Before I got the marriage proposal, Adam and I dated for over three years. That’s not a short time at all. Of course, not ten years, but enough time to thoroughly study each other, our partner’s features, our habits, even the stupid and unsightly ones.
I knew everything about Adam: how he woke up and stretched in bed, yawning sweetly; how he flinched when he tasted bitter coffee; how he ineptly flipped an omelet in a frying pan, risking scattering it on the stove I had washed; how he grumbled after work and yelled like a fool when his favorite team scored or missed a goal.
I knew every detail about him, just as he knew everything about me. But men are notoriously inattentive; I should have thought of that a long time ago. The whole time we’d been dating, I’d been worried, and it had become a complex of mine that Adam came from a good, rich family, and, according to his mother’s stories, all of his previous girlfriends had been “his level,” unlike me. My parents were simple laborers, and after my father left the family, it wasn’t easy for us at all. I never had any extra money, much less to buy my own jewelry. Adam once, when we were already living together, wanting to hide my only gold earrings, which he almost swiped off my bedside table, asked: “Where’s your jewelry box with all this stuff in it?”
I didn’t think I would ever be uncomfortable answering any of his questions. I lied that the box was at my mom’s. I don’t know why I did it, but it seemed like he’d think there was something wrong with me if he knew I’d never spent money on expensive jewelry, not even costume jewelry.
I shouldn’t have made myself so nervous. Adam said he didn’t even pay attention to it, he found out after we were married, and since then he’d been purposely showering me with jewelry.
Recently, after another gift in a velvet box, he said: “Now you have enough jewelry to open the box. You’re beautiful without them, but I want you to feel even more beautiful in them.” That finally melted my heart. I am so thankful to God that I got such an attentive and caring man!
