The Pot Half Full by Jaime Samms

A multi-published author with Freya's Bower and Love You Divine, Jaime Samms writes 'stories between men.' Spinning tales with raw sensuality and drama, like Poor Boy and Muse's Vaction, Jaime's a master of m/m fiction. Be sure to stop by her website for free reads and check out her stunning drawings on deviantART. And now, let's see what she's written for us today!

As my cat sits here on my toes and warms them as only the best of cats can properly do, I wonder. I've never been into the Valentine's Day myth, to be honest. Now, don't freak out. It doesn't mean I don't believe in love. I very much do, or I wouldn't write about it incessantly.
After nearly thirteen years with the same guy, a guy! (I still have little freak outs over that, occasionally.) I've burned through a few incarnations of the idea of love, and one of the ideas that we've both always held is that if you need a special day to declare how much you love your mate, you're doing it all wrong.

You know when you fall in love and everything is new, and you figure the world is going to be a different place? And for a while, it is? I'm happy to say, that new lasted years for us. Every day, I woke up in this world where everything was shiny and great. Who wouldn't want to hang onto that?

Eventually, we had kids. I think the biggest mistake couples make when kids come along is changing their lives completely to accommodate the little creatures. I see the looks of horror from all you mothers out there, but don't panic. Don't call the humane society on me just yet. Let me explain.

Something about love makes people think it's all about happily ever after. No one tells newlyweds about the work, the sacrifice, or the forgiveness that love requires. No one ever tells new parents about how devastating those bundles of joy are to the wedding bed, or the shiny newness they crave in their relationship. This parental filter I found myself looking at my marriage through gave me a whole new look at the world I woke up in every day. (on the days I actually got to wake up, as opposed to stumble out of the nursery in the general direction of where the coffee pot might or might not have coffee in it)

And this is where I get to the part about not changing your entire lives to accommodate the rug rats: coffee in the coffee pot. You know it's love, you know it's for life, when there is never a day there is not coffee in the coffee pot when you need it.

There was one day, very early in our relationship, when I complained about him taking the last cup of coffee and not putting on a new pot. From that day forward, I have never found the pot empty. Not even when he got up with the kids, or worked insane hours or in a town an hour's drive from our home. Not once.

What hasn't changed, over all the years we've been together, is that I am first. When he's hurting, when he's sad, when he's so pissed off at me he can't look at me, when the kids need something, nag or climb his leg for his attention, I'm still his one and only.

Certainly, we changed a lot of things. We got a bigger place to live, we spend our money on them, we gave up a lot of physical comforts to home school our children, but we never compromised our relationship to do any of those things. Now, as the kids grow and show signs of becoming the people they are destined to be, we can see the time coming when it will be as it was in the beginning: us.

And you know what? I see a new incarnation of love on the horizon. I see already the new plans forming, the future that will be a different world to wake up in. I feel the patience of a husband who has given me the space to explore and love take chances. He's put me first at the expense of his own comfort and at the risk of his world changing in ways he might not want it to. He's watched me go through a lot of heartache in the past few months and never once left the coffee pot empty, even when he wasn't sure what I was still doing with him.

That's love.