Being in love is like living on or beside a great ocean. The sea has a logic that is all its own. Even when reduced to science, the physics of the sea is not that of the air. For example, the deeper one goes in the ocean, the greater pressure and the less likely one is likely to return to sea level – alive or otherwise. Conversely, absent an ability to break the force of gravity, the higher one goes aloft, the more unstable conventional aerodynamics and power plants become and the greater the chances of planting one's self in terra firma at the end of a terminal return!

Love is more visceral than cerebral. It is more physical and spiritual than intellectual. In a word, love is primordial. Although often fragile, it is eternal. It is at once a contradiction, a paradox, and a solid foundation. In many ways, love is beyond the ability of language to describe – both in its depth of pain and its exaltation of delight. My wife and I are very much in love. Yet, there have been times when our marriage could have crumbled like a walnut smashed with a hammer. Almost everyone who meets my wife thinks she is the sweetest person on the face of the earth. Then, as my wife once frankly explained to her mother, underneath a superficial charm once lurked a real bitch that only could be tamed by a man unafraid to leave bruises on her buttocks!

My wife had first realized her need as a preteen. Of all the boys she knew, she thought I might be the one best able to handle her. Then, I disappeared into the abyss of military service and she totally lost track of my whereabouts. Consequently, although I was her first love, I was by no means her first date. When I reappeared, she engineered our first date – even pushing her curfew by several hours just to be with me. In time, she put me to the test as she had done the other men she dated. In doing so, she discovered someone able to handle her. The rest, as they say, is history.

Although there were hints from various sources, there was no book to tell me how to handle my future wife. With the singular and profound exception of a women explicitly recommending wives be spanked, it was largely on the job training. Where I made my initial mistake – corrected after taking the woman's advice – was in my failure to understand that women need periodic spankings rather than just one to prove it could be done. Once we got that settled – after we were married – our relationship improved dramatically.

There are no how-to books on marriage in the same way that there are texts on kitchen renovation or bathroom plumbing. Difficulties in human interaction are not always as easy to solve as dislodging a hairball from the bathroom lavatory trap or creating more kitchen counter space. Neat and clean remedies do not often exist in the bedroom. Measurements in marriage are less precise. Remedies to not always come with instant results. Things are more complex.

Thus, as noted above, love is more visceral than cerebral. It is more flying by the seat of one's pants than filing a flight plan. Sometimes, it is even VFR (looking for visual references beyond the cockpit) in IFR (flying only by instruments) conditions with half the instrument panel red tagged. Getting married is often like jumping from the high board without being sure of the water depth below. It is like stepping off the mythological cliff wearing wings that Zeus claims will keep one from plunging to the rocks beneath. Flying is sometimes the greater surprise.