“left destitute after a lifetime of privilege from being the partner of a highly practiced meal preparer” —- what a haunting and beautiful image. Your words are magic.
Wow...That was so beautiful. I've always wanted to have a husband aka mate, best friend, etc., but then I think about the loss, which is something I couldn't face!
This was really sweet to read. Made me feel good and sad at the same time. But that just means we're human, right? Thank you!
That happy/sad mix is the richest feeling to me. As you say, proof we're really humans living life. Thank you for reading, and I'm so glad you felt that.
Also... I once had that fear of loss hold me back from love, too, but I'm glad I've leapt. It's what it's all for, I think. Living. Loving.
I have had so many familial tragedies in my life hon-the first major one being a suicide of a younger brother, then a few years later, the death of my mommy; :( a few years later the death of a younger sister dying after giving birth to her daughter; then daddy; months later the youngest brother was murdered in Boston; and just four months later an older brother dying on a portable toilet with a needle in his harm.
Oh, at the age of 18, I experienced an extremely racist sexual assault perpertrated by a motorycle gang called the Devils' Diciples (they spelled it wrong purposely smh lol) who left me for dead. I am sure my mind/body has managed to equate all of these tragedies and losses and made me fearful of any type of closeness to anybody.
My god, dude. Words can't say my sorriness. You've had a ridiculously unfair lot. I lost my mom young, too, but that doesn't even compare. I hope you're in for a karmic load of devotion for your years ahead. I know my heart is certainly with you from here on out. DM me if you want - I'll give you my number and we can be text friends.
So sweet, deep, sad and Dear. I think of losing mine too, but mostly try not to. You’re brave to learn his recipes, your kind husband. Grief and loss are such firm companions, throughout our joys in life. I’m sending you a hug. Thanks for the beautiful writing Abby. Judi
❤️❤️❤️ I'm embracing my scars and preparing for grief instead of just fearing it, haha. Thank you for being so kind, as always. I'm so grateful for your readership. xx
You too are very kind Abby. We never know the forms which grief and loss may take and when we may have to hold them, next to our deepest Love. But you have SO much of it, that deep and profound Love. So focus on that, while being wise about loss as I know you are. That is my Grannie wisdom for you and ha ha back at ya. 😊🧚❤️ Judi
I met my wife to be when she was 60 and I was 59. We were together for 14 yrs before we decided to get married 2 yrs ago. We don't like jewelry so we had tattoos on our ring fingers.
Now we are in our 70's and wondering what I will do when my partner dies.
My wife was in the hospital for 15 days and was not allowed to get up and walk. Due to that her muscles in her legs turned to mush. Right now she is in a wheelchair and cannot do much. I have to pick her up to move her to the bed to the toilet and back. She has PT on her legs once a week and I do the massaging of her legs the rest of the week to help ger rid of the edema.
I am her sous-chef in the kitchen. She tells me what to do and how much salt to add to things. I hate salt BTW but I do it for her.
She has taught me how to fold fitted sheets that look like they just came out of the package. Okay mine aren't that good but hers is.
I could go on and on about her but my eyes are watering up as I type.
My eyes are too from reading. I almost added the watery eyes emoji but it felt wrong. I’m so moved by this comment, Eddy, thank you for sharing. You guys are lucky to have each other, but of course you know that. Go on, if/when you want, because I’d love to keep reading this from you. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Keep it coming. I’m honored you shared it here. And I just picked my phone up thinking I had to respond again and say I hope you two have many more healthy years ahead ❤️❤️❤️❤️
I just wanted to let you know that my wife passed away Sunday morning at 6:34 AM. I know you don’t know me but you responded back to me on your thread. I appreciated that and just thought I would let you know.
Oh Eddy, I've been thinking about you guys, and am so sorry to hear of your loss. I know you dont know me either but I am here for you still. And I know she is still, too, somewhere. I hope you have family keeping you company right now. My hearts with you.
I made myself learn to cook when my kids were born because of this! But still I’m a practical cook, not the savor this and that like, discover new spices like my husband (minus desserts, that’s what I go crazy for). So many things like this I’d have to figure out! (Bills, gas, taxes, health care, haha)
I have so many moments of panic about all the holes my husband has plugged, too. I remember life with those gaps and it was a cold wind a blowin'. I really thought there'd be some naughtiness with whipped cream, though.
I'm now picturing myself naked, trying to satiate holes with a cold, whipped cream dinner and remembering that Joe whips cream by hand with mascarpone and vanilla 😭
It's hard to believe, but the recipe has never made a sexy appearance for us. I'm adding it to the list!!
Thanks for bringing the sexiness to the comments section 😘
As far as I understand cooking, it's crucial not to overdo it: don't mix too much or force every spice into the dish. Instead, it's better to treat it like music: every choice you make should be meaningful in the dish (the eater should be able to recognize what it was), the dish shouldn't kill you after cooking, and the dish should be nutritious. That's it. I'm not a chef at all and I don't have a culinary education or even any special skills. Try to first identify the most basic culinary skills and hone them, and then try to cook your husband's recipes. You don't need to copy what you don't understand, you don't need to copy what you haven't yet seen the need for.
You can try an alternative approach through stress: cook for your husband, and let him be your harshest critic. He shouldn't just do it for you; he should demand professionalism from you, and you should periodically undertake culinary projects. In this approach to learning, you must do everything perfectly the first time, then suffer the painful loss and gain a host of new impressions and challenges, which you must overcome before the next project.
Don't try to resurrect the dead: it's painful and normal when a loved one dies, but a loved one has meaning because you chose them from the astronomical sum of all your options and choices: you chose them over all the alternative investments of your time. You are good not because you have a husband, but because you have the ability to make choices and manage your time, because you can create a life for yourself according to your own design. Trying to avoid reality, to close yourself off from the facts, is far worse than any loss. Madness gives you no value, wanting the impossible deprives you of opportunities and yourself.
If your husband dies before you, be wise to accept this fact fully and not try in any way to pretend that he is still alive. You can remember him, but you don't have to try to live as if he's still alive. If this happens, act in the same way as if you had broken up with him (and both were honest and worthy).
This error implies a fracture within the self—a dualism where one part “gives up” something to another, as if the person were not an integrated whole. But I am one. My values are mine, expressions of my indivisible entity. To pursue a greater value over a lesser one is not sacrifice; it is consistency. It is the sovereign self acting in accordance with its own value-standard. To call this “sacrifice” is to smuggle in the very dualism my entire metaphysics rejects.
There is no “greater value” above my own life. There is no mystical, social, or romantic justification that can override this fact. Any claim that demands my surrender—whether in the name of God, society, or “true love”—is a lie backed by coercion. It is a product of the primacy of consciousness, an attempt to reshape reality by decree. Suffering is not a virtue. Death is not meaningful. To die for another is not romantic; it is the ultimate betrayal of the only existence I will ever have. The “greater value” offered in exchange—be it “treasure in heaven” or “the common good”—is a non-value, a floating abstraction with no referent in reality, demanding the surrender of actual, life-sustaining values. It is the morality of death.
I may choose to risk my life to protect what I value—my freedom, my loved ones, my future—but I will never surrender it. To do so would be to commit metaphysical treason: to treat my life as disposable, and in doing so, to annihilate the very source of value. Romantic love itself has meaning only on the condition of individual life and freedom. To demand or offer one’s death in the name of love is not love—it is dependency, desperation, or delusion. Love is the response to values in another person, but it cannot exist without the valuer. To destroy the valuer for the sake of the value is a contradiction that only the Primacy of Consciousness could entertain.
I value my freedom and my reason above any dependency on another human being. I will not be broken by the altruist weapon of guilt, nor seduced by the romanticized drama of loss. I see through the epistemological corruption of “selflessness”—an anti-concept designed to obliterate the self while performing the motions of benevolence. I reject “duty” as a non-faculty that serves only to internalize the voice of the oppressor. I dismiss “the common good” as a stolen concept, a floating abstraction with no referent in reality, used to sacrifice actual individuals to a collective fiction. These constructs are invalid. They cannot survive the Epistemological Razor, as they are severed from perceptual reality and built on a network of stolen concepts and logical fallacies.
I think I align with a lot of this, but with more softness around the edges. I believe our individual lives serve as a means for our own advancement in whatever matters to us. But I believe the thing that matters most, on my individual level, is love. In that love, there is so much room for devotion and duty, but not in a selfless or dependent way, but through a mutually selfish respect and admiration. I don’t romanticize loss and death, not in the slightest, but I am so familiar with it that I find myself preparing for it, and thinking through these ways I may grieve. Not in a way that sacrifices my individual existence, but that aids me in living more intentionally. Like the old “memento mori.” Because no matter how logical I may feel about “points” of “life” etc, I know I am still a human, and an imperfect one at that, who seeks to love fully and that means I will feel pain with loss - and that pain, I think, is a part of this whole life and love thing so I won’t run from it or tell myself to shut it out. It’s not romantic. It just is.
And thank you for the cooking advice. This piece was more a meditation on appreciating one’s partner, and not necessarily a literal intention to create a time capsule. But I do intend on learning from my guy - he’s so good at it, so I really ought to try!
I appreciate you reading and sharing so much on your perspectives. It’s great to get to know your mind a bit.
I am a refined objectivist. I am composed of sharp angles that nevertheless accept any facts, including those of human individuality or the usual pragmatic contempt for ideas..
People suffer most not because their partners die, but because they misunderstand the meaning of their relationships. True love is not a prison; I believe it should be built on the temptation and freedom of each partner. More meaningful relationships should require a benevolent and honest test against greater, possible, and alternative temptations. Altruistic platonic love is "love" diluted with a thirst for power over another person, as well as a capricious desire beyond reality. As far as I can tell, I think you have a good relationship with your husband.
Think about the choices that brought you into this relationship — and you will find a deeper and more universal understanding of your own values. “I define value as the moral category that enables a person to preserve himself as a whole: through specific means and regular practice. A value that has no alternative or is independent of choice is not necessary. A value must be a value to me and for the furtherance of my existence. Virtue is the action I take to achieve that value. My standard is my own life—not life as a vague, mystical imperative, but my life as a specific, rational organism with a nature that dictates the terms of its survival. To act against my life is to commit the absurdity of sawing off the branch I sit upon. Therefore, the pleasure-pain mechanism, when processed by a rational consciousness, becomes the bio-ethical engine of my existence. It provides the irreducible emotional data that my mind must use to identify what is for me and what is against me.”
When you see the meaning of your life in love, you forget that you love and care about your values, that you need to understand and plan for them. The meaning of your life is determined by your own attention and the plan of your values. You shouldn't depend on your partner. Your love shouldn't die or be defined by your partner; it's your partner who has to meet your standards for you to be with them. You value him according to the principle of the best. You have no destiny, and the most important values are always built on the greatest possible sum of alternatives; an important value cannot be without alternatives; it must overcome all alternatives in a fair fight with full force of its goodness.
“The best choice is not the most convenient, the most popular, or the most immediately gratifying. The Principle of the Best is the choice that is freest, widest, most versatile, and most adequate to my own nature and the nature of things. It is not a choice for the evening or for a passing mood—it is the choice for my entire personality and life, as far as I know and love myself. This principle demands that I exercise the fullest possible sovereignty over my own judgment. I am not comparing myself to others; I am measuring my options against the absolute standard of my own flourishing. The best choice does not mean I must be better than another person; it means I must be ruthlessly attentive to the quality of my own choices. It means I bear full responsibility for my own judgments, independent of the choices of others. I do not outsource my valuation. I do not seek permission. I look at the facts of my nature and the facts of reality, and I choose what is most congruent with both. This is the practice of epistemological sovereignty in action.”
You shouldn't believe that love is unlimited, that it's eternal, or endow it with any other mystical qualities. Love is limited and must have clear boundaries. For example, if one partner exhibits physical aggression toward the other, or if one partner humiliates the other, the other's love for the first must end there. In this case, a person must act against their emotions, because they loved the wrong person, because the first person doesn't deserve love anymore. Love for someone is a tremendous value, but any love must begin with love for yourself and a desire for the best and most worthy for yourself.
If you're ready to die after your husband, you don't love yourself, and if that's the case, you don't love your husband either. In this case, you'd rather have other people or your husband tell you how to live and what to value. In this case, you do not own yourself, you do not live, and all because you do not think and do not look at your own existence independently. You should be fundamentally happy under any circumstances, as long as you have the ability to think, choose, and act. If it's not your choice, then it's not your value. This doesn't mean you should experience only positive emotions; in fact, you should experience all your emotions, but judge and decide with your mind, and use emotions as information about your core values, as pleasure, and as a stimulus to act (if that stimulus is reasonable).
“left destitute after a lifetime of privilege from being the partner of a highly practiced meal preparer” —- what a haunting and beautiful image. Your words are magic.
Aw Rachel, thank you. Writing is healing, eh?! Thanks for reading my ramblings and being so kind xxxxxxx
It is! Particularly when the words flow onto the page, just as we hear them in our heads. 😚
Wow...That was so beautiful. I've always wanted to have a husband aka mate, best friend, etc., but then I think about the loss, which is something I couldn't face!
This was really sweet to read. Made me feel good and sad at the same time. But that just means we're human, right? Thank you!
That happy/sad mix is the richest feeling to me. As you say, proof we're really humans living life. Thank you for reading, and I'm so glad you felt that.
Also... I once had that fear of loss hold me back from love, too, but I'm glad I've leapt. It's what it's all for, I think. Living. Loving.
xxxx
I have had so many familial tragedies in my life hon-the first major one being a suicide of a younger brother, then a few years later, the death of my mommy; :( a few years later the death of a younger sister dying after giving birth to her daughter; then daddy; months later the youngest brother was murdered in Boston; and just four months later an older brother dying on a portable toilet with a needle in his harm.
Oh, at the age of 18, I experienced an extremely racist sexual assault perpertrated by a motorycle gang called the Devils' Diciples (they spelled it wrong purposely smh lol) who left me for dead. I am sure my mind/body has managed to equate all of these tragedies and losses and made me fearful of any type of closeness to anybody.
Such is life.
My god, dude. Words can't say my sorriness. You've had a ridiculously unfair lot. I lost my mom young, too, but that doesn't even compare. I hope you're in for a karmic load of devotion for your years ahead. I know my heart is certainly with you from here on out. DM me if you want - I'll give you my number and we can be text friends.
So sweet, deep, sad and Dear. I think of losing mine too, but mostly try not to. You’re brave to learn his recipes, your kind husband. Grief and loss are such firm companions, throughout our joys in life. I’m sending you a hug. Thanks for the beautiful writing Abby. Judi
❤️❤️❤️ I'm embracing my scars and preparing for grief instead of just fearing it, haha. Thank you for being so kind, as always. I'm so grateful for your readership. xx
You too are very kind Abby. We never know the forms which grief and loss may take and when we may have to hold them, next to our deepest Love. But you have SO much of it, that deep and profound Love. So focus on that, while being wise about loss as I know you are. That is my Grannie wisdom for you and ha ha back at ya. 😊🧚❤️ Judi
🥹 I love the wisdom!!! Thank you ❤️❤️❤️
Smile…..
I met my wife to be when she was 60 and I was 59. We were together for 14 yrs before we decided to get married 2 yrs ago. We don't like jewelry so we had tattoos on our ring fingers.
Now we are in our 70's and wondering what I will do when my partner dies.
My wife was in the hospital for 15 days and was not allowed to get up and walk. Due to that her muscles in her legs turned to mush. Right now she is in a wheelchair and cannot do much. I have to pick her up to move her to the bed to the toilet and back. She has PT on her legs once a week and I do the massaging of her legs the rest of the week to help ger rid of the edema.
I am her sous-chef in the kitchen. She tells me what to do and how much salt to add to things. I hate salt BTW but I do it for her.
She has taught me how to fold fitted sheets that look like they just came out of the package. Okay mine aren't that good but hers is.
I could go on and on about her but my eyes are watering up as I type.
My eyes are too from reading. I almost added the watery eyes emoji but it felt wrong. I’m so moved by this comment, Eddy, thank you for sharing. You guys are lucky to have each other, but of course you know that. Go on, if/when you want, because I’d love to keep reading this from you. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Thank you Abigail. I wasn't sure how my story would be accepted on your page.
Keep it coming. I’m honored you shared it here. And I just picked my phone up thinking I had to respond again and say I hope you two have many more healthy years ahead ❤️❤️❤️❤️
I just wanted to let you know that my wife passed away Sunday morning at 6:34 AM. I know you don’t know me but you responded back to me on your thread. I appreciated that and just thought I would let you know.
Oh Eddy, I've been thinking about you guys, and am so sorry to hear of your loss. I know you dont know me either but I am here for you still. And I know she is still, too, somewhere. I hope you have family keeping you company right now. My hearts with you.
Muchas Gracias Abigail
I made myself learn to cook when my kids were born because of this! But still I’m a practical cook, not the savor this and that like, discover new spices like my husband (minus desserts, that’s what I go crazy for). So many things like this I’d have to figure out! (Bills, gas, taxes, health care, haha)
I am the sweets representation in our household, too. I've even got Joe into ice cream, though he still prefers just cream 🤪
I can't imagine I'll ever really savor this/that in the process, but I hope I can at least land a recipe with more than three ingredients one day.
We absolutely must figure out the beneficiary business, and I'm sure there's an app you could use for the bills/gas/etc bits 🙃🙃🙃
I have so many moments of panic about all the holes my husband has plugged, too. I remember life with those gaps and it was a cold wind a blowin'. I really thought there'd be some naughtiness with whipped cream, though.
“Holes my husband plugged” — yes! I have spent time in this dark space, as well. Beautifully stated.
I'm now picturing myself naked, trying to satiate holes with a cold, whipped cream dinner and remembering that Joe whips cream by hand with mascarpone and vanilla 😭
It's hard to believe, but the recipe has never made a sexy appearance for us. I'm adding it to the list!!
Thanks for bringing the sexiness to the comments section 😘
As far as I understand cooking, it's crucial not to overdo it: don't mix too much or force every spice into the dish. Instead, it's better to treat it like music: every choice you make should be meaningful in the dish (the eater should be able to recognize what it was), the dish shouldn't kill you after cooking, and the dish should be nutritious. That's it. I'm not a chef at all and I don't have a culinary education or even any special skills. Try to first identify the most basic culinary skills and hone them, and then try to cook your husband's recipes. You don't need to copy what you don't understand, you don't need to copy what you haven't yet seen the need for.
You can try an alternative approach through stress: cook for your husband, and let him be your harshest critic. He shouldn't just do it for you; he should demand professionalism from you, and you should periodically undertake culinary projects. In this approach to learning, you must do everything perfectly the first time, then suffer the painful loss and gain a host of new impressions and challenges, which you must overcome before the next project.
Don't try to resurrect the dead: it's painful and normal when a loved one dies, but a loved one has meaning because you chose them from the astronomical sum of all your options and choices: you chose them over all the alternative investments of your time. You are good not because you have a husband, but because you have the ability to make choices and manage your time, because you can create a life for yourself according to your own design. Trying to avoid reality, to close yourself off from the facts, is far worse than any loss. Madness gives you no value, wanting the impossible deprives you of opportunities and yourself.
If your husband dies before you, be wise to accept this fact fully and not try in any way to pretend that he is still alive. You can remember him, but you don't have to try to live as if he's still alive. If this happens, act in the same way as if you had broken up with him (and both were honest and worthy).
Death is not romantic, and you love a person, not a ghost. I'll quote myself from my Book 2: Values: The Integral Carnality of the Radiant Self. https://selfishjohn.substack.com/i/174792965/chapter-the-morality-of-rational-self-interest
This error implies a fracture within the self—a dualism where one part “gives up” something to another, as if the person were not an integrated whole. But I am one. My values are mine, expressions of my indivisible entity. To pursue a greater value over a lesser one is not sacrifice; it is consistency. It is the sovereign self acting in accordance with its own value-standard. To call this “sacrifice” is to smuggle in the very dualism my entire metaphysics rejects.
There is no “greater value” above my own life. There is no mystical, social, or romantic justification that can override this fact. Any claim that demands my surrender—whether in the name of God, society, or “true love”—is a lie backed by coercion. It is a product of the primacy of consciousness, an attempt to reshape reality by decree. Suffering is not a virtue. Death is not meaningful. To die for another is not romantic; it is the ultimate betrayal of the only existence I will ever have. The “greater value” offered in exchange—be it “treasure in heaven” or “the common good”—is a non-value, a floating abstraction with no referent in reality, demanding the surrender of actual, life-sustaining values. It is the morality of death.
I may choose to risk my life to protect what I value—my freedom, my loved ones, my future—but I will never surrender it. To do so would be to commit metaphysical treason: to treat my life as disposable, and in doing so, to annihilate the very source of value. Romantic love itself has meaning only on the condition of individual life and freedom. To demand or offer one’s death in the name of love is not love—it is dependency, desperation, or delusion. Love is the response to values in another person, but it cannot exist without the valuer. To destroy the valuer for the sake of the value is a contradiction that only the Primacy of Consciousness could entertain.
I value my freedom and my reason above any dependency on another human being. I will not be broken by the altruist weapon of guilt, nor seduced by the romanticized drama of loss. I see through the epistemological corruption of “selflessness”—an anti-concept designed to obliterate the self while performing the motions of benevolence. I reject “duty” as a non-faculty that serves only to internalize the voice of the oppressor. I dismiss “the common good” as a stolen concept, a floating abstraction with no referent in reality, used to sacrifice actual individuals to a collective fiction. These constructs are invalid. They cannot survive the Epistemological Razor, as they are severed from perceptual reality and built on a network of stolen concepts and logical fallacies.
I think I align with a lot of this, but with more softness around the edges. I believe our individual lives serve as a means for our own advancement in whatever matters to us. But I believe the thing that matters most, on my individual level, is love. In that love, there is so much room for devotion and duty, but not in a selfless or dependent way, but through a mutually selfish respect and admiration. I don’t romanticize loss and death, not in the slightest, but I am so familiar with it that I find myself preparing for it, and thinking through these ways I may grieve. Not in a way that sacrifices my individual existence, but that aids me in living more intentionally. Like the old “memento mori.” Because no matter how logical I may feel about “points” of “life” etc, I know I am still a human, and an imperfect one at that, who seeks to love fully and that means I will feel pain with loss - and that pain, I think, is a part of this whole life and love thing so I won’t run from it or tell myself to shut it out. It’s not romantic. It just is.
And thank you for the cooking advice. This piece was more a meditation on appreciating one’s partner, and not necessarily a literal intention to create a time capsule. But I do intend on learning from my guy - he’s so good at it, so I really ought to try!
I appreciate you reading and sharing so much on your perspectives. It’s great to get to know your mind a bit.
Take care!!
I am a refined objectivist. I am composed of sharp angles that nevertheless accept any facts, including those of human individuality or the usual pragmatic contempt for ideas..
People suffer most not because their partners die, but because they misunderstand the meaning of their relationships. True love is not a prison; I believe it should be built on the temptation and freedom of each partner. More meaningful relationships should require a benevolent and honest test against greater, possible, and alternative temptations. Altruistic platonic love is "love" diluted with a thirst for power over another person, as well as a capricious desire beyond reality. As far as I can tell, I think you have a good relationship with your husband.
Think about the choices that brought you into this relationship — and you will find a deeper and more universal understanding of your own values. “I define value as the moral category that enables a person to preserve himself as a whole: through specific means and regular practice. A value that has no alternative or is independent of choice is not necessary. A value must be a value to me and for the furtherance of my existence. Virtue is the action I take to achieve that value. My standard is my own life—not life as a vague, mystical imperative, but my life as a specific, rational organism with a nature that dictates the terms of its survival. To act against my life is to commit the absurdity of sawing off the branch I sit upon. Therefore, the pleasure-pain mechanism, when processed by a rational consciousness, becomes the bio-ethical engine of my existence. It provides the irreducible emotional data that my mind must use to identify what is for me and what is against me.”
When you see the meaning of your life in love, you forget that you love and care about your values, that you need to understand and plan for them. The meaning of your life is determined by your own attention and the plan of your values. You shouldn't depend on your partner. Your love shouldn't die or be defined by your partner; it's your partner who has to meet your standards for you to be with them. You value him according to the principle of the best. You have no destiny, and the most important values are always built on the greatest possible sum of alternatives; an important value cannot be without alternatives; it must overcome all alternatives in a fair fight with full force of its goodness.
“The best choice is not the most convenient, the most popular, or the most immediately gratifying. The Principle of the Best is the choice that is freest, widest, most versatile, and most adequate to my own nature and the nature of things. It is not a choice for the evening or for a passing mood—it is the choice for my entire personality and life, as far as I know and love myself. This principle demands that I exercise the fullest possible sovereignty over my own judgment. I am not comparing myself to others; I am measuring my options against the absolute standard of my own flourishing. The best choice does not mean I must be better than another person; it means I must be ruthlessly attentive to the quality of my own choices. It means I bear full responsibility for my own judgments, independent of the choices of others. I do not outsource my valuation. I do not seek permission. I look at the facts of my nature and the facts of reality, and I choose what is most congruent with both. This is the practice of epistemological sovereignty in action.”
You shouldn't believe that love is unlimited, that it's eternal, or endow it with any other mystical qualities. Love is limited and must have clear boundaries. For example, if one partner exhibits physical aggression toward the other, or if one partner humiliates the other, the other's love for the first must end there. In this case, a person must act against their emotions, because they loved the wrong person, because the first person doesn't deserve love anymore. Love for someone is a tremendous value, but any love must begin with love for yourself and a desire for the best and most worthy for yourself.
If you're ready to die after your husband, you don't love yourself, and if that's the case, you don't love your husband either. In this case, you'd rather have other people or your husband tell you how to live and what to value. In this case, you do not own yourself, you do not live, and all because you do not think and do not look at your own existence independently. You should be fundamentally happy under any circumstances, as long as you have the ability to think, choose, and act. If it's not your choice, then it's not your value. This doesn't mean you should experience only positive emotions; in fact, you should experience all your emotions, but judge and decide with your mind, and use emotions as information about your core values, as pleasure, and as a stimulus to act (if that stimulus is reasonable).