May 8th - Alex's Birthday

From "A City of Bells" by Elizabeth Goudge

"The human race is divided into the proppers and the propped. The propped have an easier time, of course, but they do not live so deeply or so excitingly and they get very bored."

Felicity drew gratefully closer to him in the dark street. If their two lives ran together, as she wanted them to, and this man beside her became her husband she knew just how the propping would be divided. On the surface it would be all hers, he would rely on her to charm away his depression, to light his imagination, to reassure his self-distrust and to lighten his fears and she would sometimes perhaps, as life went on get rather weary of doing it, yet deep down he had something that she had not got, some sober quality of level headness and caution, together with and unchangeable endurance in love and work upon which in her bad times she would be able to rest her whole weight.

I love the above quote and could see some of the relationship Alex and I had in the quote and how it all worked out. Sometimes I was the propper and he the proppee and vice versa - but then isn't that what makes a sustaining marriage?