“In seeking any covenantal relationship we must be willing to say ‘yes’ long before we have a clear idea of what such intimacy will cost us.”
For what it's worth, I'd argue that one also doesn't, at the outset, have a clear idea -- I would say, any idea at all -- of what the intimacy will *bring* one. I certainly didn't -- for one thing, I had no model of a happy marriage to go on. I grant that you have to choose your person(s) wisely, which is an argument for getting to know them well before, as Norris would put it, making a covenant.
Unless she means by "cost" the grief when the relationship ends with the death of one of you. In which case *laughs weakly* yeah, that part is brutal. Source: close friend recently lost her wife of oh about four decades
But much of this would apply to intimate friendship, as well. I've known my two best friends since I was 19 and I quail at the thought of losing either of them.
Battle Cry of Freedom was the first work of Civil War/Civil War-adjacent history I ever read. Do you have others in mind?
no subject
For what it's worth, I'd argue that one also doesn't, at the outset, have a clear idea -- I would say, any idea at all -- of what the intimacy will *bring* one. I certainly didn't -- for one thing, I had no model of a happy marriage to go on. I grant that you have to choose your person(s) wisely, which is an argument for getting to know them well before, as Norris would put it, making a covenant.
Unless she means by "cost" the grief when the relationship ends with the death of one of you. In which case *laughs weakly* yeah, that part is brutal. Source: close friend recently lost her wife of oh about four decades
But much of this would apply to intimate friendship, as well. I've known my two best friends since I was 19 and I quail at the thought of losing either of them.
Battle Cry of Freedom was the first work of Civil War/Civil War-adjacent history I ever read. Do you have others in mind?