Knowing and being Known

Note: The text of this post is copied (with some editing) from a comment I posted on another friend's blog.
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Ah, to know and be known. I had one of those relationships back in high school. That first 'true love' when I realized that male-female relationships weren't really about tongue or no-tongue, but about sharing and shared experience.

I've been married now for almost 12 years and I still find knowing and being known a difficult matter. I love my wife dearly, yet there are things I find that remain unknown to her about me. Things that frankly, she just doesn't want to know. And that makes me sad.

We were talking the other night about our diaries. Before we married my wife wrote in her diary almost daily. In the first year of our marriage we had a heated discussion about whether our diaries were available to be read by the other person. I argued loudly in favor of openness in our relationship - and therefore diaries should be open books so to speak. Last night I found out that this has been the primary reason that my wife has ceased writing in her diary. Our diaries are now off-limits to each other. I want her to have that freedom to write without editing - to vent without fearing that I may read it and misunderstand. Blogs are free reign, however.

On the flip-side, I'm making it a point to include my wife in my life more frequently. To share my frustrations and my dreams. It's not as easy as it used to be when I was in high school - when we scrutinized every aspect of each others lives and felt that rush of hormones coursing through our bodies. Now it's less infatuation and more choice. I still dream of that romantic notion of the perfect person who knows me completely and accepts me unconditionally. In reality, that isn't a woman. It's God.