He is truly patient and kind...

Ours is an arranged marriage, and a wildly successful one. We are deeply in love with each other. My husband is Sephardic, and a handsome bear of a man. We observe the practice of harchaka (laws of separation), and mikvah (the ritual bath of purification). This keeps marriage fresh, and a husband's interest at home where it belongs. But this is like being a young couple anticipating the wedding night, all over again. I traveled to my parents' home, several states away, to have the surgery, and to spend my convalescence. My husband drove out to visit me in the hospital, bringing me a wonderfully-sentimental "I love you" card, a box of locally-made chocolates, and a gift of Mary Balogh's Bedwyn series of romance novels (clever man). Now he is back at work, and we keep in daily touch via Gmail chat. We are eagerly anticipating the day the doctor clears me for sexual intercourse, because I will then have a mikvah, and we will make a ceremony out of the end of what will have been an *extended* ritual separation. "Shafir, I love you!"