Ethan Taylor: My Saint

I consider my husband Ethan to be my personal saint. For most of our six year relationship I have considered him to be a better person than I am in many ways.

I wasn’t raised around empathetic men because that was considered weak by society’s standards, especially in the early 2000’s. In my teenaged years I was heavily attracted to brooding, mean men who were flippant about everything. I didn’t even question it. Men who were kind were fascinating but they were also almost always aggressively creepy and unrelenting.

(Thank God I was strictly not allowed to date during my teenaged years)

I met Ethan at twenty-four when we started working together and our relationship developed slowly and naturally. I didn’t even think about him at all at first, he was just another co-worker and I was angry and disappointed in most all human men.

During those first six months of working together I had sworn off dating because most everyone knows how awful it is… I am too sensitive and I couldn’t handle one more short lived relationship where two weak people attempt to build something together whilst also trying to navigate this horrendous, scary world, especially the world I was involved in at the time.

Though I did engage a tiny bit on dating apps and went on a few achingly boring dates just because I was bored and still wanted to hold out hope that not all men were predatory, empty-minded losers, I slowly got to know Ethan more at work.

I discovered that he was pretty fun to talk to, we had a great many things in common, and he wasn’t at all pushy. He was just friendly. He treated me like an equal, a friend.

He started to look better all the time as I tried to focus on my own life. He was doing that, too.

He wasn’t a “nice guy” because if Ethan Taylor is anything, it’s never performative.

He was just himself.

He lightly teased me a little bit during our friendship, but my radar wasn’t clocking arrogance or desperateness. He was genuine and warm hearted; not only that, he was independent, creative, nature-centered, extremely hard working, incredible with children and exceptionally intelligent.

With his dad and crew, he had just finished flipping our current home right as we started dating. He had also just finished a 3-D quilt he was entering in a local art show, he did art shows quite a lot back then.

He has an extensive art portfolio going back to his high school years, the pieces of which are also incredible.

There was no denying that he was wildly talented at most everything he tried his hand at.

I remember sitting out at the playground at work watching the children play when I noticed his hands: they were rough and weathered from wood working and creating art of various mediums.

My mom told me when I was younger, “The man you’ll want to marry will not be effing around; he’ll have his head down, working on himself. Just be sure you’re found deserving of that kind of person.”

Ethan had been to therapy for his trauma, he was well-versed in childhood development, and his mentors had been several strong, intelligent, older female Montessori teachers.

His mother is a wonderful, giving Catholic woman well versed in Waldorf teachings. He had sort of a heavy matriarchal influence during his late teens and early twenties. He never spoke badly about women like I was used to hearing from one-hundred percent of men in my life; he also never bad mouthed his exes, always blaming himself for the romantic relationship failures in the past. He showed a great humility that I was just not used to at all.

He carried himself with a quiet, deeply secure, masculine energy I hadn’t encountered before in a romantic partner and a few months into our relationship I was completely sold out to him.

During the first few months after we started dating, I kept telling my mom, “I feel like I found a diamond in him”

He inspired me to be better, too. He wasn’t in competition with me; he was both self assured and encouraging.

We made art together and explored abandoned buildings around the city, collecting interesting, antique items we found to decorate the new house with.

We cooked together every night, talked about where we’d been, what we wanted, what we needed, and constantly expressed how much we loved each other. We still do all that to this day.

We laughed until our sides hurt and I raved about how grateful I was to have finally found him. We constantly touched and spent every second together that we possibly could. We found little moments at work to find one another and embrace, usually in the church kitchen or when we were alone in the supply room.

After our first date we were attached at the hip aside from the couple of months he had to go to San Diego for his Montessori training. His dad was kind enough to buy me a plane ticket to spend three weeks with him while he was there. When we weren’t together during that summer, we listened to ‘Bless the Telephone’ by Labi Siffre.

I absolutely worshiped him; he was so different than anything I’d ever experienced.

After so much trauma with men he became my peace and honestly continues to be my solid, steadfast rock even after six years.

Of course neither of us were perfect: both of us struggled to regulate our stress and anger. Also, we still worked together which was proving to be stressful especially after Covid-19 hit the global scene.

But even though it was hard to be trapped together during such a grief-fulled time, we had a lot of fun together gardening, baking, making art, and traveling around to some exceptionally beautiful places to hike and camp. A huge part of our relationship involved exercising and being around nature.

We created so many memories that will last a lifetime, like when he proposed to me the summer of 2020 and we eloped a few months later. Living together and not being married was really doing a number to my conscience and was proving to be very toxic to our relationship. We knew we wanted to be together for rest of our lives and we needed not waste anymore time.

Near the end of the early relationship bliss, we started to get really serious about maturing which meant becoming painfully aware of our relational blunders and working tirelessly together to fix them as a team. We were very intentional about growing together, reading books, going to therapy, and getting serious about Orthodox Christianity.

Looking back I cringe at how immature we were at times compared to how we are currently as parents. But the gratitude I carry now is immaculate.

Becoming parents was the best thing we could have honestly done for our relationship, not that that was why we decided to have kids; we always wanted to eventually have children as both of us have always been passionate about childhood development.

It was after my scary C-section ordeal when Ethan showed me a side I’d never seen before. Something died in Ethan that day and a new man was born, just like had happened to me. It was almost even more miraculous for him because he didn’t go through the pregnancy or labor or C-section but he was obviously changed in a massive way.

I guess I didn’t know what to expect; I’d heard countless horror stories about men becoming despondent and distant after their first baby was born, and I’d seen it myself from most new fathers in my life.

I knew Ethan wouldn’t be that way, but I didn’t expect him to become almost like a second mother to Isaac, filling in the gaps in the hospital while I was high as a kite on pain killers, literally not allowed to sleep by the cranky, underpaid nurses who kept coming in to poke and prod me for 2 days straight.

No one, especially a man, had ever shown so much care before. Sure, I knew that he loved me because he says it constantly and definitely shows it, but something about seeing him become a father made me love him even more than I had before, which I thought was impossible.

He was just as obsessed over Isaac as I was, if not more so. I knew Ethan would be an amazing father which was part of the reason why I chose him, but he blew my expectations out of the water.

Even Isaac didn’t seem to be able to tell a difference between us, sometimes he even preferred Ethan over me especially at bedtime. In my many years of working with children I’ve honestly never met a more secure child until my son and I think it has a lot to do with how his father is with him.

Watching my husband with my son honestly healed something in me; it soothed my inner child who needed to know this kind of bond was possible.

I still randomly think to my myself almost every day, "what did I ever do to deserve Ethan?”

I don’t feel worthy to even witness such a miracle of a man. I wish there were more Ethans in the world, and if they do exist I hope more women are willing to give them a chance in such a shallow, cruel society that lifts up immature, insecure, toxic men who care mostly about the vapid, pointless things of this world that we see glorified mostly in movies and television.

I don’t know how Ethan exists considering all the odds stacked against him, it is as if he himself is my very own male Aphrodite ascending from the sea foam. Even though he is very in-touch with his feminine side, he is very much genuinely masculine in the way that doesn’t give one the ick.

I learn from him so very much in regards to parenting: he rarely raises his voice and never loses his temper with Isaac, whereas I have. He disciplines firmly and consistently, but he doesn’t stoop down to Isaac’s toddler level at all in moments of mayhem. And he chooses Isaac’s needs and comforts over his own at any given moment.

He is gentle and kind, loving, playful and empathic always. And everyday it just gets better and better. At this point, there is little to no drama in our daily lives. Maybe it’s because we’ve both grown up in so many ways; I know I’ve had more growing to do than him, anyway.

His years of Montessori training have turned out to be invaluable in our current circumstances, which I knew that would be the case but watching it in action just reminded me of why I chose to spend the rest of my life with this man.

Parenting has made us closer than we ever were. It’s opened my eyes to see my own ridiculous, child-like behavior in the past and how I never want to repeat the same mistakes.

I want to keep up with them and I never want my ego to cause me to be left behind spiritually ever again, floating in the gray, blurry mire that is pride and immaturity in the human, adult soul.

+++

Ethan was the first genuinely kind hearted man I found for myself. I had just finally had enough of how cruel men before we met. I had been so torn down and “negged” so much by love-interests at this point that I was finally ready to stop entertaining that kind of person, which is unfortunately a great many of them.

I’ve already written a few times about the sexual assault I went through right before Ethan and I started to get romantically involved. You can go read that, I won’t go over it again here, but he was the only person there for me at that time.

Most people are so horrible about that kind of thing; not many people tolerate you in your wretched weakness after something like that happens.

That sick man gave me two STDs that awful night on Ethan’s birthday. One of them I was able to get rid of pretty quickly and the other I will have to deal with for the rest of my life.

I’m talking about this because the reality of STDs are very terribly real; for anyone who needs to hear this: please stop making yourself vulnerable by getting intoxicated around questionable men. I was an idiot and I thought that I was invincible, that nothing so awful could happen to me again because I was older and “wiser”. I was in the company of a lot of alcoholics and drug addicts at the time, and I’m not even just talking about weed.

Ethan was understanding and empathic towards me in such an achingly soft way. His energy pulled me in and for the first time, I felt totally secure and safe with a man.

One saving grace was that Ethan doesn’t like to drink and he definitely doesn’t enjoy any kind of mind-altering substances unlike myself. He grew up around addicts and his father had taken him to a lot of AA meetings in order to scare him off even further. It definitely worked and I honestly loved all that about him. I know that if he had the same kind of addictive personality as me we would not have lasted as long as we have.

Looking back, it feels as though we have lived a hundred lifetimes together because of how much soul searching we have both done.

Amidst all the heavenly memories, I was a jerk, he was a jerk, we were both two jerks ultimately just trying to not be jerks any longer.

But we loved one another enough to hold on and get help at each turn because we’re both perfectionists deep down to our very depths and doing the right thing is ever on our radar.

He wasn’t religious aside from a Catholic upbringing but Christianity was the only thing that has kept me alive and sane for all my thirty years.

But he came along to whatever church I wanted to try and read the books I wanted him to read, like the works of C.S. Lewis and some others.

As a man, he isn’t as vocal about faith as I am, but I read some of his written thoughts among his doodling notebooks when we first started dating and that told me more than I needed to know, that deep down he wanted to believe in Jesus and that he didn’t feel too above any of it like a lot of men I have encountered, even men who claimed to be Christian.

We’ve gone through so much together and of course neither of us are perfect, least of all, me. But I’m at the point now where I can finally see the full fruits of our labor over the past six years.

God has really made it all work together, from marriage to going back to Orthodox Christianity to becoming parents, etc, where we are now is blissful, peaceful, and vibrant with life. There will be more ups and downs, but we’re both vastly different people than we were even one year ago.

I look back and cringe at how I handled things, how I behaved in front of our child during times of intense stress. I think a huge reason for my sanity now is getting off of most social media outlets. My sensitivity to all of it is just out of this world at this point, I honestly cannot deal without losing it.

Unfortunately I want to love freely and be friends with everyone but social media is the absolute worst place for that in 2025. So much civil unrest, idolatry, and hatred at every corner.

The only people I truly ever feel safe around now is Ethan and Isaac. They are my home. They keep me safe and sane and on track. With them I am focused, leashed, and tamed yet ever blossoming into a better version of myself.

They both make me want to be a better person all around.

Ethan is a teacher to his very core. He chose his occupation wisely and he has such a secure, masculine, patient presence especially now; it compels me to want to imitate where I lack.

I do take him for granted sometimes because of I think it’s a natural part of marriage, but it’s very easy to remember why I married him when we have remained best friends for over six years.

That’s been our staple in our lives together: our steadfast friendship (and great sex, lol)

I’m elated to see what other adventures we will embark on in the future as our family grows and grows.

I thank God for my husband constantly and I will never, ever stop.

Happy thirty-second birthday (tomorrow), my sweet E!

Thank you and may Christ our God continue to bless you and our family in every conceivable way.

I love you so much.