Upon seeing that post about how nurses are taught that, if the wife is seriously ill, the husband is most likely going to dip, I decided to share the story of a couple of family friends, just to remind you that high value men exist.

I'm going to call them Paul and Elena.

Elena was my mother's best friend while growing up, and they met Paul when the three of them were teenagers. Paul immediately fell for Elena. No questions asked: they met at a club, he asked her for her number, and so they began talking.

Elena, however, didn't want to get into a relationship with Paul, and she immediately told him so. He didn't get jealous, didn't throw a tantrum, and stayed her friend, never making her feel guilty of the fact that, while she was dating other guys, he didn't date any other girls because he just wanted to be with her.

At some point, a little after finishing high school, they got together, Paul went to university, they got married, had two kids. Paul got an incredibly well paying job and Elena became a housewife.

Everything was fine, until she began complaining about a certain throat ache that would make her cough a lot. She went to the doctor and it turned out to be a very rare form of cancer, something that they weren't sure of how to treat and whose number of cases studied in Europe were under the thousand, and none of them in our country.

So they buckled up and prepared for her being sick.

Paul took time off of work and went with her to all the chemotherapy sessions she had scheduled. He helped her shave her hair, bought her beanies to cover her head, always carried in his car a change of clothes for her and additional blankets and sweaters. He would go home only to take care of their kids, as otherwise he would spend all of his time with her.

She was always a very thin woman, and with the chemo and other treatments she lost even more weight. She even had to undergo surgery, an operation that opened her abdomen, and felt awful, both psychologically and physically, with the thought that she was ugly always bothering her too. I have seen pictures of her from the 90s, and she looked like a model, she was absolutely stunning, and seeing her while sick, it was almost impossible to believe that she and the girl in the photos were the same person. Paul never once told her she was ugly, or that she had to gain weight, or that she had to undergo surgery to get back to how she was before. He always told her she was beautiful and complimented her, telling her that it didn't matter if she had short hair because she could always regrow it when she healed.

Elena had been sick for two years when she passed away, and Paul never once, not for a single moment, thought about leaving her and their kids.

It's been more than three years since her death, and he hasn't dated anyone since, not because he feels guilty or as if he's cheating on her, but because Elena was it for him, and even if his friends and family are trying to get him to have another girlfriend, he doesn't feel the need to.