She wanted to watch it as it was Savannah Guthrie’s first day back. Apropos of nothing, I was sitting and reading as she watched the show, and a segment with Terry Crews and his wife, Rebecca King-Crews, came on; she suffers from Parkinson’s and underwent a new procedure to treat her illness.

During their discussion, Terry said something which stuck with me. Many authors who have written stories about forced fem talk about a spouse or a parent feminizing a “loved one” for “their own good”, or “because I love you”. I have always maintained that this is not love - if you truly love someone, you don’t treat them like that. You don’t humiliate them, you don’t hurt them either physically or emotionally, and you definitely don’t place them in situations of potential harm. That isn’t love, rather it is simply demonstrating your power over another person. It is dominance, not caring, and certainly not love.

What Crews said that struck me so strongly was a simple statement about his love for his wife. He said that her struggles were the whole point behind their marriage - “in sickness and in health, for better or worse.” He pointed out that his wife was strong where he was weak, and that he was strong where she was weak, and together they are more than they were separately.

That is a very good definition of my relationship with my spouse, and a wonderful description of what a marriage is supposed to be. It’s not about dominance, not about who is in charge - it is rather about cooperation, where the end result is greater than the sum of the two.