'Golde, do you love me?'
'Do I what?'
'Do you love me?'
'The first time I met you was on our wedding day.'
'I was scared.'
'I was shy.'
'I was nervous.'
'So was I.'
'But my father and my mother said we'd learn to love each other.
So I ask you, Golde, do you love me?"
'For 25 years I've washed your clothes, cooked your meals,
cleaned your house, given you children, milked your cow.
After 25 years, why talk about love right now?'
'Do you love me?'
'For 25 years I've talked with him, fought with him, starved with him.
For 25 years my bed is his,
If that's not love, what is?'
'So you do love me!'
'I suppose I do.'
'And I suppose I love you too.
'It doesn't change a thing.
But even after 25 years, it's nice to know.'
Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.
Let the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over over his own body; but the wife does. Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control. But this I say by way of concession, not of command.
Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to the widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.
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