How important is the influence/acceptance of spouse?

[K]

p 128 Stan Rice, the boy from high school... up to Denton to go to N. Texas State College in 1960 and who followed me to San Francisco in 1961. I went back to Denton to marry him in that same year...the love of my life...the highest commitment we could make to one another. and we remained married for forty-one years until his death in 2002. I've never been with any other man, but Stan Rice.,, [ page 129 ...(discipline of atheist quote) he] was the most conscientious people I'd ever met ... driven by conscience and thought in terms of harsh absolutes... poetry...painting; art for him had replaced any religion that he ever had... he had intense personal vlues. And he understood that I wanted to be somebody and he believed that I should. Though he deplored my sloppiness, lack of discipline, inability to read or study, and general disarry and confusion, he believed in my intellect and in my passions and he found me interesting, more interesting than anyone else. Never did he question my capacity or my intentions to have a full rich committed life. And I believed of course in his full committed life. He was a model of personal discipline, a great reader of anything that he chose to read, and a model student ...[page 130] dedication to getting an education or living in a world of ideas and books. ... Part of our marriage was fierce intellectual argument and we often frightened people as we tore at each other, and shouted at each other, and insisted on various abstract points. But in general we had a wonderful time.