Just because the blog is titled A Good Husband doesn’t necessarily mean that I am that all of the time. Even the best of men can fall down and make a mess of things.
Sometimes it’s easy,
after marriage has been going smoothly for a while, to become lax. How many
guys dread hearing, “We need to talk?” It’s amazing how oblivious I can be
about where my marriage is at in the eyes and heart of my wife. I think, and
hope for my sake, that many men can identify with this feeling.
If “We Need to Talk”
is a surprise to you, then that’s a warning sign. Just because you don’t think
the relationship needs work, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t. I’ve found that a
wife can figuratively beat her head against the wall trying to get something
across to her husband - and he can one day hear it and say to her, “Well why
didn’t you tell me you felt this way before?”
I’ve done myself, my
marriage, and all of you a disservice. When I started writing, it was with a
passion for improving my marriage. As I wrote, many things seemed to resonate
with people and this site started to become popular. The allure of popularity
is strong. Twitter and other social media sites made me feel like I was really
getting better at marriage - when really, all I was doing was becoming a
moderately well known blogger.
Becoming a well known blogger is not what makes a good husband. Improving
yourself and caring for your wife make you a good husband.
Daily care, devotion,
and attention to her feelings - that’s what makes a good husband.
Validating her
feelings - making sure she knows that you care about what she thinks and feels -
is more important than being right or winning.
She cares a great deal
for you, and feeling rejected or belittled makes her feel ill.
Femininity is
different than masculinity, and that’s a good thing.
Husbands, when your
wife says We Need to Talk, please listen.
All husbands are interested in
skipping foreplay, right?
There are hundreds of thousands
of husbands the world over who make it regular practice to get out of their own
way. One of the biggest traps that husbands can fall into is being too
prideful to realize when it’s time to make it about what your wife needs, not
about what you want.
A friend of mine and I were
talking one day and he told me that he had this great evening planned where he
was going to have a guitar lesson and then go race remote control cars.
Sounds like a great evening for guys, right? I talked to him the next day
and he told me that he ended up canceling the whole evening. When I asked
him why, he told me that his wife (who, by the way had her fabulous Nerdy Alphabet artwork featured
on Arts Afire) had a bad evening and needed to be picked up. So he just
canceled his plans, just like that, to be with her.
Last night when I got home, my
wife was knee deep in the middle of writing her final paper for one of her
college classes. She’s been sick for a week, so it was extra stress, and
our apartment was a mess. Without being asked I decided to clean
up. I threw out the trash & the mounds of used tissue, put away the
clean & dirty clothes, organized the papers and books, and swept the
floor. It wasn’t much, but it made a huge difference in our stress
level. Then I left her alone to finish her paperwork.
I updated my Facebook status to
say, “Cory is a Tidy Husband.” One of my friends (a guy) asked what that
meant, if that had something to do with Kitty Litter? One of my other
friends (a girl) gave a rather terse reply saying that it meant that I put away
my socks and didn’t act like it was doing my wife a favor.
The difference between the way
men and women think, right?
Husbands, do yourselves and
your marriage a favor, and get out of your own way. These little acts of
service are what marriage is all about. Oh, yeah, and I’ve heard a lot of
women say that it’s the best kind of foreplay.
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