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What we Forgot to Tell You

November 22, 2011 by

Did we forget to tell you?

The number one reason we married you wasn’t for your sparkling wit or your dimples either, those certainly caught our eye but they weren’t number one. It wasn’t for your six-pack, neither the one you proudly show off at the gym nor the one you pick up from the corner store on Monday nights. It wasn’t for the TGIF dinners you bought us or the occasional Chick Flick movie you suffered through on Saturday night. It wasn’t even that you make nice with our girl friends to make a good impression or that you try hard to get along with our family.

What we must have not told you when we agreed to spend our lives with you is this.

Image Google.com

We married you because we saw something in you we didn’t see in all the other boys that did all those things during their hot pursuit.

We agreed to marry you and spend our life with you because of all the opportunities we had we thought deep down in our hearts that you were the one. The one that would step beside us, not in front of us but beside us.

You made us laugh, you made us feel safe, you made us feel smart, beautiful and mostly you made us believe together we would achieve greatness. Does that make sense? When we walked that aisle after being pronounced husband and wife we didn’t meekly follow you we walked side-by-side and that was how we expected to live our life with you. We married you because we thought we would be your partner.

Did we forget to tell you what we wanted?

This is the only explanation there can be for the strange and utterly inexplicable changes our marriages seem to take after the vows. Being women we tend to look to our own failures first rather than any of yours, we gather into ourselves for deep examination anything we might have done that would cause this baffling change in the dynamic of our relationship.

Image Google.Com

Where once you were our White Knight, our romantic hero and our friend, now you are something entirely changed from the man we said yes to what seems to be an eternity ago. This change can only be due to our failure, we think. Our failure to communicate to you our desire to keep the person we married at least somewhere we can find him. More importantly even to keep ourselves from disappearing too.

We ask ourselves countless questions during this time of examination. Questions that hurt us deeply because there are no real answers.

Why aren’t we laughing at the same things anymore? Did we forget the fundamentals that brought us together or is it that we forgot to tell you they were important to us in that forever sort of way. What happened to the man who would laugh when we forgot the punch line, not at us but with us. Where did that man go, the one who was willing to tell us about his foibles and fears, the one who was willing to be vulnerable with us now and then? The guy who would sit for hours and share intimacies as if they were invaluable gifts between us to be handled with great care, where did he disappear to?

Did we forget to tell you before the vows were read, before we said yes that we wanted there to be an “us” not just a you and an I.

How did we suddenly end up on opposite ends of the couch? Did we forget to tell you that part of what made us so happy was touch, just that random snuggle that didn’t lead to anything else.

How did the bed suddenly get so big? Why have you moved to Siberia? Why is there your side and my side now instead of us piling into the middle of the bed like puppies randomly wrapped around each other. Did we fail to tell you that was the way we wanted to wake up with you, wrapped around you and in your arms? The air conditioner isn’t broken so your excuse that it is to hot can’t be right. I am certain you aren’t suffering from hot flashes, what has happened since we said “we do” that we don’t unless it is part of the post-coital moment and even then it truly is only a moment till you roll over to your personal Siberia, your side of the bed.

Image Google.com

What have we forgotten in our march to the alter of forever, what did we fail to say to you?

It wasn’t “I love you”, those words tripped off our tongues thousands of times, perhaps to easily to thoughtlessly. Conceivably we didn’t tell you what that meant to us, when we said “I love you” did you understand it meant all the parts of you, both what we see and what you thought was hidden, that we are in it forever even when it feels like we are on top of Everest and we can’t breathe?

Did we fail to tell you there will be days we don’t like you much, we still love you.

Did we forget to tell you in our breathless joy at becoming your wife what we already knew about marriage and you didn’t; marriage is hard work, never easy. That it takes two strong people willing to go the distance every single day to make it work. Not one person willing to go half way most days but two willing to bust through all the hard stuff every day.

Did we forget to tell you even though we love the White Knight we don’t need him. Even though we love the idea of the Romantic Hero, we don’t really want to be married to him every day just once in a while we would like for him to show up and sweep us off our feet. Did we fail to tell you what we really wanted is for you to be fully in the moment, all of them every single day. Everyone changes, everyone grows we just want you to change and grow with us not apart from us.

When you say to us, we have grown apart our hearts break, all we can think is we forgot to tell you something important.

We forgot to tell you we love all the bits and parts of you. We forgot to tell you to be part of something you have to stay in the moment and stay part rather than apart. We forgot to tell you it was important to us you stay so instead we watched you drift your own way. Once you had us we became less vital to your and we forgot to tell you we were still here.

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Dirty little secrets of happy marriages or things your mother never told you

November 22, 2011 by

This is for all the men out there, you know who you are; you jumped from mama’s house into marriage thinking it was one and the same thing. Your mother had you convinced the sun rose and set on your smiling face and she happily followed you from the front door to the back room picking up the mass of unwashed, stinking sweaty clothing you dropped on your way to the X-Box.

From the time of your birth, through your angst ridden teens and into your adulthood you were petted and pampered, your butt was cleaned with only the softest towels, your plate was filled twice before being left in the sink for someone else to scrape and place in the dishwasher. Your clothing was washed, folded and put neatly away, when it could be found in the piles you left throughout the house. As if you were paying for five star

Images via Google....Who said Freud was Wrong

accommodations, your sheets and towels were regularly changed. Yes, indeed your mother treated you well and it is likely you didn’t have to do a thing in return other than the occasional “Love you Mom” which made her day.

Now that we have established you are the end all be all, the light at the end of the tunnel, the crème in the coffee, the marshmallows in the hot chocolate; you are all that and a bag of chips truly you are. Now that we have correctly identified moms view let’s disabuse you of this inflated ego of yours.

While it may be hard for you to hear, your mom lied. You are none of those things, not a single one except to your mother who has no choice but to believe them. She was provided with maternal instincts to prevent her from eating her own young, this instinct allows her to see past all of your flaws and continue to love you. Further, as your mother she instinctively wishes you cling to her and will find fault with any mate you choose. Because of this, she has quite naturally raised you without the necessary skills and competencies you need to be a successful mate, thus assuring your return to the nest.

Things your mother didn’t tell you about women.

Our happiness is directly connected to whether we feel heard, specifically by you.

Our happiness is directly connected to whether we believe we are being partnered and cared for.

Our happiness is directly connected to whether you are fully participating in our marriage.

What does this mean? What didn’t your mother tell you? What did you miss while you were being coddled and convinced your farts didn’t stink?

Women’s libidos, big word I know, are directly tied to their emotions. When we are happy, we are far more likely to be horny or at least receptive to your clumsy overtures. If we feel particularly cared for, particularly loved, we might even initiate an evening of hot sweaty sex with you.

Image from Newswire....Happy Women say Yes more Often

Your mother failed to tell you that about women and the link between sex and emotional happiness, didn’t she? The thing your mother lied about was what women really want from their man! She probably didn’t tell you about chocolate either, that is something for a different day though.

This is the big lie, the one thing your mother didn’t ever tell you.

You don’t have to love the things we love. Indeed, we don’t expect you will love everything we love, after all, you are a man and we are women. We are by our very nature designed differently and our mothers raised us differently from the time we were born. All we ask is for you to love us enough to try to meet us half way.

Mother’s lies you need to unlearn:

  •  It isn’t unmanly to do the dishes, push a vacuum or make the bed when you are the last one out.
  •  It doesn’t make you less of a man to put the toilet seat down.
  •  It doesn’t undermine your manhood to listen to how our day went without telling us how to fix our problems. Honestly? It is unlikely you know more than we do about our jobs so try for simple listening just once.
  • You are in no jeopardy of losing your man card if you clean the bathroom now and then without your woman asking. It is surely obvious to you it needs it and if you are the only man in the house, clearly those yellow dribbles down the outside of the bowl aren’t your woman’s misses. Remember your woman doesn’t stand above the bowl playing target practice in the morning.

Your mother didn’t tell you the truth about women.

She didn’t tell you the simplest truth about a happy partnership and that is that it really is a partnership between two grown-ups.

If your biggest complaint about the woman in your life is the sex stopped after marriage, you need to stop and think about what else changed. Ask yourself why. Is your woman getting what she needs? What are you doing or not doing. Do the words “that is women’s work” ever trip over your tongue? Worse yet do you find yourself uttering these mood killers, ‘I never did that when I lived at home’, if the answer is yes then you know why your sex life is like the Sahara and you have only yourself and your mother to blame.

This isn’t mama’s house and the sun no longer rises and sets on your happy ass. Your wife isn’t your house servant, she is your partner not your mother. Want a happy marriage? Get with the program and start listening even to those things she might not be saying to you, this means listen with your heart now and then. Try to determine what your wife needs from you, maybe even what she wants but is tired of telling you and as Nike says ‘just do it’  without being asked.

Your mother lied.

She probably didn’t lie with malice. She lied because she wanted to keep you close; it is the nature of mothers. Now you need to man up and be the husband she didn’t intend you to be so your wife has the husband she deserves and your future sons have an example to follow in the future.

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