Dessert-First Date

My wife and I recently read one of those inspirational, stop-taking-your-life-for-granted books. Though I didn’t think the book was good enough to warrant recommending to others, there was a passing comment made in one chapter that I thought could be tweaked for a fabulous date idea.

You know how whenever you go out to restaurants the waiter comes up at the end of your overly-sized meal and asks if you want dessert? I don’t know about you, but my wife and I always say no. It’s not because we don’t want it, it’s just that we’re too full for it. Desert always seems like a good idea at the beginning of a meal, but it’s not something you particularly want to spend money on when you’re feeling completely stuffed.

So here’s the date idea. Take your wife out on a Dessert-First Date. Tell her that you both are going out to eat at her favorite restaurant, but there’s a twist: Before she can eat dinner, she must have dessert. You’re going to spend an evening doing something that flies in the face of everything your momma taught you: you’re going to ruin your dinner. After you both enjoy a sweet first course, then order something small afterward: a soup, salad, or an entree you both share.

It’s crazy, and it’s not something anyone should make a habit of, but that’s exactly why it will be a wonderful date. It’s a fun twist on that default dinner date we're all so accustomed to.

Earn The Right To Say No

My wife often asks me to do things around the house that I often would prefer not to do. They’re small things that seem to always come right about the time I decide to sit down and rest for a minute, or that involve me exerting more energy than I feel I want to give. But, because I love my wife and try hard not to fall into the I Don’t Want To Trap, I almost always oblige.

I say “almost always” because there are times when her requests come at a most inconvenient time for me. Maybe I’m minutes away from finishing an important email, or maybe I know that if I do what she’s asking, I won’t have time to finish getting ready before we have to leave. Or maybe it’s something trivial like wanting to finish the last four minutes of a TV show. At these times, I will tell my wife no, and she graciously responds with words of understanding. Why is that?

I have earned the right to say no.

My wife knows that unless I have a good reason not to do what she’s asking, I’ll do it immediately. I have made the immediate fulfillment of her requests the normal in our household. So when I do occasionally respond with, “No, I can’t do that right now,” she knows that I mean it and that I’m not just trying to get out of helping her.

But that’s not the end of it. Just because I’ve earned her trust to say no doesn’t mean I can skip out on doing these things for her when I am able. When she asks, “Would you mind coming in here and doing up some of these dishes?” and I respond with, “I can’t right now, but I’ll be in there just as soon as I make this phone call.” This lets her know the reason why I can’t do something, and tells her that I will help the minute I’m available. Sometimes she gets to the task before I am able to, but she knows that I wasn’t just avoiding it.

And what about wanting to finish the last four minutes of a TV show? Earn her trust. Don’t be sneaky about these things, be honest. If you’re expecting guests over in thirty minutes and she’s just asked you to vacuum the living room, be honest: “This show is over in six minutes. I’ll vacuum just as soon as it ends.” If you’ve made it a habit to help her whenever she asks and have fulfilled your word when you’ve had to put the task off for a little while, she won’t have to wonder if the thing is going to get done on time.

Don’t just say no. Earn the right to say no.

Create More Than You Consume (In Your Marriage)

Every year about this time we begin thinking about how we want the coming new year to be different—to be better—than the last. We all seem to have a natural desire to grow in some way. Though my temptation is often to think of a whole list of changes I want to make, this year I’m trying to keep it simple. In every area of my life, I want to create more than I consume. I love how simplistic and how hard it is.

Create more than you consume.

We are all trained to be consumers, and that attitude seeps into every area of our lives. It convinces us that the world was made for our effortless enjoyment and turns us all into entitled little rich kids. And we’re carrying this over into our marriages.

I am madly in love with my wife, and I love the relationship we have. In fact, I love my marriage so much that I often simply consume the goodness; I feed off of it when things are going well. Why work hard when things are going so well? However, it's just like our refrigerators: if we don’t replenish that which we are using, we’re going to go hungry.

I’ve started to try and live by this idea of creating more than I consume in all areas, but especially in my marriage. Instead of just feeding off the beautiful fact that my wife and I have a good relationship whether or not the bed gets made in the morning, I’m trying to remember to make the bed. Instead of giving into my desires to consume the day’s headlines or catch up on Facebook, I’m trying to create a happier home by getting to those projects we “never have time for.” These are little things, and that’s why they’re such a big deal.

This New Year’s, I challenge you to create the best marriage you’ve ever had. Stop simply feeding off the good of your relationship. Stop wasting moments in front of the TV or the computer. Take every opportunity to create more intimate moments, more dates, more smiles—more things you can be proud of.

Create more than you consume and you be more fulfilled in every way.

The Words She Needs To Hear

I love taking pictures and I have my camera with me just about all the time. Recently, however, I dropped my camera right onto a slab of concrete and it bent the extended lens in a way that rendered the camera inoperable. My heart was instantly crushed and I was so mad at myself for allowing it to happen.

As I turned to my wife she said something to me that makes me love her even more every time I think about it. Instead of getting on to me, she looked at me ever so genuinely and said, “We’ll buy you another one, don’t worry.”

"Crazy Good Sex"

The struggle men have with their own sexuality is a quiet, lonely battle. It’s amazing to me that we can live in a culture that shouts sex from the rooftops, televisions, radio stations, and the internet, yet we are still be so embarrassed to have any real conversations about it.

It shouldn’t be this way, but it is.

"Intimate Kisses"

I love words. I love how powerful they are, and I love the imagery and emotion they can evoke in my mind. I love sitting down to write and I love editing what I’ve written so it flows better and sounds stronger.

Because I’m such a fan of words, I’ve always been just a little bit frustrated that I can’t adequately describe the beauty and emotion of sexuality and making love with my wife. Sex is such a powerful thing. It is an experience that captures your body, mind, and soul. It goes so much deeper than “I love you” but trying to express that out loud often feels so clumsy.

Pretend Your Wife Has Been Away

You know that last day before your wife comes home from a long trip and you're scrambling to get the house in order? You're doing laundry, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming the carpets and trying to figure out a way to make the homecoming even more special. I always try to throw in some kind of extra surprise to let her know that I not only wanted the house to be welcoming, but that I also wanted her to feel special.

My challenge today is: Pretend your wife has been on a trip. Take whatever few hours you usually have at home alone today, and go all out. Clean as best and as fast as you can. Do the dishes, do some loads of laundry. Go the extra mile and do a quick dusting of some shelves. Then, prepare something special for her. Buy her flowers, or surprise her with a candlelight dinner at home. Maybe bake her a cake, or go buy her a little something you know she's been wanting or that you know she'd love (like a new set of earrings from one of those accessory stores in the mall).

Go out all, and act like you haven’t seen her in weeks. When she asks what it's all for, tell her that you've just missed her so much. She’ll think you're crazy, but she'll love you even more.

It's Time To Get Rid of the Marriage Vows

My wife and I attended a wedding recently and I began to get distracted by my thoughts on the vows. Through my little tangent-chasing episode, I came to this very disturbing realization:

Nobody takes their wedding vows seriously anymore.

When Your Wife Is Sick

Usually when my wife is sick I try to baby her as best as I can, and I step up and take charge in the areas that she is usually responsible for. She’s been sick for the last few days, but she hasn’t been living on the couch, so I didn’t think she was feeling too bad.

Don't Leave It At Thank You

My wife is an excellent cook. Amazing, actually. She’s always getting compliments from everyone we know about how much they like what she makes. But I’m not one of those guys who thinks with their stomachs. I like food just fine, but I’m no connoisseur. I’m not too picky and rarely just hate something that I eat. So unfortunately even though I always try to remember to thank my wife for her meals, I don’t always remember to compliment her.

The New Kindle And My Old Sex Life

Two days ago I loved my Kindle and there wasn’t another e-reader on the planet that I desired. But yesterday Amazon announced their new line of Kindles and my beloved Kindle 3 is now looking a little outdated.

We can all relate to this, can’t we? You buy a state-of-the-art, just-released gadget, and it is the apple of your eye until the new version is released. Then my fast device isn’t as fast, and my “new” features are old news. This is something we all understand and can relate to, but the point I want to focus on today is this:

How did you learn that what you had was old?

Organize Your Own Marriage Retreat

Last week I got an email from a woman who shared that she and her husband had just organized their own marriage retreat. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was just what their relationship needed, and now they both are feeling rejuvenated and more deeply in love. What was it they did exactly? 

Nothing. But with a purpose.

One New Way To Show Your Wife Love

Coming up with ways on your own to improve your marriage is a great idea, but sometimes it's not nearly as helpful as hearing what your wife is thinking. Hearing it straight from her allows for many more hits than misses.

Remember Your Manners In Marriage

It is so easy to get used to being married. And though the intimacy of normalcy is magical in its own right, if we are not careful we can take that day to day stuff for granted.

What’s on my mind today is manners. We go out of way to be polite to strangers, people at work, and kill ourselves trying to teach our children the concept of Please and Thank You. We all consider manners to be important, but does that hold true for your relationship with your wife?

Momma's Boys In Marriage

Sunday was Mother’s Day here in the states. It was a day to honor the woman who gave you life, raised you, and who is, for many of us, by your side even now that you’ve grown up, moved out, gotten married, and had children. There is a very special bond that exists between mothers and sons, but sometimes that bond goes a little far. Today I want to ask you a very important question:

Does your relationship with your mom have a negative impact on your relationship with your wife?

Your Wife Is Not Blind

For whatever reason, men seem to let their physical selves go after marriage. Husbands get sedentary and are fed three meals a day right around the same time their metabolism is really slowing down. For some reason, that’s just an acceptable place for men to be.

Are You A Mature Husband?

There are certain things that a man will never be completely comfortable with. Things like buying tampons or panty liners, for example, or actual saying the words tampons and panty liners out loud. Going to the gynecologist with your wife is a strange experience for sure, and walking into a room while your mom and your wife are discussing how the two of your are “trying” to have a baby can be pretty awkward as well. What I want to say today is not that you need to grow up and be completely comfortable with these things, but that you do need to grow up and be mature about them.

Your wife doesn’t need you to freak out when she tells you she has a yeast infection, she needs you to listen. Your wife doesn’t need you to giggle like a fourteen-year-old if she says the word “vagina” in your presence. You are a husband now, her life is your life. Don’t like running into the store to buy liners because she started spotting earlier than she expected? Get over it and do it. Yes, it feels funny to be a man standing in the check out line buying feminine products, no one is denying that. But you’re not in middle school anymore, either; no one is going to point and laugh and say you’re a girl.

And speaking of what others are thinking, the ironic thing here is that the more womanly things you’re mature about with your wife the more manly you actually look. She appreciates being able to talk about sensitive issues with you, and her friends are impressed that you don’t run out of the kitchen with your hands over your ears when you hear the words “Pap smear.” By choosing the mature route you actually look more like a man in people's eyes than the other way around.

Like I said, it’s not that you have to feel comfortable with these things, but you must be mature about them. She needs a manly man, not a manly boy.

Do You Allow Your Little Girls To Dress Like This?

Well I apologize for missing my Monday deadline. House guests will do that to you every time if you're not prepared. I'm actually heading out of town myself today, so I thought I'd break the routine and just share a link that really resonated with me that I read this morning.

It was an article on CNN titled Parents, don't dress your girls like tramps. Though I try to keep this site focused on the husband/wife relationship only (the kids add a whole different dynamic that merits its own blog), I couldn't help but agree with everything this writer was saying, and couldn't help but wonder what parents are thinking by pushing this industry of sexualizing little girls.

The last line in the article summed it all up wonderfully: A line needs to be drawn, but not by Abercrombie. Not by Britney Spears. And not by these little girls who don't know better and desperately need their parents to be parents and not 40-year-old BFFs.

This relates to marriage in that you and your wife are a team, and the way your kids dress should be a team decision. I'm not sure there are any fathers out there who are really into their little girls dressing like Britney Spears, but someone's allowing it. Is this a topic that needs to be talked about in your home?

If there are things to stand up for in your household, I'm saying this is one of them.

And The Winners Are...

As was announced last week, I was giving away five copies of the book Stuff Husbands Should Know after my review of the book. As I mentioned, five winners would be drawn from the comments section using Random.org. Well, we actually only ended up receiving a total of five qualifying comments, so that makes everything a bit easier, doesn't it?

So for those first five commenters on the last post, send me your name and mailing address using the contact form and I will have Quirk Books send those out to you right away.

Thanks for playing everyone! See you Monday.

Is This Stuff Every Husband Should Know?

This last week I was sent a newly released book to review by Eric San Juan called Stuff Every Husband Should Know. It was a short book that I finished while reading off and on throughout a single day. It’s published by Quirk Book which releases a lot of “Pocket Companion” books.

What I Liked
For what it was, I enjoyed the book. It was not written to be the end-all manual for husbands, but a fun overview of some common marital topics and a warning to the newly married man to avoid common pitfalls. It provided some genuinely useful “man” information such as “How to Choose Great Jewelry”, “How To Remember Things Men Don’t Remember”, and “How to Do Simple Wall Repairs.” It gave great ideas like “Six Great, Easy Dates” and “Five Great, Classy Dates”, as well as “How To Serve Breakfast In Bed”. And, it provided some good relational food for thought like, “Be the Master of One Meal A Day”, “How Not To Fight Over Money”, and “How To Make Decisions.” The chapters weren’t very long but generally provided some good information.

What I Didn’t Like
The book is written to be light hearted and funny which worked well when it was actually funny, but it was awkward and felt forced when it wasn’t. One of the first things that didn’t sit well with me (and actually caused me to tell my wife I didn’t think I was going to like it at all) was that the book seemed to be based on the idea that “Marriage is hard, so here’s how to survive” instead of “Marriage is hard, here’s how to thrive.” It seemed to find it’s foundation in the stereotypical husband jokes and work its way out of that muck, rather than start fresh with a message of hope. It felt like a book about dealing with marriage rather than a book about falling in love with marriage. Which, as any visitor to this site needs to know, that is a very important thing to me.

As with any book you read, you’ve got to pick out the bones, and one of the biggest bones I had to pick with this book was a chapter on how to manage one’s erotic materials. The idea was how to keep it safe and secure from anyone else including your wife if you weren’t already open about it. If there’s any message I want resounding from this site is that honesty in marriage is the key to a happy and intimate relationship. Porn destroys marriages, especially when it’s kept secret. Whether or not it’s common doesn’t change the fact that it’s dangerous. The irony to me was that the author often, when telling husbands to do hard things, challenged them with the words “You are a man, you can adapt. You can overcome any obstacle.” Aparently getting rid of an addiction to porn didn’t warrant that kind of admonition.

Conclusion
Since at first glance it looks as though I didn’t like this book twice as much as I liked it, let me say again that, for the most part, I enjoyed it. In all fairness that chapter on porn was a few pages in a book that was full of some good information. If nothing else, it all got me thinking about my own relationship with my wife, and even sparked some conversation. And that, dear husbands, is always a good thing.

Want A Free Copy?
I asked Quirk Books if they’d be willing to give out a copy or two to our readers, and they graciously offered to send five. So if you’d like to a chance to receive a copy of Stuff Every Husband Should Know, simply post your best piece of “Every Husband Should Know” advice in the comments below (keep in clean) by Friday, April 15 at 10pm EST. I will choose five winners using Random.org and announce them on Saturday. Only one comment per person, please. And sorry, but only U.S. readers are eligible.

So what is that one piece of husbandry advice you’d give to someone getting ready to be married?

The book is Available at Amazon in hardback and for the Kindle here.