figuring things out

One of the pluses of marriage is having a woman that completes you. That’s the best thing that I can honestly say about being married. Now, the difficulty in that is moving out of your way to letting her complete you. I spoke to a gentleman in the gym, he was contemplating marriage. I told him that it was hard in beginning and that’s true. I know that it was for me, but it was more so hard for me to get out of my own way.

Here’s the guy’s perspective on things: Once we get married, our mind goes from being cool and calm, to “how am I going to take care of this woman”? It affects each man differently. We are disadvantaged as men because we don’t grow up with the mindset of taking care of a woman until it actually happens. In fact, I watched my father be a husband and a dad; I learned more from him being a father than I did from him being a husband. There’s no real equation to produce perfect husbands, especially in the beginning of the marriage. I watched my father work, come home, check homework, plan out days of catch, but nothing outside of that. All the “behind the scenes” work was never discussed…. even now, as an adult, we don’t talk about it. And that’s good because my marriage is nothing like what my parents have. Honestly, I love my parents but I don’t want anything like they had, because that was for them and what’s for me is for me.

During counseling, we were told to make sure that we communicate. That’s such a big thing. I’m not sure if I touched up on this but it’s so important. For me, I believe it’s more important for her than it is for us. But it differs from person to person. Nevertheless, it’s important.

Also, there is a thing called comfort. From my experience with women, they need a lot of this. I mean, when you think you’re giving enough, you’re not! Trust me on this one, unless she tells you she’s getting enough, most times, it’s not enough. Here’s something to look out for. If she tells you verbally that she’s getting enough, that’s one thing….but if she shows it….that’s another. My advice, give her as much as you can, then find some more and give her some of that too.

I don’t wanna’ give too much here, but here’s a little nugget that I’m dropping. I’ve made lots of mistakes and learned lots of things in the process. There’s a big difference when it comes to a women letting you know how she feels. There’s the telling and the showing. In most cases, showing comes first. There’s all types of ways they do it, but it still happens. Now telling as when things are bad. Us guys know about the dreaded…”we need to talk” intro to different conversations. Those are the ones we generally feel we could do without, but are sometimes glad we’ve had them. I’ll explain this more later in detail, so that we all can be more aware to the game.