How often do you give your wife little touches? Hold her hand, pat her, put your arm around her, and so on?
Touch is powerful. It releases hormones and brain chemicals that can make both of you feel calmer and more connected. And a steady drip of that will, over time, have a profound positive effect on your marriage.
Anything worth doing, is worth doing right.Hunter S Thompson
You have no doubt heard this said. But how about this one:
Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly. ~ Paraphrase of G.K. Chesterton
That probably hits you the way it hit me. Then I learned what it means. Doing a halfway job is better than not doing it at all. So for example, if I don’t have time to swim three quarters of a mile, doing half a mile is better than not bothering.
I think this should be applied to marriage. Giving your wife half the time she needs with you is better than not giving her any time at all. Doing up some of the dishes is better than not doing any.
Of course, the danger here is getting in the habit of doing a halfway job. Less than all is never best, it’s just better than nothing. If you can’t do it all and do what you can, great. If you could do it all and don’t, that’s bad.
Have you ever felt good when you were angry? Anger is the primary “negative” emotion for many men – and the primary emotion of any kind for some of us! Many of us were taught emotions are weak, and we learned from experience emotions could hurt us or make us vulnerable. These lessons can lead to trying to control emotions and limit the emotions we show and feel. Anger is a popular negative emotion because it seems powerful. Anger gets things done, and we don’t see angry people as weak.
This might be valid when anger is rare, but when anger becomes common, something is wrong. Frequent anger is bad for our bodies, and our minds, and very bad for our marriages. It may feel safe to be angry, but that is a lie. Ongoing anger limits, distances, and destroys. If anger is your “go to” emotion, it’s time to rethink things. You can choose to change how you react, but it will take work. Most of us will never be free of anger, but we can learn to react in anger less often, and we can learn to make our anger short-lived when it does happen. Your wife will be blessed by any effort you make.
A few days ago, my bride wrote My Cottage Garden, in which she talks about her gradually growing cottage garden. She makes a great point about some poor reasons why many of us don’t invest as much in our marriage as we should, and I urge you to go read her for those things. That said, I’d like to make a different point.
I happen to like Lori’s cottage garden – I like the concept, and I like how it’s looking. However, even if I didn’t care, I’d be supportive because this is something she wants to do. This is fun for her, and good for her, and that is all it takes for me to be all for it and as supportive as possible.
There is, however, a danger – getting too involved. This is her thing, and she’s having a blast with it. She cares what I think, and enjoys discussing how it is going and what she wants to do next, but this is not a project she wants to do jointly. Lori wants it to be a reflection of who she is, and if I get too involved, I will spoil it for her. So I am encouraging and available to help, but nothing more. I ran the tiller and helped get the grass out. I lug bags of compost and mulch, and I sprinkle red pepper to help keep the cats away, but I do not tell her where I think things should go. I occasionally mention a plant I like – if it shows up that’s fine, if it doesn’t show up, that’s fine too.
My point is sometimes being supportive means being on the fringe. It means being available to help, but not getting offended if you’re not included.
If Thanksgiving is at your place this year, your wife has a lot of cooking and other work to get ready. Make that a bit easier by taking care of dinner Wednesday night.
It needs to be something simple and easy to clean up. Picking up or ordering pizza would be a great choice. Make it your job to get the meal, get everyone to the table, and do all the clean-up afterwards. If your wife needs the table for cooking, or wants to start decorating it early, do a picnic on the living room floor.
The other option is to take the kids out for dinner so your wife has the house alone. Ask her if this is even better.
We have sunflowers planted in several places around the yard, as we’re growing seeds both for our poultry and for people. I’ve noticed the big, bright flowers make my wife happy.
Women usually enjoy things of beauty. Beauty makes them feel happy.
If you are responsible for beauty that makes her happy, that will make her feel good about you.
How could you add a bit of beauty to your wife’s life?
In a recent Doing Marriage Well post, my wonderful wife suggested that being faithful means doing what you should as well as not doing what you should not! Her example was:
Certainly, I want to be faithful sexually to my sweetie (not cheat on him), but am I faithful to take care of his sexual needs and wants. There’s faithful to not do and faithful to do.
While we often think first of sex when discussing faithfulness, there are a lot of other areas where we need to be faithful to our wives.
Being faithful with money is about not spending it on things we should not, but it’s also about paying the bills and having insurance.
Being faithful with our time is not just about spending it where we should, but also not spending huge amounts of it in fruitless pursuits.
Being faithful with her heart is about not doing what would hurt her, and doing what blesses her.
Are you doing both sides of faithful in your marriage?
I mention in today’s XY Code post that most women have a superior sense of smell. This little gender difference can cause problems in marriage. She complains about the trash because she smells it. He ignores her because he does not. She doesn’t want to hug him, much less get naked with him, because he stinks. He thinks she is exaggerating or looking for an excuse.
The truth is, she is offended by things you can’t smell, and finds things you do smell to be stronger. This is even truer when she is ovulating or if she is pregnant. Part of being a loving husband is believing this difference is real and doing what you can to prevent your wife from suffering for her stronger sense of smell.
