Fathered Five

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Do you find yourself looking back with fondness on the days before you had kids? Or the days soon after marriage? Life was different then, wasn’t it? Yes, yes—children are a lasting source of joy and satisfaction yada yada yada. While that may be true, you’ve made a permanent trade and there’s no going back. I hear you, bro. You wonder in your quiet moments what life would be like if only you could be newlywed again, or if the kids weren’t always there. (It’s normal and natural to wonder. However, I don’t recommend you gaze too long into that particular abyss.)

As you know, I’m no genius when it comes to my own marriage, much less yours. Oh, the stories I could tell. I’ve documented some of the folly here and here. So because I have little to no idea how to make a great marriage, think of this post not so much as marriage advice, but as evidence that sometimes things go well despite ourselves.

Watch for these signs in your daily experience. They might indicate that the white-hot flame that brought such sweet burning to your early marriage all those years ago is not completely gone. It’s there, maybe hiding, and will flare up on occasion. As men, we need such signals because subtler ones are lost on us, preoccupied as we are with sex and work and bills and sex.

1. You suck in your gut when she comes in the room.
   Forget what anyone has told you about lack of comfort with your own body. And it’s not about self confidence. Sucking in your gut is a good sign! It shows that you still care about how you look and what she thinks about how you look. (If you have abs instead of a gut and thus don’t need to suck it in, I hate you.)
2. You catch her smiling at you for no apparent reason.
   Either she still likes you sometimes or your sister just told her about when you went streaking through the neighborhood at a slumber party when you were 10.
3. She shaves her legs in the winter.
   Unless she’s a stripper, this could mean that she wants to be smooth for you. (I only say “could” because women are mysterious. It could also mean lots of other things, none of which have anything do with you. Maybe if you sucked in your gut more…)
4. After a long day with children while you were at work, she still chooses to be with you.
   Think about it—she could go out with friends, visit her family, or just disappear into TV or a book. But instead she sits down by you. Maybe it’s because you suck in your gut and she thinks you’re trim.
5. You realize that she knows you suck in your gut, that it doesn’t work, and she still likes you anyway.
   The smart husband, upon realizing this, will try to find out what it is he’s doing right so he can do more of it. I mean, does x amount of play-with-kids time cause her to overlook x amount of midsection flab? What’s that ratio? And is the ratio the same for all bonus points? In other words, does doing the dishes have the same effect on the flab overlooking ability as letting her sleep in? These are things you might one day learn. And when you do, please tell me!

You can probably find some great advice online about keeping the honeymoon fire burning. I’ve read some, but I don’t think the writers have ever imagined 5 kids as part of the equation. That’s me, though: defying common sense at every turn.

So how about it? What’s working for you?

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This entry was posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 7:59 am and is filed under Marriage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.