Things They Don't Cover In Marriage Prep Class, Final Installment

As I prepare to leave for Tom's wedding, I conclude my marriage prep series for Tom. I've tried to prepare him for some of the little things I've discovered in my short time as a married man. Here are a few more tidbits:


> The first 6 months or so is the "Honeymoon Period". After this, according to marriage experts, comes a period of "power struggles". This period is supposed to last a couple of years. The "power struggles" for Lynda and I lasted approximately 20 minutes. I lost.

> If you see an attractive woman on TV, it is OK to mention to your wife that said woman is attractive, as long as you follow it with "She looks like you."

> A great thing about being married? Every morning, as I begin to wake up, I become aware of a warm body next to me. I roll over and see a pair of brown eyes, with nothing but love and affection reflected in them, gazing longingly at me. I can see who much she loves me, how much she wants my attention and affection....

Then Lynda comes out of the bathroom and tells the dog to get off the bed, and for me to get my lazy butt up and get to work.

> Seriously, though.........Married sex is different than any 'experience' you may have had when you were single. For starters, you don't feel guilty and you don't need to go to confession later. Mostly, though, it's because I feel completely "there", and because I see my wife as a person instead of a mountain that I've reached the top of. I don't feel the need to fret over performance, because I'm not 'competing' with anyone else she may have 'been with': I'm the only husband she's ever had, and since for Lynda, like most women, physical intimacy is more about the 'intimacy' than the 'physical', to her I'm the greatest lover who's ever walked the earth.

> Remember that the 'courting' of your lady is never over. Flowers, little love notes, the occasional stuffed animal - all these go a long way toward reminding her that you don't take her for granted.

> Tell the Pope I said 'Hi'.


Happy Honeymoon!!!!

Things They Don't Cover In Marriage Prep Class, Installment #4

Besides the shower, another change in store for you will be waiting for you when you come home from work. When you first walk through the front door, the change from single to married life is definitely an improvement. You get a hug and a kiss, and you really have nothing more to say than “Fine” to “How was your day?”. You then plan to lumber off to the couch or the computer for some “Decompress Time”. After a long hard day of oppressing women and minorities**, all you really want to do is relax in silence at the computer or the TV for awhile, recharging your batteries. The most taxing thing you wanted your mind to process during this time would be how to watch two TV programs at the same time.

As of February 2, those days are over.

** - According to such luminaries as Betty Freidan, Jesse Jackson, and Noam Chomsky, as a white male, this is what you do, being part of the white patriarchal hegemony and all. I don’t get to get to do this too much; it’s not that I don’t want to oppress women and minorities, it’s just that as a software engineer, I don’t get that much of an opportunity.

The first thing you will notice is that you are being followed as you set about to lumbering toward the couch or computer. Since this is a new sensation, you will turn around and ask “Yes, dear**?”. The reply you will get, in a semi-soft pleading tone, will be “I want you to talk to me…”

** - “Sweetie”, “Pumpkin”, “Shnookielumps”, etc.

This marks the end of your relaxation for the foreseeable part of the evening.

You, not wanting to be insensitive to her feelings, will sit and attempt to carry on a conversation. You hope that after a few token minutes of effort, she will appreciate that you tried, and leave you in peace. This is what I hope and pray for every night with Lynda. God a) ignores my pleas and b) must derive great pleasure from watching me squirm. Lynda starts to talk. And she talks

And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.
And talks.

I cannot believe that a person can talk so much. I can’t help myself but to allow my eyes to wander about her anatomy, looking for an “OFF” switch. As to holding up my end of the conversation, I can’t just ‘mail it in’, so to speak, like I would when listening to my 8 year old niece regale me with the latest scoop about all things Pokemon. Nope, that would be insensitive to her feelings. So I’m stuck, and I just have to gut it out.

Eventually, though, she will cover every topic that she can possibly think to cover with me. At this point – blessedly – she will wander off, leaving me alone to see if my mouth still has sufficient strength to chew food. She, however, is just getting warmed up. She will now get on the phone with either

> her best friend
> her ex-roommate
> her cousin
> a wrong number

and talk for another 45 minutes. She will talk, loud enough for me and everyone in our zip code to hear, about a) everything I just talked to her about and b) a whole new batch of subjects, up to and including the most intimate details of our marriage and intimate life:

Lynda: “Yes, my NFP mucus levels have been somewhat slippery lately…”
Me: “Who are you talking to?”
Lynda: “What was your name again?”
Phone: (inaudible)
Lynda: “He says his name is Bob…”

She will continue talking until the batteries on the phone run out, or until dawn, whichever comes first. She will then put the leash on the dog, and leave to take the dog for a walk. Halleluia!! While she’s excercising the pooch, I get some peace and quiet. I don't know how long it will last, so I try to enjoy it while I can.

Of course, after a few minutes, I realize that I can still hear her voice talking. This is not due to any dementia (not yet, anyway) but due to the fact that she and the mutt made it less than a half a block before she started talking to one of the neighbors. While the dog looks on pleadingly, Lynda will stand and jabber for another 45 minutes with one of the elderly ladies that lives on our street. By the time good-byes are said, it’s getting late, so the dog is lucky to get even a block’s distance out of this foray outside.

When they return, the dog jumps in my lap, looks at me with sad eyes, and I pet her very lovingly. Lynda will complain “She loves you more; you’re more lenient than I am…”

Nope. Just quieter.

Things They Don't Cover In Marriage Prep Class, Installment #3

Since the number three is associated with various sacred entities – the Trinity, my birthday, Joe Montana’s jersey number – I have decided to dedicate this third installment of “Things They Don’t Cover…” to the most profound revelation NOT shared with you by the good folks who run marriage prep: the root cause, the very essence, of every instance of your wife being upset with you:

You were insensitive to her feelings.

That’s it. Every frown, every complaint, every pout, every “uh-oh, what did I do now?”-inducing look your wife sends your way, at its essence derives from something you did that she interpreted as being insensitive to her feelings. Didn't notice her new hairstyle? Insensitive to her feelings. Unaware that she made spaghetti for dinner, you grabbed a sandwich on the way home? Insensitive to her feelings. Salma Hayek and Jessica Alba walk by you on a beach wearing bikinis, and you sneak a peek? Insensitive to her feelings. Using logic to win an argument? Insensitive to her feelings. (And also impossible, because a) being a female, she does not understand logic and b) you can never win an argument with a woman - even if you win, you lose.)

Being insensitive to her feelings cannot be avoided, and you will be insensitive to her feelings an average of 3.4 times per minute. Of course, as a man, you can not help but be insensitive to a female’s feelings. This is because, as men, we don’t have feelings. Can you imagine John Wayne “getting his feelings hurt”? Hell no; that’s because he, like all real men, doesn’t have any. Sure, during the dating process, we men may have had moments where we talked about “feelings” or may have acted in a manner that led women to believe that we have “feelings”; this is time-honored and highly successful male strategy to get women to have sex with us. However, Katie was, as was my Lynda, too smart for this – that’s why Tom and I decided to marry them.

Of course, not all moments of being insensitive to her feelings are of equal consequence. Here is a simple guide to the level of angry response you can expect from being insensitive to her feelings:


Your only hope is to do what I do: every morning as I wake up, I apologize - For being a man, for not having periods/pregnancy/menopause, for not having to eat less food than a gerbil to maintain my unbelievably high state of attractiveness, for failing to fully appreciate the entertainment value of Yes To The Dress…..whatever. Another apology right before you go to sleep isn’t a bad idea, either.

Weekly flowers help, too.

Things They Don't Cover In Marriage Prep Class, Installment #2

-> Installment 1 <-

It is likely that you will cover “Expectations” in your marriage prep meetings, as most couples enter marriage with unreasonable ones. Most unreasonable expectations usually involve having one or both spouses-to-be thinking that not much is going to change once you’re hitched. For example, I expected everything to be the same, except there would be sex. Lynda expected everything to be the same, except that someone would be around to kill spiders, take care of the lawn, and vacuum clean.

If you have any such illusions, you’d best get past them now.

Of course, this is why you have marriage prep, and I won’t rehash anything they’re going to cover. I’ll warn you about the stuff you won’t hear about. For instance:

The first thing in your life that will get radically made over, believe it or not, will be your shower. Looking inside my shower on, say, March 14 (a month before the wedding), you would have seen:

• A bar of Irish Spring, The Official Soap Of Sheer G—damn Manliness
• A bottle of shampoo
• A bottle of conditioner, the same bottle which, due to lack of use, had been there since the Clinton administration

That’s it. That’s all I needed. No fuss.

Then I got married.

Of course, I was well aware that Lynda would add a veritable cornucopia of shower products to the scene. When I first ventured into her bathroom while we were dating and observed the vast array of bottles lining the ledges of her shower, I was compelled to ask her “How many people live here?”. When she assured me that she lived alone, I surmised that she must have what is known in the female vernacular as “combination skin”, which apparently means that every square inch of her body requires a different cleanser. Of course, these various products are not just supposed to get her clean and smelling nice; according to the print on these bottles, they are supposed to remoisturize, revitalize, rejuvenate, resuscitate, resurrect, reanimate, enliven, enhance, empower, reenergize, repair, renew, refresh, and reinvigorate her. While men’s products are designed to have a man come out of the shower clean and ready for polite society, women’s products are apparently designed to have a woman come out of the shower like Christ coming out of the tomb.

So the shower became rather crowded with fruity-smelling bottles. Oh, well, to each his (or her) own, right? Nope. I was about to fall victim to the post-wedding process of

Insidious Female Bath Product Creep

I was soon informed that my bar soap left a residue that was harder to clean than that of any in her menagerie of liquid soaps – a problem I addressed as a bachelor by simply never cleaning the shower. No sooner had she made this proclamation than my bar of Irish Spring was replaced with a bottle of……Dove Exfoliating Body Scrub.

Christ almighty, Dove? What’s next, am I supposed to start wearing floral prints and listening to Justin Timberlake? And just what the hell is “Exfoliating”? I suspected it was some process by which testosterone is sucked out of my body and replaced with a mysterious chemical that would compel me to leave the toilet seat down. Lynda informed me that exfoliating was just the removal of dead skin, which is OK, I guess. I wasn’t too crazy about the switch, but I gave it a shot. My new soap was a white creamy mixture with little blue specks in it: it was a little like washing yourself with ranch dressing. And it never – and I mean never – quite felt like it washed completely off. Ugh.

After the bottle of Dove ran dry, Lynda said she’d find something she thought I would like better (or at least not hate as much), and settled on……Aveeno Body Wash with Colloidal Oatmeal. This is a step up? Oatmeal? I’m washing with breakfast foods now? If I must, couldn’t it be something a little more manly, like bacon and eggs? And just what in the name of all that is holy is “Colloidal”? It sounds like the stuff The Blob was made out of.

After (warily) using the Aveeno stuff for awhile, I was out shopping at the local Walgreens when I discovered my salvation from the parade of wussy bath products being imposed upon me: Liquid Irish Spring. I bought a whole case of it. The Official Soap Of Sheer G—damn Manliness is now back in my shower where it belongs.

So beware, Tom, of the life-sucking process known as Insidious Female Bath Product Creep. First they take your freedom, then your soap, then on to your vital bodily organs. Don’t let it happen to you.

Consider yourself warned.

Things They Don't Cover In Marriage Prep Class, Installment #1

Now that Tom has found the woman of his dreams to enter into wedded bliss with, I think it is my duty to pass along some helpful info to him. Having finally found the woman that possessed the necessary criteria (low standards, poor eyesight, etc.) for me and entered into wedded bliss myself this past April, I shall today begin a series of posts to enlighten my blogging partner on aspects of marriage and female behavior that I have discovered, so that he may either be a) better prepared in his adjustment to married life, or b) sufficiently warned so that he may run like hell.

I'll begin with an easy, yet crucial one:

It is possible to have the last word in an argument with your wife, provided they are always the same 9 words:

"I'm sorry. I was wrong. It won't happen again."