my wife likes to see me tied up

I have a job that requires that I wear a tie.

I have a few secrets that I use to insure that I get a good knot, the right length, and a perfect dimple. I am pretty good at it, but that was not always the case. Back in the day, I used to struggle a bit with the tie thing. I would do the best I could and just deal with the results. I wore them so infrequently, that I paid very little mind to the finished product.

Now that it is a daily ritual, I have learned a few things.

If I tie it too short, it looks sloppy. It draws attention away from the rest of my “get up” because it looks like I should be popping out of a Volkswagen with 20 more “face painted” friends at a Ringling Brothers event. If I tie it to long, it looks like I am trying to hide a coffee stain from a poorly placed coffee cup during my drive to work. Additionally, it gets caught on stuff and it seems to get in the way all day.

When I pull it too tight, it restricts my breathing and my movement. When I wear it too loose, it looks unprofessional. The point is that, more so than learning how to make it match, I had to learn how to tie it properly according to my shirt style, collar type, and pants positioning. I had to learn what it took to get the right results and then try to repeat those steps daily.

my wifes ‘but’ keeps getting bigger

I have been married for almost 14 years.

To some couples that may seem like an impressive number; to others it isn’t even a dent in their cup of life. I have met people that could not make it to their second year of marriage and I know others that have been together since before I was born. On the flip side I know couples that live a miserable existence regardless of marital tenure of 30 plus years and others that seem like they are living in a constant state of euphoria after only a few years.

Some couples try to give themselves credit simply for sticking it out longer than most people they know. They pay no mind to measuring the happy years vs. the trying ones. They have tricked themselves into believing that the goal is the quantity and not the quality.

That must suck.

I can tell you the secret to having a successful relationship with your wife. Even better, I can do it in one sentence. (Actually, it’s a question). I must warn you, it will challenge you from the time you read it, till the end of your days. It is never too late to implement it, but once you do, your job is never ending. You can start it at any time in your marriage and you can measure its success with little effort. It may not always be easy to see, but it will be simple to stick with it once you recognize its importance. Here it is:

women are like dead bugs

Women deal with multiple thoughts and emotions from their past and present all the time, at the same time – and these can’t be easily dismissed.           Jeff Feldhahn “For Men Only”

It is no great revelation that there is more going on in a woman’s mind than in a man’s. I mean, I know that we all have experienced the random, tangent filled, and sporadic array of information that pours from the female mind. I can’t be the only one that gets dizzy when I am trapped in a conversation with my wife and she really gets going at mach speed.

How can we go from: what she is wearing, to what the kids did today, then exactly what bills are due next, while we talk about what we need at the grocery store, followed by what happened at work, and  what we are eating for dinner, after that comes what I need to pick up from the hardware store, and how much gas prices have gone up, leading to what she read in the bible this morning, with the broken garbage disposal, to ……(please tell me its not just me)!