Advice for Wives on Valentines Day: Look for the Love

When I was pregnant with Gebre, Josiah started doing the dishes every night. I often had to leave the supper table to lie down in the early part of that pregnancy, and he just took over that job. It was a sweet gesture, but I didn't mind much when after the baby was born, he stopped doing the dishes. He was working long hours, getting up at 3 am every day, and going to school on top of that. Doing the dishes during pregnancy was just his non-verbal way of communicating that he cared for me. Making my life a little easier and allowing me to rest was his way of saying "I love you". He wasn't comfortable bathing a toddler, or working the laundry machines, or buying roses and chocolate, but dishes he could handle. Over the years his taking over the dishes has become a classic sign that he's concerned about me. This week when mastitis hit me big-time again, he rushed the dishes off the table before I could get to them. He was willing to chat current events with me while he washed, but he wouldn't let me near the sink.

The point of all this isn't to brag on my husband. Well, it is a little. But I have learned something, being married to my particular man. He's a Guy. You know the kind-before you marry you can tell everyone he's the strong and silent type (and that's good). After you marry, you can complain that he's "noncommunicative" (and that's bad). I have been noticing lately that a lot of women seem to be married to the same type of man. One who doesn't fit the women's mag image of what a man should be and do. But this is what I've learned-roses and chocolates mean nothing if they're forced and not heartfelt. If your man loves to show affection with traditional hearts and flowers, more power to him. I'm not putting that down, not at all! But there are plenty of husbands for whom such behavior simply doesn't occur as a sensible, viable expression of love. My husband is one of the latter group. Sure, I could cry and complain and give him the cold shoulder until he "gets it" and starts doing what he's supposed to according to cultural ideas of romance. If I liked playing the martyr, I could sigh and cry and spend the rest of my years "sharing" with a group of "praying" ladies about how unloved I am. I could call Dr. Laura and say "My husband just doesn't love me. He never does anything for me. He even forgets our anniversary sometimes! Am I morally obligated to stay with him, or do you think I'm right to take my kids and shatter his life because he doesn't give me the romance I desperately need?"

I see and hear this stuff so much that it makes me wonder if these differing ideals of what love looks like aren't a large portion of those "irreconcileable differences" divorces. I hear women complaining about what they don't get, remaining completely oblivious to their husbands efforts at loving them. It's astounding really, how a woman can be married to a man who provides her with everything she wants, the big house, the private school for the kids, the trips to the mall, dinners out, the latest cell-phone, and all the things their kids "need", and still be enraged that the date on a calendar slips his mind. Maybe he's not a bad, unfeeling, uncaring man. Maybe he's just, well, just a man. He's not a character in a romance novel, or a player who uses romance to get into women's beds.

Maybe the best ways he knows to show love are to work to make sure his family is taken care of. Maybe he shows love by appreciating his wife's body as beautiful even after 3 pregnancies have done their damage. Maybe he forgets an anniversary date, but when walking through a store some day he sees something his wife really would like, and buys it on a whim, because he knows she wants it. Maybe his taking care of the cars and making sure they are safe and running is an act of love in his mind. Maybe he thinks a brand new vacuum cleaner or dishwasher would make his wife's life easier, and is baffled when she breaks into angry tears when he gifts her with a (to him) useful, helpful, sensible appliance for a holiday or birthday. Maybe he does the dishes.

Look for the love ladies. You might be surprised where you find it.