Voices in My Head: the Meaning of Wife

I've been married now for almost ten years. In those ten years I've gone through quite a number of changes. Most notably I now have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, two kids, two dogs and two cats. None of which I had before I was married. There is also a whopping forty more pounds of me to love that I didn't have before I was married. (The "big boned" excuse isn't cutting it anymore).

Some single men think when they get married they are gaining a wife. The truth is they are getting much more. On top of my new found physical ailments I now have new mental conditions that I never had before marriage. For instance, I actually notice when someone is wearing white pants after Labor Day. When I was single I would never notice what color pants someone was wearing. My insomnia is also new since my wedding day as is the little twitch in my eye that starts up every time I begin to get irritated.

Marriage isn't all bad though. For example, I never need to turn on any lights in my house because my wife constantly leaves them all on for me. And I can't remember the last time I had to open the toothpaste myself because my wife is so considerate she leaves the top off every morning. She also helps me exercise by letting the trash get so full that I have no choice but to take it out every night or else I'll have to deal with cleaning up the mess her cats made over night. And she helps keep my mind sharp by letting the toilet paper run out so that I have to remember to check before doing my business or things will get messy.

My single friends tell me that I'm lucky because I have the American Dream. I have a beautiful wife, two beautiful daughters and a new house on a cul-de-sac. Why is it that when I pull up to the house after a long day of work I see grass that needs to be mown, a driveway that is falling apart, a mortgage payment I can barely afford, two kids that need to go to college some day and two weddings for which I'll be footing the bill. When I was single this was not my dream. It was however the dream of the little lady I now call my wife.

The woman I married tells me that there's a reason 'wife' rhymes with 'life'. She says it's because men don't have a life until they get married. I see it just a bit differently. I think we trade in our life at the altar during our wedding. And in return for our life we leave the church with a wife.

We do have somewhat of a return policy in this arrangement but it's never crossed my mind. Sure there was that time she threw out my Larry Bird t-shirt without asking and there does seem to be an unfair ratio of "girl's nights out" compared to "guys nights out". But when it comes right down to it I wouldn't trade my life for anything. My wife and I have a pretty good system. She lets me do stupid things and when I do them she reminds me how dumb I am. On the flip side she never does anything stupid because every time she does something wrong it was someone else's fault...most likely me or one of my stupid friends.

I think it was Max Kauffman who once said "I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late".