Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man

negative, harsh talk at your man. This approach won’t change your man, but it surely will bring out the best in him.

Marjorie is quite good at this. I’ll tell you this much: when we decided to move in together and get started on our journey through life with each other, I sat my girl down and made something very clear-I don’t do housework. I have no problem eating and leaving my plate on the table to be picked up by someone else, and I’ve been known to climb out of my clothes and leave them laying on the floor. I pay professionals to keep my house clean. I admit that there are plenty of men who don’t have access to housecleaners, but hell, I do. And so I told my intended that I would pay a gang of folks to do these things, just so I didn’t have to and she, a neat freak, wouldn’t have to be bothered by dirty dishes and clothes.

This, of course, didn’t stop her from trying to get something entirely different from me. I’d eat dinner and push away from the table, and she’d say, “Steve, scrape your plate off and rinse it.” I’d take off a shirt and drop it inside the closet, and she’d say, “Steve, you just dropped your clothes on the floor.” And the whole time I’m reminding her that’s what the housekeeper is for. I pay them good money to handle these things-provide a job to someone to clean the house. “You want me to help them do their job? Because they’re not helping me do mine. They’re not writing jokes and holding them up for me to read while I’m up on the stage, so let them earn their money. Cleaning is what they do.”

Except on the weekends.

It’s then that both my closet and the kitchen start to look chaotic, because the housecleaner isn’t there to pick up the pieces. And I realized pretty quickly that piles of laundry on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, and an unmade bed in the master bedroom affects Marjorie’s mood. When we lie down on Saturday evening, she jumps up out of the bed, insisting, “I can’t deal with this-look at this bed! It’s not made up. I have to fluff these sheets and tighten up the corners…”

And now, Saturday night isn’t what it’s supposed to be because my lady is bothered by the sheets, she’s thinking about the sink full of dirty dishes downstairs, and she’s staring at the pile of underwear, T-shirts, and pants piled up in the corner. But instead of letting it fester, she simply communicated what she needed from me in order to be comfortable in our house when the housekeepers aren’t around. She didn’t throw a tantrum, she simply said, “Steve, it would make me so happy if you tried just a little harder to keep the house neater until the housekeeper comes back on Mondays.”

It was clear that my priorities had to align with hers or there would be problems. But there was no nastiness accompanying the request. And I rose to the occasion. I’m not saying my wife changed me. But she did bring out the best in me-the concern that I have to make sure she’s happy.

So instead of just dropping my clothes any old where, I pile them in a corner out of sight so that she can’t see them so easily. I get out of the bed on the weekends now and I actually pull the covers up tight and put the pillows (all those useless pillows that have nothing to do with nothing) onto the bed. And I make the kids load the dishwasher so their mom won’t trip.

Then Marjorie is happy. She has no reason to nag. And I don’t have to watch my perfectly beautiful, diminutive wife turn into a 450-pound monster with a Darth Vader voice, which makes me equally happy. Of course, on occasion, we still have our issues, still have days when all is not perfect in the Harvey house. That’s the nature of being human. But the understanding we have and the care we exercise to respect each other’s boundaries, needs, and wants make life together pretty sweet-and nag-free.

10

Show Your Appreciation

A Little Bit of Gratitude Goes a Long Way

I was not expecting this-it caught me totally off guard. I wasn’t even thinking about how to put a smile on her face. Mind you, I specialize in making my wife, Marjorie, happy: I love nothing more, other than God and the Lord Jesus himself, than to see Marjorie’s beautiful eyes light up-to watch her smile spread from ear to incredible ear. But at that very moment, all I was looking for was a rare piece of quiet time in my comfy leather chair-no work, no nagging kids, no drama. Just me and a fine cigar.

There I am, walking past the living room, headed straight for some me-time when I overhear my wife on the phone, bragging to one of her girlfriends: “Girl, I’m so fortunate. My husband is always trying to do something kind for me. He doesn’t have to do it, but he does it, and I appreciate him so. He works hard, he’s kind and thoughtful…”

The little boy in me went, “Oooh, oooh, oooh! Wait! She’s talking about me! I have to do something nice for her right now because she likes that!” And even as she continued her conversation with her girlfriend, I made a beeline to my office and got on the phone and hurriedly put in a call to her favorite florist. “Listen,” I said, practically huffing from rushing to the phone, “I need an abundance of my wife’s favorite roses at the house by four this afternoon.” And before I hung up the phone, I was thinking up more ways to bring a smile to her face, just so I could get a little bit more appreciation from Marjorie.

The truth is nothing in the world makes a man square his shoulders and hold his head up higher than when someone shows him appreciation. We men have responded in positive ways to praise and appreciation since the moment we were old enough to understand the praiseworthy words coming out of our mothers’ mouths: “Look at my little man, he’s so strong!” would make us grab four more grocery bags out of the trunk of the car, just so that we could look stronger in her eyes; “My boy watches out for his mama-won’t let me cross the street unless he’s sure I’m safe” would make us cement ourselves on the corner and look both ways forty times before we let our mothers so much as hang her pinky toe off the curb; “My boy is such a man of the house-he locks up all the doors in the house before we go to sleep every night so nobody can get in here” would make us do CIA-worthy perimeter checks on the house every night to make sure the family could sleep soundly, without anyone having to remind us to do it. It didn’t matter how puny we were or that we couldn’t flick a flea without falling on our behinds, if our mothers praised us for standing tall, we would stand taller. Because her praise-her willingness to say out loud that she appreciates us-made us feel valued, which in turn gave us joy.

This need to feel appreciated is human. No matter if you’re a husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, or adult, teenager, or child, every last one of us looks for a stamp of approval and a simple thank-you when we lend a helping hand, get the job done, and especially when we get it right. But when you show that appreciation to a man, his response to it is immeasurable because men are so rarely thanked for what they do during the course of their days that when someone does extend a simple, “thank you, you are appreciated,” they feel as if they’ve won the lottery. His boss isn’t likely patting him on the back with a “Job well done.” He’s giving him a paycheck-that’s thanks, enough. His friends aren’t high-fiving him and saying, “You’re a great friend, man!” We’re way more casual about it, if we bother congratulating each other at all. And guess what? Rarely does that appreciation come from the women we love.

It is the latter that hurts men most. An admirer of the work of women, I get that no one can multitask like a woman, that you are busy; in many cases, you’re working and may even be the breadwinner for the family, you take on the lion’s share of the child rearing and the household duties, and you are the keeper of the family’s social calendars. If left to men, the kids’ annual checkups would take place every lunar year, that is, hardly ever; birthdays would never be celebrated and gifts never purchased; and there’d be no family vacations. Yes, you run the households the way corporations ought to be run. But often, husbands and otherwise committed men feel like they’re near the bottom of their ladies’ list of priorities, and the only time they get any kind of feedback from you is when they’re not doing something right or falling down on the job. After a while, men can start to feel like they’re being taken for granted-that no matter how much they do to help, no matter how much they’re stretching outside of themselves to participate in the relationship in ways that aren’t necessarily natural to them, it’s never going to be enough to keep a smile on their ladies’ faces. And when a man has spent the day getting dogged out at work, or facing off against the forces that conspire to bring him down, he wants to be able to turn to his family, and especially the woman he loves, for some uplift, a kind word or two that makes him feel like he was of some use to somebody today.