His Point of View* A Reply

[edit]
This is what I see when I see blue jeans.


These are what DW sees:

[/edit Nov. 6]



Ok, ok, now that the air has been filled with a cute fantasy, I’d like to say what really happened.

I’ve NEVER told DW (Darling Wife) what to wear.
All I said was, I once saw my Orchestra director wear blue Jeans (notice not ‘Jeans’, specifically Blue Jeans) and I mentioned to my wife that I just didn’t like the looks of them.

Look, I’m not telling her what to wear; she can wear what she wants. But just as I’m not attracted to trailers to live in, nor do I long for the opportunity to poop at a downtown gas station restroom, it just so happens I – for some reason I do not understand – don’t find BLUE jeans to be appealing. She can wear what she wants. What I’m not going to do is lie and say, ‘Oh my! Now I like them!’ when I don’t, never have. Burlap would look better to my eyes, but that’s just me.

When I pass a store where they have these worn out cut out blue jeans, I often think, GOODNESS, LET ME STOP THROWING THINGS IN THE TRASH, IN 25 YEARS I’M GOING TO BE RICH.

So, now, after 15 years of marriage, just to prove some point, she is wearing them, NOT ONLY because she likes to wear them, oh not at all. Rather, it’s to torture me, because I don’t like them.

I’ve noticed that throughout the years it’s wise if I don’t tell her OTHER things I don’t like, for the frequency of them happening leap through the roof. And, if I do tell her things I DO like, it almost never happens again.

Examples:
‘Wow, I love this particular dish you made. In addition to being nice to me to make a meal for me this week, and I do want to say how grateful I am, I happen to particularly like this combination of ingredients? What do you call it?’

Well, de facto she calls it, ‘I’m going to throw the recipe in the trash and never make it again.’

I actually tested this out, over several months; she made this one dish I liked several times. I would merely say how grateful I was that she cooked, but today it just so happens that such and such was especially pleasing. Sure enough, like the Jews about the Holocaust, ‘never again’.

I started out by telling her that she should wear her hair any way she wanted. So, I guess because she had short hair when I married her, she went through a lot of trouble to grow it out long. One day, blundering away a rook for a pawn, I mentioned, ‘Thank you for going through the trouble to wear your hair long, I really like it.’ Faster than Darth Vader whipping out his light saber to chop in half an enemy of the Emperor, out came the scissors to consign anything longer than two inches to the oblivion of never more.

‘That make up you spent so much time putting on really looks cool.’

Well, to be honest, she’s more refined about that. She’ll wear it when she goes out someplace formal… when I can not attend. I do get to see her wearing make up in photos, specifically those photos when I was working at the time and her sister went in my place.
I do admit she plays piano, which I do like, but only when I’m not in the room. She does play very nicely, and I do enjoy it. Usually she thinks I’m asleep, so I have a chance to listen to it for a while.

Her biggest love in life is reading books. I, however, made the mistake of changing,
‘I don’t mind at all if you read books.

To

‘I think it’s great you read books, here, let me buy you thousands of them!’

Now she won’t touch them.

Hmmm, how can I put this to my advantage?

You know, I really like it when she goes shopping…

And I count myself very fortunate that I ONLY tell her she shouldn’t clean up the house so much. I think she thinks I DON’T want her to clean up, therefore she really does quite a bang up job of keeping the floors clean.

Matter of fact, she really is the perfect wife. She never asks me to work, never asks me for things, never complains about how much I sleep, in fact encourages it, she works like the dickens around the house, minding the fifty kids, feeding them keeping our business going, remembering everything I need from phone numbers to where I left my brains. She's attractive, supportive, the perfect wife. She does so much for me, I'm very lucky, thankful, and I count my blessings every day knowing I got more from heaven than any man has any right to hope for.

I like and love everything about her.


Oh crap. I shouldn’t have written that…




*I refused to call this "The Truth" as he suggested. Seriously! A reply to this.

For Your Own Good, Darling!

One of our many agreements before my darling husband and I got married was that he wouldn't tell me what to wear, how to wear my hair or clothes, and stuff like that. Did I say that right? Yeah, I think I did.

After we got married, I noticed almost right away that D [that's my darling husband], detest jeans. It's a strong dislike, and he wouldn't be caught dead wearing one. It has something to do with an Orchestra teacher. He used to play the violin for years and years.

Anyway, it's really bad for him because I have a great love for jeans. I do. Later on, I am going to hunt around my album and find a picture of me in jeans. I look fabulous in it. I used to anyway. It doesn't really matter if I don't look as fabulous with it now, because I love jeans.

The other day, we have this conversation. I don't exactly remember how it goes, but it's something like this...

DH: We should burn all those jeans
Me: Aren't jeans great?
DH: You could wear them another day (facetiously)
Me: I surely can't darling. I love jeans. I am wearing jeans for your own good. If I stopped, I'll have to call you my a*bus*ive spouse because you told me what to wear!

LOL. Sometimes, I just cracked myself up. That's my point of view. D mentioned writing his point of view of the conversation later. We'll see if he gets around to it.

The Joys of Motherhood

is being a wife to a wonderful husband. Anything the kids can come up with which might have driven me insane is just an entertainment because I have a husband who's there for me all the time.

I do not blog about my husband all that much. It's because having his love and support and all things in between is like oxygen, ubiquitous and constant. And just like that basic element, having a first rate supply of it makes me thrive. It's not that he's been taken for granted, (though he might think differently, what with the sexual thingy I have while breastfeeding!). He's just so much part of me, and how often do you read about me except with my unhealthy obsession on weight?

My husband likes to tell a chronicle of us meeting in ‘Nam. How I was a sniper slaughtering his buddies one by one. I was a sharp-shooter*. The Fall of Saigon and liberation…

We met one weekend when I was eighteen, and got married less than 36 hours later. You could say it's a whirlwind romance. It was and it wasn’t!

We’ve been writing for half a year. We were averaging 6 days a week of letters with an average of 3 pages, and approximately 200 voice tapes. More him on the audio as I detest listening to my recorded voice. With that much communication, it's amazing how much of our personality is imprinted on each page.

How I managed to get good grades in my demanding BS Nursing studies and writing handwritten long letters to someone not-quite-my-sweetheart yet is pure luck. That and a younger brain which retains majority of the important information I need for my test despite markedly decreased studying hours. I was writing letters when I should have been studying.

I firmly believe that I wouldn’t have the audacity to ask my questions or firmly stated my world views. How do you ask a person you just met what his ideal wife would be or his views on fidelity? Or asked all other awkward personal information when I haven’t even kissed the gentleman! Rules and suggestions were exchanged. Dislikes and likes pounded smooth, but never set in stone. I do not recall now what we were writing volumes about, but it was exciting, tantalizing, informative, entertaining, and above all, pleasurable.

We’ve establish an unspoken rule with our first letters that we’ve going to treat it like a conversation. Each letter takes an average of 10 days to arrive. We didn’t wait for the reply to arrive before we’d launch another one. It’s the only way we can keep the flow going. There was no electronic communication in 1991. Mails are delivered by canoes! Phone call cost a fortune, so we limit those to once or twice a month. Phone sex was certainly out of the question. As for dirty letters, I wasn’t daring enough to initiate one. He tried, but his intimation and hints went right over my head…

One day, I received the letter that would change the course of my life. It didn’t hurt that the picture with the letter is one hot dude! After all, I said I was smart and young. I didn't say I wasn't capable of being shallow!

I was eighteen and in my second year of college. I met my perfect man. I had a dream of traveling around the world while working as a nurse a la Betty Neels.** I am not a nurse today, and I am living a dream life.

Oh yeah, the joys of motherhood is not just about having fabulous and fantastic children like mine. It’s also about having an extraordinary spouse!

*I hardly knew which end to shoot from on any gun thingy with bullets in it. Yeah, I live in a state where shotguns is as common as sandals in summer, but I've never actually shot one. (Note to self, enroll in a class. That's after reading an intruction about shooting. Which means, a trip to the library first!)

**Betty Neels writes romances about nurses traveling while working and meeting their dream boy, usually a doctor. She writes sweet and innocent love stories. A endangered genre nowadays.

To Have and to Hold

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages."

by Friedrich Nietzsche

I believe that husbands and wives who are best of friends will have a stronger marriage for it. Sex is always a factor of course. It can be the "it" that makes a marriage run, or it can be a bonus. Or it could be both. But friendship in a marriage is a glue that hold things together in times of stress.

I am glad that D is my best friend. He's a wonderful, considerate and intuitive lover, and I am glad for that. Right now, am surely glad we have this friendship thing going. Despite the upsetting events, it's nice to know that our marriage was never on the table. It's not an issue, and it's not a bargaining chip. It just is.

That said, I wouldn't like it much if all I have in my marriage is friendship. I truly enjoyed the sex part of it.

What can I say but Nietzsche has a way with words. For next time, I should explain why this is.

"After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands."