This post is for those who have finally managed to stave off the divorce after much pain, heart-ache, and probably weight loss!

Now that you have completed this quest – there is another one before you and it will be a significant risk to your marriage coming up. Make no mistake – your marriage will be on unstable ground for some time and there is always a risk that these troubled waters could come back.

You see, the enemy would prefer that you not keep all these changes that you have made. He wants you to have a rift in your family and in your life so that you can affect other lives in a negative way, just to spite God and try to prove God wrong. Are you going to let him have his way with your family? Don’t think the enemy is real – you are sadly mistaken, my friend.

If you are anything like me – the whole experience would have changed who you are on a fundamental level – but that does not mean the fight is over.

For example, I’ve now gotten to the point in my life of not even asking for physical intimacy anymore – well not as much Fortunately, it seems to be provided without my asking now. Weird how that works – not sure how long it will last, but it is nice.

That said, I know that our marriage will be attacked on another level now. I’m not sure from where it will come, but I am bracing for it when it happens.

Be wary of the calm sea for a storm is beyond the horizon.

It could be financial since we have been fortunate to have never really had to struggle that hard. Don’t get me wrong, there were definitely some Raman noodles for awhile, but we were still able to eat and our bills were at worst only a month behind.

It could be our kids or something else, but I know that it is coming and I will be on guard.

Marriage is a job (79 hits) man – don’t forget it.

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Don’t you want to be totally honest with your spouse? I know I did. I felt that it was a fundamental requirement that marriage must be built on. I’m not saying it isn’t, but don’t things get complicated sometimes?

Let’s try to walk-through a classic husband wife situation – “Do I look fat in this dress?” Have you ever heard that trick question?
Before I was married – I thought this was something that married people just make up – just like I didn’t believe that some Canadians really say “eh?” after everything they say before I met a wild bunch of Canadian firemen in a bar one time, but that is another story.

Would my wife and I have ever met if I wasn’t physically attracted to her? I’m not really sure – how sad is that – I guess it is just reality or nature or something, but I know for certain that after we did connect that I loved her so much that if even she became disfigured that wouldn’t change anything for me.

At one point my wife weighed over 200lbs after she had the kids and what not. She would always ask me if she looks fat. What a trick question! Wives really do say that. Perhaps it is just a myth that is self-perpetuating or something.

It really didn’t matter to me if she weighed 400lbs or 80 – but I wanted to be truly honest with her as some sort of need within me to have true intimacy – which I felt could only be had through brutal honest truth.

I’d respond to her trick question – “you look fine to me babe, but others may perceive you differently” or “You could lose a little, but you still look good to me.”

Oops. Not the right thing to say during the first couple of years of marriage. Once she got ready to leave me she would always bring that up. Annoying trick questions.
She did lose most of her weight as she was preparing to divorce me though! Apparently, that is a classic sign that she is either having an affair or is about to leave you.
One more thing – if you haven’t figured this out yet – if she is unhappy about the way she looks – she will most likely have a much harder time wanting to do the horizontal polka.

You see – I’m overweight a bit, but I’ve accepted it. I’d like to be a nice strapping buck – but working out is so hard and the weights are so heavy So if someone says that to me – it rolls right off my shoulder so naturally I would expect that she had just as thick of skin as I’ve got. Not the case at the time and definitely the wrong thing to say the first couple of years in a marriage. It takes time or a significant movement towards intimacy in your relationship before it can get to that level (the latter is what happened to us). In either case, there are nice ways to say things and you should never say anything mean if you can avoid it. I’m not promoting walking on egg-shells to hide the truth, but just wording things a bit better because you love her.

Besides – it doesn’t matter what you really think anyway – she read that on your facial expressions before you uttered a single word.

I eventually got smart enough to not answer that one using such brutal honesty when she was fat, but now we are at a level of truth that we can say the true answer without the other being offended. It is growth in our relationship. If I do have something really challenging that I feel I need to say – I think it over for awhile so that I say it right without hurting her. That is another way to display love even though you may feel like you are giving up your own pride.

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People change and so can you.

Has she told you this “You’re not the same person I fell in love with” or “I’m no longer the same person”?
Do you know that initial bliss in any new relationship? You know – that stage where you can’t stop thinking about the person you just got involved with? Then at some point it sours – you find out you’re not compatible or whatever. What about the same in marriage though. You married her for a reason and she you. Both of you expressed a lifetime commitment to each other for some reason. What happened? Did you both expect that it would be peaches and cream the whole time? Did reality set in? I’m not saying that it can’t be most of the time, but to get there takes work after the initial bliss has passed.

When was the last time you two did something fun together? Did you get caught up in the business of life? Or is it worse – did she give up? I don’t care if she has – you can bring her back if you try hard enough. I did.

Until you can get past this stage that you both are in – that “love” thing you are searching for will be elusive. It is only a stage. This too shall pass if at least one of you is willing.

If you are on this site, you are most likely at stage 2 of marriage as explained by this save the marriage ebook (373 hits) that I read from another site. Please note – the ebook is good for understanding what you are up against – but you should also supplement it with other resources. Are you at the Fight Fight Fight stage or have you been together so long that you’ve forgotten and become complacent and never made it to stage 3. I can’t speak to the latter because we were at the fight fight fight stage.

What I did learn from people who have been married for much longer that I have been alive is that it is founded on commitment, acceptance, and forgiveness. The raw emotion of love is some kind of reward that your brain gives you for doing those things.

She has lost that emotion, because you have not showed her love in a manner that she can understand (30 hits). Just like many of us guys equate sex with love she will have other things that she needs.

Does she say that she can’t forgive you? That is a crock too. She has only convinced herself of that. I know my wife did, but she eventually forgave me after I started acting right for an extended period.

I had to really forgive her after some of the things she did once I had pushed her too far.

Love is also a decision when it comes to your spouse. Period. You will never be able to meet all of your expectations and you hers until years down in the marriage. Do you think these people that are happily married after 50 years never had a rough period like what you guys are going through? Why don’t you ask around and you may be surprised.

Did you or her get this expectation out of a movie ?

It is like a river man! The marriage relationship will change as you or your wife changes. If you are truly committed to this woman, you must adjust to her changes and only then can she adjust to you.

What is different about her? Do you know? Have her needs changed?

Food for thought.

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This post applies only if your wife is still living with you under the same roof. If this is not the case you may want to start from the beginning (222 hits) or look here (182 hits).

Okay here we go. One of my counselors revealed a very simple truth to me.

People tend to forget about problems once a solution is identified.

I’ll try to explain. Do we worry about the problem of slicing bread? Nope – bread is purchased sliced now a days. The problem simply doesn’t exist.

Let’s try to put this into practice. I’m sure you are capable of doing about a 100 things that bug your wife and vice versa. One of them may be the classic toilet seat debate. I think almost everyone with a toilet can appreciate the inherent humor and value in this debate. Women want the toilet seat down – guys want it up. Personally, I couldn’t care either way so I tend to leave it down for my wife, but let’s think about this.

A couple of times of leaving the seat up may be annoying to your wife. If this has happened to your wife thousands of times, then perhaps she is at a breaking point and what could have been a seemingly small issue could now be a big deal to her.

Instead of focusing on the problem – ask instead – is there a solution? In corporate parlance, don’t be part of the problem – be part of the solution. Of course, surely by now you know that you need to respect her wishes and just leave the thing down – that is one solution, but sometimes there are creative solutions.

Let me show you one that will likely be the best thing since sliced bread. It is the dawn of a new era. Enter the automatic toilet seat raiser!

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Are there other problems in your relationship that have solutions creative or otherwise?

I know my wife and I had this challenge just recently.

My wife and I were discussing an upcoming major decision for the both of us. I like to debate big decisions to make sure it is the right choice. I play “Devil’s Advocate” on both sides of an argument to make sure it is the right course of action. In other words, I analyze it. Unfortunately, my wife was receiving this analysis and debate as a personal attack on her given that I was playing Devil’s advocate on some of her points. We needed a solution to this communications gap.

• I told her my intentions were not to hurt her, but rather my goal was to make sure we are making the right decision.
• I explained that I was playing Devil’s advocate.
• I started prefacing my points with a warning shot to let her know that I was playing this role.
• I asked her to suggest better ways of saying something if what I am saying comes across the wrong way – to which she agreed.
• I let her know that it was important to me that she be a part of the decision making process and that it was our decision not mine.

After all of this – she admitted that perhaps she was being too sensitive and wasn’t really sure why. She agreed to help “train” me to say things in a way that wasn’t offensive to her and acknowledged that my motives were pure. Problem solved. Now I’ve got to buy her one of those fancy toilet seats for Christmas! How romantic.

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What I am about to tell you only applies if you are fortunate enough to have your wife sleeping in the same bed with you again and only if intimate relations have resumed at her invitation. If you aren’t there yet you need to go back to the start (222 hits) or at least here (182 hits).

Here we go. Some of this article may be a bit crass so you have been warned.
One of my friends told me a funny yet sad story about how he had gotten a bit out of control with his wife. No disrespect to my friend, but I thought we all could learn from his experience. Apparently, his wife climbed into their bed minus her underpants. To most guys – including myself – this would be an indicator of good things to come.

Unfortunately, for my friend it seems that his wife instead rejected his advances for physical intimacy and in response he threw a nice little temper tantrum. He proceeded to remove the sheets from their bed and even went so far as to toss his underwear somewhat violently. He then remade the bed with her in it. I can certainly relate to wanting to do things like this and have done much worse in the past.

I once commented to my wife on a similar situation albeit minus the underwear tossing – “I hope that one day you become reincarnated well endowed so that you’ll know what it’s like to be a guy.” – I said it much meaner than that of course – it might as well have been in demon-speak. I can say it much nicer now though. I just explained what is written in the following paragraphs.

Please filter appropriately as this is based on a study of my wife and many of my friends’ wives. For all I know, your lady could be loaded down with so much physical intimacy drive that you have to fight her off with a stick. Lucky you.

Also, for those couples who sleep in the nude – I have no answers on the subject of going to bed minus underpants.

At the risk of being crass, this stuff applies to the rest of us who have kids or who have a fear of the house catching fire while sleeping nude and then running out of the house naked much to the dismay of the local fire department that just arrived to put the fire out.

Yes I have kids.

A couple of suggestions for guys and ladies.

Ladies

You just don’t know how much power you have over us in this area and if you do and abuse it – well you are only robbing yourself. Please please play nicely. Denial in the area of physical intimacy wounds our poor little inner child which is waht results in the nice little temper tantrum at times. You must realize that in many ways this is no different from the need to eat and drink for us guys. Think of it this way. To us it is almost like saying “Sweetie I’m dying of thirst can you get me a drink of water?” Then we receive a proverbial “Sorry honey, I don’t feel like getting you a drink of water even if you are dying.”

Please don’t come to bed minus underpants unless your intending on a roll in the hay or unless some gnomes stole your underpants (187 hits). At the risk of sound crass, wrap your bottom up like a mummy if you aren’t interested. It is nothing less than torture to your poor poor husband to show up to bed minus under pants and not be in the mood. Period.

If you’re bloating, head-aching, or any of the other common ailments – let us know. It makes it a heck of a lot easier on our inflated male egoes. Until we reach a certain age (80 (235 hits)?), you must realize that these thoughts govern (259 hits) our brain half the time if not more. We’re just wired that way. You could almost say it is our mummy.

Guys

Sometimes your lady just wants to be held and every little physical caress doesn’t mean that the horizontal polka is a go that night. I have yet to figure out how to tell the difference, but just realize that it may not be. The whole process is some kind of game to them. They’re looking for the dance of romance (though not all the time). Confusing eh? Again, just acknowledge it for what it is and play your part.

No throwing the sheets like my ill-fortuned friend. It is tough I know. Here is a trick for her to calm that inner sheet tosser of yours. I found that if my wife explains why she is denying me that proverbial glass of water it instantly removes those feelings. Ask her next time to just help you understand and you may find yourself sympathetic to your loved one’s plight for once.

Another thing – you can’t just come in from work, sling all your stuff down, ask for a beer, prop yourself in front of the TV, and then expect her to want to be physically intimate once it is time for bed. If you do this – congratulations – you just made her feel like a piece of meat (188 hits) and you are probably building up some nice resentment against yourself from her.

Lastly, I’ve noticed that there are at least a couple of ground rules that allow her to take the game to your desired conclusion.

• It starts with you (assuming we’re working with the standard sex-crazed male situation and not the inverse (166 hits)). Make her feel loved. Think selfless.
• She has buttons – you need to figure out what they are. In the case of my wife, I discovered a rather simple equation. Fun (305 hits) for her (206 hits) = fun for me.
• 
• There are other buttons, but this is a big one for my wife. Do you know what your wife’s is? How sad if you don’t. I know I didn’t until I started piecing everything together.
• She needs the right environment – that means no kids running around, the nest needs to be secure, clean, etc. If your wife stays home like mine, then bring home dinner for once. Figure out what she is worried about and help remove as many items from her todo list as possible. Then she can focus on more fun activities.
• Whatever you do – if she says no – don’t complain. Suck it up and you can talk about where you both are going wrong (187 hits) later.

These rules apply if you actually want her to be into the experience. If she’s just indulging you (i.e., she’s not interested, but lets you have your fun anyway) then perhaps you should let her know how much you appreciate her kindness.

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It’s Thanksgiving day and I’m sitting here watching Divorce Court on television. It is amazing some of the things that people going through a divorce do to one another. The really sad thing is the impact that a divorce can have on the generations that follow. It is a statistically proven fact that persons from broken homes are more likely to have a divorce themselves. There are other behaviors that we may pick up from our family of “origin” as well that can be just as destructive to a marriage.

As I was watching divorce court I watched this husband who totally expected his wife to wait on him as though she were his maid. No doubt he learned this from somewhere, possibly his family of origin.

To illustrate this concept let’s start with the following joke:

A young woman is preparing her first thanksgiving dinner. As she gets everything ready for thanksgiving day, she very sternly reminds herself to let the turkey finish thawing in the sink overnight. She puts it in and places the dishrack over the top of the bird. Her husband walks into the kitchen and sees this. “Why are you doing that?” he asks.

“My mom always did that to help the turkey thaw” she told him.

The next day Mom calls to see how everything is going. “Fine, Ma. I have everything ready to go in the oven. I even remembered to put the rack over the turkey last night.”

This seemed to confuse her mother a bit. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

“Oh, I remember you always put the dish rack over the turkey when it was thawing in the sink,” she said.

There was a pause on the end of the line. “Yes, but honey, we had cats!”

Got the idea? I can relate this to my own personal experiences and how it affected my marriage.

I grew up in a small town where a great deal of the male population inherited a number of behaviors from their immigrant forefathers. To outsiders, many of these behaviors would seem a bit harsh by today’s standards; however, within that subculture it is the norm. They are good men – just a bit misguided by today’s standards.

As I approached my own marriage I realized that I did have some inappropriate expectations based on the culture I grew up in and furthermore within the immediate family that I was raised. Every family has its share of secrets and so does mine. The trouble is that if you believe that any poor behavior towards your wife is appropriate because that is the way you grew up. If this is the case with you, perhaps you need to investigate whether the way you grew up was actually correct. I know this hurts, but it is something that you need to at least think about. “Your way” may truly be the best way, but you need to realize that your spouse didn’t grow up in the same family and possibly culture as yourself.

It gets worse though. I know many people in the Christian “family” who tend to rationalize poor behavior and then source it to the Bible. I was one of them. For instance – us guys tend to love the passages about women being required to be submissive to their husbands “according to the Bible”. We always seem to miss the other part to that though. We are required to love our wives as Christ loved his Church. How did Christ love his Church? He died for it and that is exactly how you need to love your wife.

Side Note – I recently found out that this same logic was used to rationalize the owning of slaves in the 1800s by “good” Christians. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

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There is a scene in the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where the patriarch in the family believes that since he is the head of the family things should be his way. There is no way his daughter is going to marry a non-Greek agnostic. His wife slyly retorts – the head can not move without a neck! His wife managed to convince the patriarch otherwise about the approval of his daughter’s suitor. Before the movie was complete the non-Greek agnostic actually goes through the Church ceremonies.

How lucky for this woman getting married that they could begin to agree on such a significant religious issue well before the marriage had commenced. Others are not as fortunate. Some of us are confronted with situations where we think we know our spouse’s spiritual leanings, but over a period of time we learn the truth or our spouse’s faith begins to waiver as was the case with my wife.

I discussed this subject with a friend of mine having some marital problems of her own today. Apparently her husband doesn’t believe in praying and is a bit on the agnostic side. In effect – he either never believed or has become so lost that it as though he never did. I decided to refer my friend to some Biblical passages that I uncovered during my own search to save my marriage. 1 Corinthians (225 hits) 7:13-15 discusses the subject of divorce. For those who have never read the Bible – this is an excerpt from a passage from one of Jesus’ disciples, Paul, written to the Greeks of Corinth about many topics including marriage.

I believe the intent of these specific verses is that if you are Christian and your spouse is not, you should lead by example in your marriage and hopefully your spouse will eventually turn to God. It also indicates that if your spouse is not a believer and decides to leave, then as a Christian you should let them. It seems that this may be a bit of a Biblical loop-hole for Christians married to non-believers.

I doubt a loop-hole is what you need if you are reading this though. I imagine you really want to save your marriage, even if your spouse’s spiritual leanings or lack thereof, are different from your own. I imagine that somewhere deep down inside you really love your spouse and would prefer not to exercise some Biblical loop-hole, but instead save your marriage. There are plenty of people who have done it. Let me tell you about one.

A family member of mine told me about his mother in law who waited 30 years for her husband to stop being an abusive alcoholic. As the story was told to me, this guy was agnostic as well. At some point, this man had what alcoholics sometimes call “a moment of clarity”. He felt the presence of the Divine and never drank again. What dedication to the marriage that woman must have had to wait that long. If he had ever wanted to leave, and I imagine there were times that he did, then his wife would have been fully justified in releasing him if she stuck strictly to the letter of the law in what Paul wrote. Instead, she waited patiently for him to change. That kind of strength is rare in our 24X7 (275 hits) society. Most of us would just waltz on down to the court house and get a divorce.

The hope is that through the assistance of the Man above, your unwaivering faith, and unconditional love, that you may eventually help save your marriage and your spouse’s soul to boot! If you are a believer just remember, you are not alone in this. For those who don’t believe in Jesus- getting your spouse back may hurt as bad as crucifixion but it is still possible. It will take a different kind of love from you, one that you may not be used to.

Did you know that the Greeks actually had several words to describe the different kinds of love? Is the mysterious concept of creating a working marriage Greek to you? Fortunately for you – there is a book (18 hits) that talks all about the different kinds of love as they relate to marriage.

I’ve observed in my own search that many of the secular resources out there actually borrowed many of the concepts from the Bible. Nothing wrong with that I suppose, but I think it is ironic that there are timeless truths written in the ancient Hebrew and Greek Biblical texts. They have been translated and repackaged into something even the modern divorce “trigger happy” sophisticate can understand.

Even if you don’t believe in all this Bible stuff you can still learn some valuable lessons.

Check out the first three chapters of Hosea, and especially 1 Corinthians (225 hits). For those of you who can’t seem to say the right thing to your wife – check out James 3.

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Okay – I’m a fan of Star Trek. Yeah I said it. That’s not to say that I go around wearing Vulcan ears and attending “trekie” conferences, but I do enjoy the movies. In a weird way, they seem to much more in tune with some of our own internal struggles than do many of the other outer space genres (e.g., Star Wars) and the premise just seems much more plausible to me. I believe George Lucas has actually stated that the target audience for his Star Wars movies are kids so go figure.

My favorite Star Trek character has always been Spock. This guy struggles with his own humanity. In retrospect, maybe the reason I like this character is that I could relate to his struggle. Some of you guys may be very much in touch with your inner woman or whatever, but I certainly wasn’t and it lead me to a very dangerous place with our marriage.

Logic vs. Emotion

Women seem to possess some sort of instinctive knowledge of relationships that us poor fellows have to learn over time or through very traumatic experience like having divorce papers filed. I’m sure there are exceptions to this, but I think as general rule most of us guys struggle with this. The bad news is that though women may have these built in skills with emotions / relationships they may not always have the analytical skills to go with it. I guess guys do have a purpose after all. Now there are some very analytical women out there and I have certainly met many of them in the corporate world; however, most that I have met are more intuitive than logical until they reach a certain age. This is based on just my personal experiences so please don’t accuse me of being some kind of chauvinist or woman hater because I’m not.

The point to all of this is how do you reason with someone whose analytical skills aren’t as strong as your own, and furthermore how do you reason with someone who wants a divorce? It doesn’t work that way my friend. You have to show her by your own example, not talk her to death.

Many guys think that once their woman has decided to leave that they can “talk her out of it”. It didn’t work that way for me and I’ve heard plenty of other folks agree with me. There are some interesting points about logic that I noticed during the war to save my marriage.

• I thought I always “won” any kind of reason / logic based debate with my wife, but in reality I was winning the battle at the expense of the war. You know this has happened to you if you get a sarcastic variation of “of course honey, you are always right” in response to winning a debate. I later learned that this was one of my wife’s biggest issues with our marriage. She could never win! Don’t be like I was. Throw her a bone, man!
• I learned to respect her wishes even though it made me personally vulnerable. I agreed to some of her wishes that were illogical. I had to really trust in God on this part, because my brain was telling me that many things I was agreeing to would hurt me. There was one point where she requested that I sign the papers. I had planned on stalling her out on the divorce, but finally said “Yes Ma’am – if this is what you want show me where to sign.” I respected her wishes even though her wishes would hurt me. I did tell her that I did not want this, but was reluctantly agreeing to her wishes if that is what she wanted. In essence – being selfless. You can’t do this just to “Call her bluff”. Now let me caution you on this part, my wife was a Christian who was fast heading towards agnostic so I was able to trust in God on this one. If she started out as a non-believer I’m not so sure I would have done this.
• I realized that once she was in the “divorce is the only option” state of mind that I could no longer reason with her. I needed to call in backup and that’s what I did. A friend referred me to an awesome Christian marriage coach (216 hits). This coach had been doing this for 30 years and really understood that divorce was not the right path for my family. He also had enough reasoning tools and prior experiences under his belt to reason with my wife on “our” behalf.
• My “backup” asked my wife to remove all the emotion to her decisions and confirm that a divorce would actually be harder than her life at the moment. She agreed that it would be. He then turns to me and says “Shohn – she knows that divorce will be harder on her, but she’d rather have that than you.” Wow. Deep revelation for me.
• My “backup” used the following argument. He said – “A divorce will affect you (my wife) for the rest of your life. Give me 30 days to work with Shohn and see if I can turn him around. 30 days is a small amount of time compared to the rest of your lives. I can’t turn him around in a day – I need at least 30.” He then promised her that he could show us the best marriage we had ever had and could ever have if she would just let him work with me for 30 days. Powerful stuff. He then turned to me and said Shohn most of this will rest on your shoulders since she is the one who wants to leave. This person had no reason to help either of us so it made it twice as powerful in her eyes.

• Note: I later asked my wife why she agreed to give me 30 more days and she said it was because our marriage coach was so persistent. Haha!

Good stuff from a very wise man. Now that we’ve covered this I hope you have learned some lessons from this. You’ll need help, but it needs to be the right kind of help. Perhaps there are some pre-screening questions you can ask your counselor or marriage coach.

“Do you believe in divorce?” for starters.

Now since we are on the subject of Star Trek and Spock and all I thought I would help relate the feelings I had as I was going through this rough time.

There is a scene from Star Trek V where our beloved Captain Kirk and Spock are being lead into the very scary “Great Barrier” by Spock’s zealous brother, Cybock. The Great Barrier was a wall of star dust and stellar stuff that separated the center of our galaxy from the rest of the galaxy. There comes a point where everyone is freaking out – “Oh nooo.. not the Great Barrier” to which Cybok replies “It is an illusion – full speed ahead”. Turns out it was just a bunch of dust. This is kind of like the way I felt once I placed my trust in God with regard to my marriage. It felt illogical to place that much trust in someone I couldn’t see, but man did it work! Get out of the driver’s seat buddy – let Him drive.

Go get the movie if you haven’t ever seen it or if it has been awhile so you’ll feel what I’m talking about.

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My grandfather shared with me a simple truth about marriage that I’d like to share with you. My grand parents have been married for well over 50 years so the man must know at least a thing or two about the subject.

If you don’t go to your job or place of employment what happens? You’d get fired right? The same applies to your marriage. It is a job and if you don’t work at it you will get fired i.e., divorced.

Simple.

I think this also has another lesson that my grandfather may not have seen. At my job we like to say work smarter not harder. I believe this also applies to a marriage. You can give her chocolates every single day of your life, but if chocolates are meaningless to her what good are your efforts doing? Food for thought!

In addition, I have learned not to compare her to my grandmother. This applies to other “model” marriages from those bygone times. This is not the 1950s so don’t expect your family to be like the Beavers. I have noticed that as a general trend women’s tolerance for the “bohemian” male has gone down tremendously with each generation. The bohemian male is that guy who props down in front of the TV in his underwear and asks his wife for a beer and then refuses to help her out some. If you don’t believe me – just ask your mom about some of the stuff she put up with, and then ask your grand mother. You may be surprised.

Unfortunately, depending on which generation you grew up in – you will have to live up to a different standard of behavior from what you may have grown up with and the reality is that the ideal standard of behavior has become lost.

The standard is simple though – love her more than you love yourself. If you follow this principle to the tee, she has no choice but to follow, but it may take time. Love is patient.

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I think the original expression was “All Work and No Play make Jack a dull boy”. Are you a dull boy?

One of the things I was doing wrong was spending way too much time at work. I kept telling myself – this is for a greater purpose so I can put the kids through college one day, so we can retire, or whatever reasons I came up with to rationalize the long hours. I do have a very demanding job, but I realized that I wasn’t working very efficiently either. I have a white collar job so you’ll need to filter this appropriately if you work in the great outdoors.

I started to learn how to make myself more efficient by doing some of the following things:

• I made a todo list for the day and got something done to get a momentum going.
• The first 10 minutes of my work day set the pace for the rest of the day. I stopped checking email first and instead focused on my todo list.
• I stopped checking email every 5 seconds. Just shut it off for awhile and stay on task.
• I then started focusing on the objective and task instead of the grand vision. While vision at work is good, remember that an idea without execution is normally useless.
• I quit having useless conversations with co-workers. Some of these are good for networking and relationship building, but some are a waste of time. Know the difference.
• I learned that I work to live, not live to work.
• I identified and purchased software tools that could make me go faster. Some tools can be used to increase your productivity tremendously.

• For email – I used Neo Mail (66 hits). This tool is awesome. I process my emails in 1/10th of the time now. It only works with Microsoft Outlook.
• Since I have mild programming skill, I wrote a whole series of tools for project management, etc. in Microsoft Office using some of the scripting stuff built into Office.

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