by Red Green
It’s not unlike the system you used to find each other. You stand back and observe a fairly large sample of people and then, through a process of elimination, you whittle that group down to the chosen few. So for the first few weeks, avoid eye contact and conversation with all of the neighbours. When you get home, just rush right by them into your home, close the door and lock it. If you feel like you’re being rude, you can yell something about diarrhea over your shoulder as you go by. Once you’re inside, pull a chair up to the edge of the drawn curtains and just observe your neighbours for a few hours.
You’ll be amazed at what you can discover just by watching people interact with each other. Have your wife join you so you can discuss what you see. A stepladder makes an excellent vantage point, with one of you sitting on the top and the other one about halfway up.
Remember: the objective is to rule out any neighbours who could be a nuisance once you get to know them. For example, the guy who sits out in front of his building and stares at a tree. You probably don’t want him dropping over on a regular basis.
Sometimes you can tell by just looking at their property. The guy with the perfectly groomed house and manicured yard and spotlessly clean car is not the guy you want to hang around with. He clearly has radically different standards from you in terms of how much time you’re prepared to devote to keeping a house looking nice. In a matter of weeks he’ll be asking you why your place is such a dump.
Then there’s the quiet guy on the corner who wears camo and has a gun collection. Don’t make him your friend. Don’t make him your enemy, either.
But the most dangerous neighbours of all are the friendliest ones. The ones who come running over to welcome you to the neighbourhood and tell you everything about everyone and are so pleasant you want to nail them with the pie they just handed you. The clue here is that they’re being overly nice to you and they don’t even know you. That’s not a compliment, it’s a personality disorder. You want people to like you for being you, not just for being there.
This kind of person is probably lonely, and will infiltrate and then dominate your life. You’d have to be very aggressive to get rid of them. Better to just nip it in the bud.
The neighbours you want are the quiet, reserved couple who pretty much keep to themselves. An occasional wave. If they see you struggling with a load of groceries, they ask if you’d like a hand, rather than just pitching in and maybe seeing some medication you’d rather keep a secret. These are the kinds of neighbours you want. They’re there when you need them, but they’re not there when you don’t.
Try to get your wife to see that people have a lifetime limit of a hundred interactions. If your neighbour drops by once every twelve months, you can last a hundred years before you’ve had enough. If they drop over twice a week, a year from now you’ll be moving. And if that keeps happening, you will eventually become a guy in a camo suit with a gun collection.
STOP DOING THAT
Most single men live in a dream world where they imagine they will find a life partner who will represent an unqualified addition to their lives. They think they’ll be allowed to carry on with all of the activities and attitudes they had before they met her. The only difference is that now they’ll have a beautiful woman to share their home and their bed and their lives and their bed.
I suppose this may have occurred way back in history before women got the vote or learned how to operate a firearm, but in today’s society it is unreasonable for any man not to expect to have to make lifestyle changes to accommodate the wishes of his partner. And I suggest the best way is for you to anticipate those changes and make them on your own, rather than force her to make a federal case out of everything you say and do.
To get you started thinking along those lines, here is a list of activities you should voluntarily give up in the interest of being a responsible husband:
• going to strip clubs
• performing at strip clubs
• picking up female hitchhikers
• coaching the cheerleader team
• participating in, or even winning, pickled egg-eating contests
• exploring Antarctica
• wearing velour
• doing things with your mouth that your male friends find funny
• heli-skiing
• sleeping in your street clothes
• being on the street in your pyjamas
• always thinking about sex
• never thinking about sex
• spending more than one weekend a year with your buddies
• lying around your house
• lying around your yard
• lying around your cell
• forgetting your wife’s birthday
• remembering your old girlfriend’s birthday
• speaking before thinking
• speaking before sobering up
• speaking before your lawyer is present
• thinking you know everything
• thinking you know enough
• thinking you know anything
THE WIN-WIN OF A MAN CAVE
In the last few years there has been an official recognition of the “man cave.” This is an area of the house that has become the designated territory for the man of the house. It’s usually in the garage or the basement, but never both. Now, you might think there’s an inequality for the man to have his own space while the woman gets none, but the reality is that, over time in a marriage, every other space in the home is the woman’s. You can’t just leave your shoes on the stove or your underwear on the La-Z-Boy. And just try giving the lawn mower a ring job on the dining-room table.
So after years of bickering about what belongs where, the husband and wife will arrive at a truce. He can have his own space in some remote area of the home, provided that none of his projects or pastimes ever show up in any other area. He gets 5 per cent of the house that’s all his, while the other 95 per cent of the house is 85 per cent hers. And because men would rather have all of something than part of anything, we call that a win-win.
Personally, I highly recommend a man cave, especially in the garage where a guy’s buddies can come and go without ever setting foot in the restricted area (the house). I’m including a preliminary list of furnishings to help get you off on the right foot:
Beer fridge
Backup beer fridge
Tall-boy tool caddy
Workbench with vise (nutcracker)
Exhaust hose for gas motors
Exhaust fan for guests
Oil filter air freshener
86-inch flat-screen high-definition TV (gotta love those big garage doors)
Pirate satellite receiver with continuous code upgrading
Movie collection
Book collection
Repurposed reclining front seat from that late-model rental Lexus you totalled (heated, cooled, massage with remote)
Bottle-cap collection (old-school)
Bottle-cap collection (twist-offs)
Theatre-style popcorn maker
Coffee pot full of melted butter
Cheese fridge
Five-gallon deep fryer full of melted butter
Sausage fridge
1,000-foot roll of beef jerky
Telephone with pizza delivery number on speed dial
Defibrillator
Johnny-on-the-Spot
The spot—a.k.a., floor drain
A BRAVE NEW WORLD
You’re going to have to make a bunch of adjustments once you get married and/or start living together. You probably know each other well enough to have a sense of the big things in your lives, like what kind of homes and food and social events you enjoy. But it’s the mountain of little things that will come as the biggest shock. What you wear to bed when it’s not a date. How often you eat over the sink. The timetable of clothing that goes from being worn to lying on the floor, to being in the laundry hamper, to being washed, to being ironed, to being put away, to bei
ng worn again. That could be years.
But of all of these adjustments you each have to make, nothing is more staggering than what is about to happen to your bathroom. You’ve always kept it pretty simple: shaving stuff, soap, shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant. Those days are gone. You’re about to see more tubes, jars, bottles and spray cans than they have at Home Depot during bug season. The makeup containers alone will represent more shades than the paint department at Psychedelic Warehouse.
There’ll be lotions and potions for every situation under the sun. And some for under the moon. There’ll be secret formulas to make things look darker or lighter, thinner or fatter, bigger or smaller, younger or older—no, wait, nothing to make things look older; that’s what the mirror’s for.
There’ll be one drawer just for the applicators—short hairbrushes, long-bristle whisks, foam-rubber dabbers, cotton balls, Q-Tips, clay pencils and sandpaper.
You might want to think about beefing up the door on the bathroom cupboard, because you’re now going to have a selection of toxic and volatile chemicals in there—hydrogen peroxide, ammonium sulphate, calcium carbonate, etc. If you can find a used particle accelerator on eBay, you could probably make your own nuclear weapon.
Don’t even think about questioning what these chemicals do and why there are so many of them. Just trust that your wife is convinced that this science lab is an integral part of her ongoing happiness, and that is all you need to know.
And get ready for the appliances strewn all over the bathroom counters, hanging on the walls and draped over the doorknobs. Hair dryers and curlers and foot massagers and electrolysis guns and laser hair removers and steam facial misters. You may have to rewire the bathroom to have enough outlets. Maybe you should reroute the stove wiring so you can bring 220 volts in there. Just don’t put the outlet too close to the bathtub.
And before you get your shorts in a knot and are about to say something insensitive to your wife about what’s happened to your bathroom, just stop and think about your garage. Think about the six-foot-high mechanic’s tool chest overflowing with every kind of hand tool on the market. And all the power tools hanging on the walls. Not to mention the Shop-Vac, air compressor and hydraulic lift lying on the garage floor. And why do you need all that? To work on your car. Your baby. Well, your wife has all her tools to work on her body, which is her baby. The bathroom is now her garage. Just accept it and move on.
However, this does not mean that the garage is now your bathroom.
THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE
For centuries, women have accused men of always wanting to take the path of least resistance. Now, I know a lot of you like things to be black and white, absolute, yes or no, guilty or not guilty. Well, sorry, but I’m going to plead “guilty with an explanation.”
And here’s the explanation. Let’s begin by examining the premise of “path of least resistance.” How did that get a negative connotation? What is so offensive about taking the path of least resistance?
Let’s say I have an errand to run. To the beer store. And there are two ways I can go. I can glide south downhill for a mile and a half and approach the store from the east, which is the side the drive-thru is on, or I can go due north over a glacial mountain for 134 miles and then approach the store from the west. So I’m thinking I’ll take the downhill glide and be home in ten minutes.
Now, I know many of you are appalled. “Oh my word, he took the path of least resistance.” Yes. I also took the path of least stupidity. So let’s admit that the path of least resistance almost always makes the most sense.
Next, let’s look at the lives of most men. Men are generally not as intuitive or as sensitive as women, so they don’t usually anticipate the world’s reactions to their projects or ideas nearly as well as women do. Consequently, they get more unpleasant surprises, on average, than women get. Men generally behave in a way that women expect. Women generally behave in a way that completely baffles men.
What I’m saying here is that in their professional lives, as well as in their personal lives, men are constantly bombarded with surprisingly negative reactions to their ideas and proposals and, by inference, to themselves as people.
Let’s take a closer look at that phrase “negative reactions.” Is there perhaps a word that says the same thing? Yes, I believe there is. And I believe that word is resistance. If you get a negative reaction from someone, they are trying to thwart you. And thwarting, even in its mildest form, is resistance. So what I’m telling you is that men, because of their inherent lack of sensibility and through no fault of their own, experience resistance all the time in every aspect of their professional and personal lives.
And after a few years of that, they’re tired of the fight. They’re confused. They need a hug. Failing that, when they see the path of least resistance, it’s like an oasis to them. A respite from the rejection that permeates everything they try to do. Sure, they take the path of least resistance. What did you expect? Did you think they would take the path of most resistance? Even men aren’t that crazy.
ONE BED TOO MANY
I know there are married couples out there who, for one reason or another, have separate beds. Maybe one of them often dreams they’re a field-goal kicker in the NFL and in their sleep will attempt to put a sixty-yarder through their partner’s uprights. Maybe one of them has the habit of clenching the covers with their entire body and then rolling up like a hydraulic cylinder, leaving their partner to swing in the wind of the ceiling fan. Maybe they just don’t like anybody touching them when they’re asleep. Or awake.
Now, we all know it’s not proper to judge other people, but sometimes you have to. Personally, I don’t want to live in a world where my wife sleeps in another bed. She might give you a different story, but hey, this is my book.
To me, there is nowhere in the world more sacred or personal than my bed. As far as I’m concerned, there’s my bed, and then there’s the rest of the world. That’s how separate it is from any other location. And I’m pretty fussy about who I let into that bed. You’re not going to find any of my buddies or the mailman or even that cute little crossing guard in there. It’s a very exclusive club. My wife and I are the only members. That suits me fine.
I don’t understand why anybody wouldn’t want their wife in there with them. I’ve been in bed alone many times and nothing interesting has ever happened. I’d rather have my wife in there feeling sick than for me to be alone, feeling healthy. Part of the whole appeal of getting married in the first place is to have that place to go together at the end of every day.
My experience with life is that you never know when an opportunity is going to present itself. And when it does, you need to be in the right place at the right time. Being in a different bed is not the right place at any time. Women like spontaneity. Not some planned thing. When the two of you are in bed together, you can be spontaneous. You can’t do that in separate beds. What do you do if you’re suddenly feeling amorous—yell over to her? Or call her on her cellphone? Or wait until she gets up for a glass of water and when she comes back to her bed, you’re in it? How gauche.
Now, I’m not saying there’s a nightly romp going on in the shared bed. But there could be. And for most men the idea of “could be” is often more exciting than “is.” You don’t have to shout when you’re in the same bed; you can whisper. And if she can’t hear you, she can move closer. Then, when she does hear you, she’ll move farther away.
But the whole idea of marriage is to allow your partner into your world. That’s got to include your bed. And don’t tell me you’re too big to share a bed. Nobody’s too big. Sometimes beds are too small. Get yourself a king-size. Don’t worry about the cost; it’ll pay for itself in no time because you’ll be able to turn the furnace down while simultaneously turning the heat up.
MONEY, MONEY, MONEY
One of the reasons marriage is so tough is because it’s not just two people falling in love, it’s also a business merger. They are pledging t
o pool their assets as part of the deal.
This can be a problem. When companies merge, there’s a legal responsibility for each party to give full disclosure. Love waives that obligation. So it may not be until after you’re married that your wife, who has no debt and a few thousand dollars in the bank, finds out you have less than a hundred bucks and still owe fifteen grand on a car you totalled three years ago. I say you’re better off telling her about that long before the wedding. Chances are her dad is running a credit check on you anyway, so it’s better if she hears it from you.
They say that money problems can break up a marriage, but those problems always have one thing in common: one of the partners bought something without talking it over with the other. And men are the biggest culprits. That’s because we don’t like to talk things over. When we talk things over, the point we’re trying to make can sometimes sound incredibly stupid. That’s because it often is incredibly stupid. But here’s the problem with being a man: you know it’s stupid, but you want to do it anyway.
It’s actually worse than that. One of the main reasons you want to do it is because it’s stupid. So people shouldn’t say it’s stupid—that just encourages us. And I know buying stupid things, like a Russian helicopter or a llama farm, makes for great stories to tell your buddies, but you have one über-buddy at this point, and trust me, she will not find those stories amusing.
So it’s very important for the financial stability of a couple that only one of you is in charge of the money. It’s an easy call if you just look at the two resumés. The one with the better credit rating and positive net worth is a better choice than the one with the maxed-out credit cards and pending litigation. If your wife is the better choice, be man enough to admit it and let her run the finances. If she really loves you, she will occasionally let you do something stupid just so you don’t lose your self-esteem.