Red Green's Beginner's Guide to Women

by Red Green

  HOW TO GET TENURE

  When university profs have held their teaching jobs long enough that people start to forget they’re there, they are awarded a thing called tenure. It basically means they can’t be fired. In a country that has no royalty, that’s as close to being crowned king as you’re going to get. This is a great thing. It almost makes up for being a university prof.

  As a husband, this is a position you want to strive for. You want to have tenure. You want to know that whatever you do or say, you will not be forced to live in your car. It’s a lofty goal, perhaps unattainable, but it’s what dreams are made of.

  A friend of mine theorized that every time a man does something pleasing for his significant other, like bringing her flowers or doing the laundry or grooming the cat, he is subconsciously awarded one point in her mind. And every time he does something wrong, like getting home late or commenting negatively on her hairdo or doing a face plant into the rum punch, he is penalized ten thousand points.

  So getting tenure is a rough go. But it’s worth it. If you think you’ve got what it takes, here’s my advice for how you, too (or perhaps I should just say “you”) can gain tenure:

  Be nice. Don’t look for negative things to say. When your wife is upset about her weight gain, don’t somehow try to connect that to your hernia. Instead, comment on her beautiful eyes.

  Be thoughtful. Just for a moment, imagine yourself being a vibrant, attractive, exciting woman who, through circumstances beyond her control, ended up married to you. How would you feel about that? That should make you feel appreciative. Share that feeling.

  Be consistent. Consider yourself the anchor of the relationship. Not in the sense of holding her back, but in the sense of being grounded and reliable. You need to react to the same stimulus the same way—day in, day out. You know what happens to you when you eat onions? Well, it’s kind of like that. Women are reassured by a man who holds his ground.

  Be there. This is the big one. Men’s normal reaction to problems is to either punch somebody or to get the hell outta there. Neither of those will work. You gotta just hang in. Good news is coming someday, but you gotta be there to get it.

  Be her best option. From my limited experience, the best way to get tenure is to convince your wife that you are her best option. And the only way to do that is to let her know that she is your best option. I know it’s scary, but the best way to get tenure from your wife is to give it to her first.

  I’VE GOT A SECRET

  They say you should never have secrets from your wife. Well, I’m here to tell you they are dead wrong. If you’re in it for the long haul, it’s crucial that you have secret information that you’ve kept from your wife. The more secrets, the better. Not horrible, dark secrets like you once killed a guy with an egg whisk. But rather impressive surprises, like that Nobel Prize you had never mentioned. And I’ll tell you why: because that’s my style.

  You’ve heard the expression “First impressions are lasting.” That’s because the only time you really look closely at a person is when you first meet them. At that first encounter, they have all of the attention of all of your senses. You’re trying to evaluate their abilities, their IQ, their appearance and intentions.

  With each successive meeting, your degree of scrutiny decreases. Eventually, you get to the point where you don’t notice anything about them. You’ve seen it all and heard it all; you’ve moved on to other projects. A couple who’ve been married more than twenty years can barely pick each other out of a lineup. That’s because humans are weird. We think we want things to stay the same, and when they do, we ignore them. It’s as if the key to happiness is to have absolutely nothing in your life that you pay any attention to.

  And yet, almost nothing stays the same. So we’re constantly on guard, monitoring the changes and trying to figure out how bad things are going to get now.

  Over time, you are only interested in the things that change, even though you think you want them to stay the same. This is one of the great mysteries of life, as is non-alcoholic beer. So if you’re holding a pen or a crayon or even a grasshopper’s butt, you might want to underline this next statement: to keep a relationship alive, you need to continue to find the other person interesting.

  That’s it. Being attractive is nice. Being athletic is good. Being smart is swell. Being kind is essential. But being interesting is the key. And to be interesting you have to say and do things that your partner finds pleasantly surprising.

  Sure, you can come home with flowers and candy, but even that becomes a routine after a while. To be truly interesting you need to come up with something new. A new opinion or a new career or a new haircut. You gotta give her something. And when you’re stuck, when you’ve done everything you could think of, when you’re at the brink of not being interesting and sliding into the “boring” category where you will sit with almost everybody else she knows, that’s when you need to pull out a great secret. Like the time you jumped out of an airplane or shared a cab with Engelbert Humperdinck.

  Don’t tell her that stuff in the early years. She’s got enough to absorb. Wait until you’ve lulled her into thinking she knows everything about you. And then nail her with a secret. You’ll be in for a very romantic night. But keep that a secret too.

  SOCIAL TRAPS

  You’ve been married for a while now and things seem to be panning out pretty well. Don’t get complacent. Being a married man is a lifelong educational process, and by the time you get your diploma, you’ll need bifocals to read it.

  You may think you have figured out how to interact socially with your wife, and maybe you have, for certain situations. But what you need to realize is that almost every different social encounter requires a different approach to that interaction. These are called social traps, and although they are not traps that are purposely set by your wife, they have the same result—i.e., you get caught and punished.

  All of these events can be put into one of four categories, based on the circumstances that led you and your wife to be in the same place at the same time and the relationship of the other people at the event to you and/or your wife. The categories look like this:

  Planned Event with Friends and/or Relatives

  These are the easiest. Everybody there already knows both of you well enough to have no expectation of you treating your wife better or worse than you ever do. It might be a birthday party or a tailgate party or just the gang getting together to celebrate a case being dismissed. You’re off the hook with these folks because the fact they invited you shows they acknowledge you as someone they like, or at least tolerate. You have to really misbehave to get your wife mad at you in this environment. But it’s not impossible, which you have proven a few times.

  Unplanned Event with Friends and/or Relatives

  This is a social encounter that just happens when you accidentally bump into people you know. It could be at the park or the county fair or the mall or the holding area for impounded cars.

  This is still one of the easier environments for you to interact appropriately with your wife without her being overly sensitive to the scrutiny of others. However, because it’s unplanned, there will be other people there. People you and your wife don’t know. People who may not find your chicken dance as entertaining as you do. And your wife will be much more aware of their discomfort in watching you, especially that part where you pretend to lay a very large, untapered egg.

  And because she is your wife, she will feel that the criticism is also directed at her, which she will feel is unfair and which she will deal with by adding criticism of her own and sending it all your way.

  Planned Event with Strangers

  This one’s trouble. In most cases it’s a business get-together, which is bad enough, but when it’s your wife’s business get-together, it’s deadly. Suddenly you’re thrust into a group of your wife’s co-workers and customers, which is the last place on earth you want to be, and your wife is on high alert that you are going to somehow
blow her professional image, which she spent the last four years establishing. And yet she needs you to be there because everybody else is dragging their spouse along and she doesn’t want to be the odd one out.

  This is not a social event; this is a trap. There is almost no chance of you saying or doing something that your wife’s boss or customers will find interesting or amusing. You must, at all cost, avoid talking to these people. And yet, you have to be supportive of your wife. The best approach is to find out if any other woman from the company is at the affair. Ask your wife to introduce you to her, because that way you’ll be able to meet her husband. He’s your way out. You go to a quiet corner and talk to him for the whole night about cars or motorcycles or even hybrids if you have to. If he only wants to talk about things you find boring, just suck it up and keep the conversation going. You’re way better off to be bored with him than to be embarrassing in front of the people who matter.

  From a distance, keep an eye on your wife, and every half hour, go over to her, get introduced to whoever she’s talking to, be polite, don’t make a joke out of any of their facial features, and then offer to get your wife another glass of wine or a canapé. If you’re not comfortable saying the word canapé, just say “one of those little cheese things that smell kind of funny.” The trick is to be attentive, but not too often and never for very long.

  Unplanned Event with Strangers

  This is the big one. The ultimate test. You’re walking down the street and you see your wife having lunch with other women at a sidewalk café. My first warning is: never assume she didn’t see you. Wives can see things they weren’t even there for. Just accept that you have no chance of getting away. Instead, take a moment and evaluate who she’s with. If one of the women is recently divorced, make sure you kiss your wife hello. Otherwise she’ll get an earful about how your marriage is in trouble.

  At least one of the ladies will invite you to join them. Do not, under any circumstances, accept. They don’t really want you to be there, and you feel the same way. If you sit down with these women, that will be the end of all interesting conversation. They’re just being polite. You must also be polite by returning the favour and declining the offer. Make up an excuse about a prior commitment you have. But don’t use the term “penis enlargement.” They don’t want to hear the word penis and you don’t want to say the word enlargement.

  Be brief. Treat the encounter like a proctology examination—get in and get out as quickly as possible. Be gracious with the ladies and say goodbye to your wife in a way that implies you’re looking forward to seeing her later.

  Social encounters are much tougher on a marriage than the two of you sitting at home in your underwear watching Wheel of Fortune. You’ve got to take all of these events very seriously. If you’re casual, you will be a casualty.

  THE DISENCHANTED FOREST

  Most guys are in a pretty good mood most of the time. They don’t fixate on their problems. They don’t whine. They’re just easy-going, happy guys. It makes them popular and great salesmen.

  Unfortunately, it doesn’t make them great husbands. That’s because most happy guys aren’t happy because everything’s great; they’re happy because they’re oblivious to the things that aren’t great. Their wives don’t usually share that ability to live in Fantasyland, and that creates a rift between them, because when you have a problem, there’s nothing more annoying than someone in a good mood.

  So as a married man, the first thing you have to watch for are the signs that trouble is brewing. Look for extremes in her behaviour; maybe she is way too loud, or way too quiet. Look for her reactions to your conversation. Does she not even crack a smile at your best joke? Does she laugh long and hard at something you said that wasn’t even funny? If so, she’s not laughing with you, she’s laughing in spite of you.

  The secret to a happy life is to be married to a woman who’s always in a slightly better mood than you are. You really need to establish that while you’re dating because it’s hard to change later. I know a few men who tried for most of their lives to get their wives into better moods than theirs, but eventually gave up and became more depressed and miserable than their wives. Mission accomplished.

  LAUNDRY THE MANLY WAY

  The quickest way to strengthen your relationship is to let your wife know that you appreciate everything she does and that you see the marriage as a partnership where you share responsibilities as often as possible. And that has to include housework.

  It’s not her job to keep the house clean and tidy while you languish in a universe where salt and fat are the planets and your recliner is the sun. You’ve got to pull your own weight, and that could be significant.

  Now, it’s probably safer for everybody if you stay out of the kitchen, but taking over the laundry duties, when done the right way, will be a boon to her and fun for you. But I know that sounds wussy to you, so you need to make a few changes. The first problem is the look of the washer and dryer themselves.

  They’re usually glossy white, with a splash of chrome. They’re designer chic, and designer chic is closer to being a woman than you ever want to get. So for starters, paint the machines flat black and cover the chrome with camo duct tape. Now they’re looking tough. Add a few racing stickers—Pennzoil or STP or Nitro. You can even throw on a couple of racing stripes if you tend to do small, quick loads. Cover the round dryer door with an imitation mag wheel in polished aluminum and add a couple of Indy-style quick-release hood pins for the top-loading washer door.

  Now the machines are starting to look edgy. Throw on some ultraviolet ground-effects lights around the bottom edges and your laundry room is going to look like a biker bar. But as every motor-head knows, looks are not enough. You’ve got to deliver under the hood. So open up the washer and remove the agitator. Replace it with a Volvo Penta Duoprop marine outdrive circa 1982.

  These two racing props delivering opposite rotation are going to beat the crap out of any piece of clothing you throw at them. If you’re washing delicates, set the motor speed to “Trolling.”

  But anybody who does laundry will tell you the real thief of time is the dryer. Not anymore. Pull that baby apart and you’ll find a small electric motor running a long, circular belt that goes all the way around the dryer drum, giving you one level of torque and one speed. That’s not good enough.

  Sure, you need a lot of torque to get it started, but once she’s rolling, wouldn’t it be great to have another gear to go to? Yes. Yes it would. So throw away the cheesy AC motor and replace it with an AC-to-DC transformer hooked into a golf-cart motor. Now you attach the motor to the driveshaft of a transmission from a mid-’60s British car—Austin, Vauxhall, Morris Minor or similar. Anything that has a four-speed box plus overdrive, connected through a hydraulic clutch.

  This will allow you to switch gears as the dryer revs up, and eventually max out in overdrive at around 100,000 rpm.

  The concept is that spinning the water out of the clothes is faster and more energy-efficient than trying to bake it out. Just be sure to attach the mounting bolts of the dryer directly to the foundation of your home. And do not open the dryer door for at least an hour and a half after the spin cycle.

  PRIORITY QUIZ

  One of the driving forces behind people’s behaviour is the emotional component. For example, they may understand the importance of eating good food and exercising regularly, but if deep down inside they really don’t care much about those things, they will not continue to do them. This pattern is exaggerated in a marital relationship because there are only two people involved and because it plays out over such a long period of time.

  Finding common ground in what a couple cares about is crucial to them having a successful marriage. Moose T. and his wife, Mrs. T., have been having problems, so we got them to take this Priority Quiz in two separate rooms without being able to consult each other. Here are the results.

  1) List, in order, the three most important things in your life.

  MR
S. T.: My nails, my cat, Nancy Grace.

  MOOSE: My car, my toolbox, my other car.

  2) Can you describe the last romantic evening you had together?

  MRS. T.: It was last summer. We sat out on the porch and just talked about things. We stayed up past midnight. Moose had eaten a bad taco and was afraid to lie down.

  MOOSE: Nope.

  3) To celebrate your anniversary, would you like to go to a nice restaurant?

  MRS. T.: Sure.

  MOOSE: When is it?

  4) What was it about your spouse that attracted you in the first place?

  MRS. T.: The other guys were worse than him. And he was kind of big and fat, so I knew he could probably get food. Getting him to share it was another hurdle.

  MOOSE: Getting married was just something you did back in the day. If you proposed to a girl and she said yes, you married her. Or if you dated a girl and she said yes, you proposed to her.

  5) Looking back over your marriage, do you have any regrets?

  MRS. T: Yes.

  MOOSE: I don’t operate that way. Oh sure, maybe I could have shacked up with some hot-looking babe, but that’s all water under the bridge. You learn to move on.

  6) How often do you tell your spouse that you love them?