Red Green's Beginner's Guide to Women

by Red Green

  MRS: T.: On New Year’s Eve. And it takes a few martinis.

  MOOSE: It’s implied.

  7) If you were trapped on a desert island, who would you want to have there with you?

  MRS. T.: My manicurist, my hairdresser and David Hasselhoff.

  MOOSE: Nobody.

  8) Name your three greatest heroes.

  MRS. T.: Nelson Mandela, Walt Disney and Roseanne Barr.

  MOOSE: Colonel Sanders, Hugh Hefner and Spider-Man.

  9) If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money?

  MRS. T.: I’d give some to charity and spend the rest on lottery tickets.

  MOOSE: I’d buy a big house for my wife. And I’d live close by.

  10) Would you be willing to work with a counsellor to help you make your marriage happier?

  MRS. T.: I’d have to think about that.

  MOOSE: We don’t want to be happier.

  Conclusion: Their marriage is fine.

  THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PORNO

  I’ve never been a big fan of porno movies, but the adult video stores never seem to go out of business, so they must have customers. And I suppose there are some good things about them. Like you can miss the first twenty minutes or so and still pick up the storyline. And they always have a happy ending.

  The performers are generally in excellent physical condition and, although they’re not really celebrities, some of the men are certainly larger than life.

  But I think overall the negatives far outweigh the positives. These are not classic romances. Not nearly as much resemblance to An Affair to Remember as there is to rutting season at the zoo. And I think porno movies provide attitudes and images that are damaging to a normal, healthy relationship between a man and a woman. Here are some reasons for you to not watch them:

  • You will start thinking of it as “getting it on” rather than “making love.”

  • You will expect women to have voracious sexual appetites.

  • You will think your mere presence is an irresistible aphrodisiac.

  • You will spend most of every weekend shaving.

  • You will buy a tanning bed.

  • You will think it’s okay to have sex with your socks on.

  • You will feel like a failure if the session takes way less than an hour.

  • You will feel like a failure if the session takes way more than an hour.

  • You will increase your expectations while simultaneously reducing your chances.

  • You will think it’s normal to have a camera crew in your bedroom.

  • You will hurt yourself.

  THE COST OF FREE SPEECH

  Most of us grew up in a country where you have a lot of freedom. Yes, of course, there are laws to prevent you from doing stupid things like running down Main Street in your birthday suit yelling, “Who wants to blow out the candle?” But within reason you can pretty much say whatever you want without fear of imprisonment.

  However, as a married man you will soon learn that there are things worse than imprisonment. For example, sharing a home with a woman who finds you annoying. So over time you will figure out that you need to really think about not only what you’re going to say but how you’re going to say it.

  Let me help you speed up that process. There is no acceptable way to mention certain things. For example, your wife’s weight gain. You certainly can’t be blunt, and you might think it’s cute to encapsulate the thought inside a witty comment like “You’re a lot stronger than you used to be. I never thought you’d be able to lift over 200 pounds, and now you do it every time you stand up.” But it’s not. You can say it about someone else and she’ll laugh like crazy. You just can’t say it about her. In fact, you can’t say anything negative about her.

  She already knows she’s gained weight. She gets constant reminders from her clothes and full-length mirrors and those tiny airplane seats. You’re her last hope. She thinks you either haven’t noticed or don’t mind if she gets fat. When you take that away, you’re looking for trouble.

  Now, I know what you’re going to say: your wife should be a responsible, confident adult and have the inner strength to keep herself fit and happy and looking good. Do you honestly think a woman who was that balanced and capable would be attracted to you? Of course not.

  Your wife has weaknesses, just like the rest of us. Which includes you. So you have to take the high road here. You have to see yourself as a support system for your wife. Try to say things that focus on the positive. But don’t overdo it. And don’t include any of her physical attributes in your compliments, particularly if you like to use the word huge. And don’t go too far the other way, either, by giving her a compliment that’s so lame it’s almost an insult. Like, “You can do a lot of stuff with your left hand.” Or “I really like your right knee. It’s huge.”

  Sometimes you’ll see couples who’ve been married a long time and you’ll notice that the husband hardly ever talks. It’s not bad manners, it’s self-preservation. He’s decided, based on experience, that he’s better off being criticized for not talking than being ostracized for what he says. The best advice I can give you is to make sure your actions and words are completely in sync with how you truly feel.

  If you like your wife and want to stay with her, don’t give her a cheap shot, no matter how much it entertains your unhappily married friends. Nobody’s perfect, but if you can stay consistent, that may be close enough.

  THE GREATER GOOD

  As the veterinarian said to the pregnant moose, I don’t want this to come out the wrong way. However, there are times when telling the truth, or at least the whole truth so help you God, is not in anyone’s best interest. For example, when you’re coming home unexpectedly late—unexpectedly really late—and you didn’t call. You meant to call. You even thought of it, but the time was never right—one of your buddies had just started into a really long joke or the food was coming and you didn’t want the waitress at Hooters to know you’re married. Whatever the excuse, you know you were wrong not to call. And you also know that at this particular moment, the truth is not your friend.

  In fact, when you think about it, the truth is not even correct. Because the truth is she regards your not calling as a sign that you don’t care about her and that your relationship is not important to you. You know that’s not correct. You do care about her and your relationship is important, and you don’t want her to be angry with you, especially if you fall asleep before she does.

  So what you want to send is a message that reflects how you truly feel. The truth doesn’t do that. The truth reflects a stupid mistake you made, and if it is revealed, nobody wins. She ends up hurt and feeling unimportant. You end up in big trouble. So this is one of those times in life when you have to focus on the greater good. It’s better for both of you if she sees your lack of communication as an unavoidable incident brought on by extraordinary circumstances, rather than the thoughtless actions of a stupid, stupid man. It’s better for both of you if you lie.

  Step one: reset the clock on your cellphone to four in the afternoon. Then toss it forward out the car window and run over it. Stop and pick it up. With any luck the clock will still display the time of death.

  Now drive to a very busy street within walking distance of your house, abandon the car and walk towards your home—but don’t go home. Stop at a buddy’s house. If his wife is home, go to the next house. As soon as you find one with a man alone in it, ask if you can use the phone.

  Call your wife and tell her a story involving car accidents and traffic jams, all the while ignoring your buddy smirking and giving you the thumbs up. Keep the story short and don’t give a lot of details. Your verbiage and credibility are inversely proportional. And stay in the realm of the plausible. When she asks you what caused the accident, say you don’t know. Don’t start speculating about a jaywalking Sasquatch. When she asks why you didn’t call earlier, start crying and tell her about your cellphone and the UPS truck that ran over it.


  If she buys the story and says she’s been worried sick, apologize. Don’t say it wasn’t your fault before she does. If she says she kept dinner warm, thank her and admit that you’re starving, even though you’ve just eaten your weight in chicken wings. Then rush home, hug her and kiss her, chow down whatever she’s made and tell her how this whole chain of events has reminded you of how much you care about her. Always good to at least end with the truth.

  THE HOW AND THE WHY

  For just this brief moment, I am going to draw from my own personal experience. This is something that happened to me in my own marriage. If my wife or any of her friends are reading this book, which is incredibly unlikely, rest assured that absolutely nothing else in this book bears any resemblance to anything that has ever occurred between my wife and myself in the past or at any time in the future.

  So here’s the thing I noticed: whenever my wife would ask me a simple question like “Have you seen the car keys?” or “What’s the name of the neighbours’ dog?” or “Did you buy a lottery ticket?” I would give straightforward, specific, direct answers like “They’re on the hook by the back door.” Or “Sparky.” Or “Yes.” However, my wife never does that. No matter what I ask or when I ask or how many times I ask, I always get the same answer: “Why?”

  I find that very odd. For example: “Where’s the can of lawn mower gas?” Answer: “Why?” What do you mean, “Why?” Are you going to change or withhold your answer, based on what I want to know for? The word why is pretty small, but the implications are huge. When somebody asks you why, it can mean a lot. For example, it can mean:

  • You can’t be trusted.

  • It’s not good for you to know that.

  • I’ll decide what you should and shouldn’t do.

  • I’m going to try my best to prevent a disaster.

  • I’ve seen you do stupid things before.

  • The world relies on me to control you.

  • I will not visit you in prison.

  But actually, the word why is revealing of yet another challenge in the complex nature of male–female interaction. Men are naturally curious about how things work. When they see a lift bridge, they’ll watch it operate nine or ten times, ignoring the honking cars as they stare at different parts of it through each cycle until they figure out how each component plays a role in the overall task of raising and lowering the bridge. A woman, on the other hand, will be staring at her watch, wondering how much longer until she can drive over this stupid thing. She doesn’t care how it works. She understands why it works: so boats can go by, now get on with it. Men don’t care why it works, they just think it’s neat and want to know how it works in case they ever want to do something neat in their lives, should their wives let them.

  Men are theoretical; women are practical. And women are fine with that. You can theorize and pontificate until you’re blue in the face. The trouble starts when you put those theories into action. Like building a lock-and-dam system between the above-ground pool and the fish pond. Someone needs to prevent that from happening. Someone needs to nip it in the bud. When you ask, “Have you seen the cable and pulleys from the old clothesline?” someone needs to ask, “Why?” And someone does.

  THE SECRET PANEL

  One of the most daunting challenges a new husband faces is to be able to detect when something is wrong in the relationship. And once detected, he must then be able to deduce the events that led to the rift, and from there, come up with a strategy that brings the two of them back together. I brought a panel of married guys together and set up hypothetical situations to see how they do when facing these types of problems. Here are the results:

  Scenario One

  A husband and wife are out for dinner with friends. He asks her to tell the story about when she did some incredibly dumb thing at the supermarket and came home smelling like dill pickles. She says she’ll tell it later, but right now wants to hear everybody else’s news. He reminds her four more times through dinner, but she keeps postponing it. Finally, when the bill arrives, he can’t hold it any longer and tells the story himself, complete with lots of theatrics—he uses his full repertoire of exaggerated facial expressions and even gets out of his chair to do the splits with a foot on each pickle. It’s a stellar performance and everybody is in hysterics, with the exception of his wife. There is a cold silence all the way home in the car, and when his wife gets into bed, the furnace kicks on. What is wrong with his wife, how did it happen and what should he do now to make it right?

  MOOSE T.: I have no idea.

  STINKY P.: It sounds to me like this guy’s wife has no sense of humour. My wife’s like that too. Not sure how you fix that. I usually try telling more jokes until I get one she likes. Never have.

  BUSTER H.: She didn’t want to tell the story. Almost everyone has a fear of public speaking. Then, when he took the heat on her behalf by showing how effective public speaking can be when you tell a good story with poise and confidence, she was upset because it was her story but he got all the glory. The only way he can make it right now is the next time they’re in a similar situation, he needs to get everybody at the table to insist she tell the story. That’s what I’d do.

  JUNIOR S.: I think you guys have all missed the point here.

  She didn’t want anybody telling that story. It’s an embarrassing story and it makes her look like an idiot. And it’s even worse that her husband told it, because he’s supposed to be the guy who loves her the most and he’s the one making her look stupid. He needs to apologize and then he needs to do something way stupider than she’s ever done and then let her tell the story to everybody. It’s okay if your wife is stupid as long as you’re stupider.

  Scenario Two

  The guys asked him to join them for a beer after work. They’d never asked him before, so he was flattered. So there he is, having a good time plowing through nachos and draft beer, when his cellphone rings. He doesn’t answer it because that would be rude, but he sees it’s his wife calling and he suddenly remembers he was supposed to pick her up at the hairdresser’s so the two of them could shop for a new living room set. He downs his beer and takes off. He drives like a madman, but he’s still two hours late and his wife is ticked. She wants to know what happened and why he didn’t even answer when she called. He lies. He tells her the car broke down and the road was closed and the battery went dead on his cellphone. Suddenly, his wife’s cellphone rings. She answers. It’s the waitress from Hooters dialing the last number received on the cellphone he left there. His wife gives him a look that would curdle cheese and storms out of the house. What now?

  MOOSE T.: We don’t have a Hooters in our town.

  JUNIOR S.: I think this guy needs to put his foot down. He finally gets asked to go out for a beer and she gets her nose all out of joint. He’s gotta just stand up to her and say a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. That’s what he should do. Mind ya, I wouldn’t try it.

  BUSTER H.: I don’t think she’s upset about him forgetting to pick her up. It’s the lying she’s mad at. And I don’t blame her. If you’re gonna lie, you gotta do a lot better job than this guy did. She deserves a better lie than that one.

  STINKY P.: This goof made his big mistake a long time ago.

  He’s convinced his wife he’s a guy who remembers things like appointments or birthdays or anniversaries. That’s just an argument waiting to happen. You gotta let your wife know that you’ve got a mind like a sieve. You can’t remember anything. The last thing you say before going to work is “Be sure to call me and remind me about picking you up after work. Love ya.”

  Scenario Three

  They go to a street party to welcome a new neighbour. She’s an attractive blonde divorcée. They both introduce themselves and then move along to greet other couples, but the husband doubles back to offer the new neighbour a drink. He chats with her a few times through the evening and even dances with her, although there is no music. Later, when he’s walking home with his
wife, she innocently asks him what he thinks of the new neighbour. He says he didn’t really pay that much attention to her. Thus begins World War III. Where did he go wrong and how does he fix it?

  MOOSE T.: Do you have any pictures of the blonde?

  STINKY P.: This guy broke a cardinal rule. You should never meet attractive single women when your wife is there. You have to either meet them alone or not at all. The bankrupt ex-husbands I know would recommend not at all. And the biggest problem is that this guy’s wife now thinks he’s like that with every unattached woman he meets. The only way he can rebuild her trust is to quit his job and stay home for a year without ever opening the mail or talking on the phone.

  JUNIOR S.: This is a tough one, but I tell ya, apologizing is not the way to go. He’s gonna think he’s apologizing for his behavior, but he’s actually apologizing for his intentions. But his intentions aren’t going to change and it only hurts his case to draw attention to them. I recommend he goes with a full-court bluff. Tell her he’s shocked that his wife would prefer him to shun this new neighbour rather than welcome her. The Bible says you should love thy neighbour. Flirting with her was just the Christian thing to do. That’s what I’d try—it worked for Jimmy Swaggart.

  BUSTER H.: This is one of these unfortunate situations when lying won’t work. Instead, I recommend this guy tells his wife he has a friend that’s looking to hook up with a woman and he was just scouting this new neighbour out on that friend’s behalf. That may be a lie right now, but as soon as he finds a friend in that situation, it won’t be. Any statement that becomes true eventually is not a lie.

  THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

  If any man truly wants to have a close and lasting relationship with a woman, he must make a concerted effort to change his behaviour and attitude. That’s because men instinctively see things differently than women do, and women don’t like that. Sometimes with men it’s a maturity issue, a matter of putting aside childish things. In short, a man needs to stop saying and doing anything that his wife finds “inappropriate.”