by Red Green
In fact, with few exceptions, neither of these approaches works. You may think you can change another adult human being, but to pull it off, you need to overpower twenty-five years of permissive upbringing and two million years of evolution. You may change them for an evening, or a couple of days, or a week, or maybe even a whole month, but eventually they will return to their default position.
It’s like gravity: it’s pulling you when you’re not even thinking about it. So when each of you realizes you’re not going to be able to change the other, and yet you still want to stay together, you need to make a different arrangement. And you do. And you don’t ever discuss it or even suggest it exists. It’s like cleavage—you’re aware of it but don’t dare say anything in case it disappears.
That arrangement is a silent truce. It’s a device that each of you uses to satisfy yourselves that you are being treated fairly in this relationship. If you see a hundred pairs of shoes in your wife’s closet, you get yourself a dirt bike. If she sees a couple of cases of beer in the back of your truck, she picks up a box of expensive chocolates. If she gets to watch Dancing with the Stars on Friday night, it means you get to watch WWE on Saturday night. If she knows you’ve been to a strip club, she doesn’t have a conniption. She goes out and gets her hair and nails done. And then has a conniption.
This is all nature’s way of helping couples get along. You were hoping to change the other person so that you could do what you wanted. That’s never going to happen, so instead you have a system where the other person does what they want and, to get even, you get to do what you want.
Revenge is much easier than compromise. But the key is that neither of you can ever reveal that you are aware of the arrangement. You have to remain oblivious. Shouldn’t be a problem.
THE GREAT DIVIDE
There is no activity that more clearly defines the difference between men and women than shopping. Women can shop with their friends for twelve hours straight, come home with nothing and call that a great day. The only thing men hate worse than going shopping and not buying anything is being dragged out shopping with a buddy who doesn’t buy anything.
That’s because of another basic difference between men and women. When a woman sees something she likes, she thinks, “I like that.” When a man sees something he likes, he thinks, “I’m getting that.”
Women are passive shoppers. They’re allowed to just enjoy the experience. Not men. They’re aggressive shoppers. Their job is to get stuff. If they see something they like and then don’t get it, that’s a blow to their masculinity. If you liked it, why didn’t you get it? Couldn’t you afford it? Did you chicken out? Weren’t you man enough to get it?
Every time a man goes shopping with his wife and comes home with nothing, his ego shrinks a bit. It’s no better when he goes alone. That’s one of the reasons a man will never go shopping until he’s ready to buy. If I were a sales clerk, I would focus on the men. They’re not fooling around. They’re there to establish their masculinity by buying something. To a salesman, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
And that goes way back. We’re supposed to be hunters. A man who goes shopping and comes home empty-handed is either bad at picking hunting grounds or a lousy shot. It’s embarrassing for men to shop and not buy. That’s what catalogues are for. Or the Internet. Where we can embarrass ourselves in the privacy of our own homes. Once we’re out in the store, we’re dealing with a salesperson who, no matter what excuse we give, is going to assume that if we don’t buy it’s because we’re not really men.
Most men would rather buy something they don’t want and don’t need than come home empty-handed. Women are just the opposite. They think not buying makes them seem more aloof and harder to get. Men aren’t hard to get and don’t even know how to fake it.
When women are looking to make a purchase, they put most of their time and energy into looking at all the options and getting the best possible deal, and then they do the buying. Men just buy the thing right away and then put all their time and energy into making it look like a good purchase.
Neither is wrong, they’re just different. They can’t work together, but they can work in tandem. It’s better if the woman does the research and the shopping but doesn’t bring the man into the mix until they’re ready to buy. The woman gets the value she’s looking for, the man gets the sense of accomplishment. Everybody wins.
THERE’S SOMETHING FUNNY GOING ON
A lot of the reason I wrote this book is to help open your eyes to the thoughts and actions that are hurting your chances of having a successful relationship with the woman in your life. We all know that if people were all the same, it would make them far less interesting. But there are differences in people that make cohabitation difficult. Some of these differences are obvious, and they’re easier to deal with.
One of you needs to change. And I’m pretty sure it’s you.
But other differences are more subtle. You may not even be aware of them, which makes them even more dangerous because if you don’t see them, you won’t see a reason to change them. One of the most destructive differences between men and women is what they find funny. Women like clever wit and sophisticated repartee. Men like slapstick and bathroom jokes. If men get a whiff of a bad odour, they will take a really deep breath that almost kills them and then laugh about how bad that smells.
Men love jokes in general and often use them as a substitute for conversation. Women prefer funny stories to jokes. They want to know about the characters in the story and the emotional turmoil they’re in. Men just want the punchline.
So if you’re going to get up at a party and tell your favourite joke about the priest, the nun and the unicorn, you’re better off to just tell it to the men, even if you have to tell it to them one at a time. If you insist on including the women, you need to rework the joke into the form of a story. You can try to keep all the funny stuff, but you need to add a lot of narrative and romance and you need to make it a personal story. But don’t pretend to be the nun.
As a general rule, don’t tell jokes to women unless you’re Ellen DeGeneres. In fact, trying to make a woman laugh at all is a dangerous game. That’s because when you try to make a woman laugh, you are revealing what you yourself find funny. That will usually hurt you. As a man, you think it’s hilarious that your buddy’s pig fell down the well. But when you try to tell your wife about it, she will be horrified. Partially because she will be so sympathetic to this poor, helpless animal having a horrible accident, but mainly because you’re laughing so hard you’ve got tears in your eyes and can barely get the story out.
I’m not advising you not to tell funny stories to women, but I am saying you need to look at the subject of the story and assess its potential for getting those laughs you so desperately need. Generally, stories where bad things happen to animals have a very high failure rate.
Similarly, when people get hurt, women don’t find that nearly as funny as you do. Seeing a nerdy guy going down the street reading a science book and walking right into a telephone pole may be hilarious to you, but a woman is more likely to run over and console him. And when she has him feeling better, she’ll return and make you feel worse.
I’m not sure why men find personal injury so funny. Maybe it’s our competitive nature. Somebody falling makes us feel better. Maybe we empathize—we hurt ourselves on a regular basis and it’s comforting to know we’re not the only ones. Maybe we just find any surprise funny, good or bad. Whatever the reason, nothing hurts your relationship more than laughing at something she doesn’t think is funny.
There is a solution, but it comes in two parts. Part one: spend a few hours a week with your buddies—at work, on a sports team, at the Lodge, whatever. This is your laugh time. You can tell your jokes and they can tell theirs. You can laugh at each other getting hurt and then toss a pig down a well. Get it all out of your system.
Part two: the rest of the time you will be with your wife. Do not tell any jokes or funny stories.
If somebody says something or does something or some innocent person or animal gets hurt in some ridiculous way, do not laugh. Instead, focus on your wife and do whatever she does. Be sympathetic, be offended—whatever she does, you do. If she laughs, then and only then can you laugh. Don’t ever laugh first or you’ll be playing with fire.
Throughout the history of successful marriages, you would have heard “I’m going out with my wife for a romantic dinner” or “I’m going out with my wife to shop for new furniture,” but you would never hear “I’m going out with my wife for a few laughs.”
BEING CONSISTENTLY INCONSISTENT
You’ve probably heard throughout your life that everybody is looking for a partner who is consistent. Someone they can rely on. Someone who’s the same person today as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow.
Well, okay, I guess it’s a nice theory and it works well in romantic novels. Unfortunately, very few of us live in romantic novels. You’re more likely to find us in washing machine manuals—we get soaked, we get agitated, we get spun out of control and at the end of the day, we tumble into a hamper.
And in that environment, being consistent is not the best way to go. It is impossible for a man who’s consistent to have both a wife and friends. If he’s always the same guy, if he talks and acts the same way when he’s with his wife as he does when he’s with his friends, that will not work. If he treats his wife like his friends, she’ll think he’s a jerk. If he treats his friends like his wife, they’ll think he’s a wuss. If he tries to compromise by finding the small overlap of personalities between his wife and his friends and then restricting all of his conversation and activities to fall within that tight framework, they will find him boring and he will be exhausted and have a headache all the time.
So don’t do it. The truth is nobody cares if you’re the same with your wife as you are with your friends. Your friends don’t care how you are with your wife. They know how they are with their wives and they’d rather just have kind of an unspoken agreement that it’s something nobody ever talks about.
Conversely, your wife may be concerned about how you are with your friends, so the secret there is to never have your wife and your friends in the same room. The friends won’t mind, and if your wife ever does meet them, she probably won’t mind never seeing them again.
The problem is, your friends and your wife want entirely different things from you. Your friends want you be a light, fun-loving guy who will go along with whatever the gang has decided to do and, when necessary, will give the exact same story to the cops, word for word. Your wife, on the other hand, wants you to be the perfect, caring, considerate husband, deferring to her and supporting her in all she does. Your friends don’t wanna know about that crap. If you don’t believe me, try telling your friends about some really nice thing you did for your wife and watch the reaction. I’m talking eye-rolling and gagging surrounding a barrage of unflattering comments loaded heavily with sarcasm and disbelief.
So don’t make the mistake of being consistent—being the same guy all the time. Instead, you need to be consistently inconsistent. If you’re Guy A with your wife, sure, you need to be Guy A every time you’re with your wife. But you need to be Guy B with your friends. And Guy C with your boss. And Guy D with the policeman who is currently going through the contents of your trunk.
Shakespeare said that all the world’s a stage. And it’s a stage we’re all going through. You’re in a play, but you never play yourself. Instead, you have all these characters you play, and every time they make an entrance, they need to be the same character they were three scenes ago. The trick is to never have two of your characters in any one scene. I suggest you limit the cast to yourself, your wife and a few friends. Don’t even think about having another woman in the wings. You’re not that good an actor.
ALL IN THE GAME
It’s perfectly natural that whenever you have two people spending a lot of time together, it creates a certain level of competition. Each person has a vague idea of where they stand in certain aspects of the relationship, but they need to have that confirmed. Which one is smarter? More fit? Harder working? More successful? Etc., etc. The problem is that a full-blown overt competition between a husband and wife on the daily issues of career, finance and family will lead to bad feelings.
So instead, you need to focus the natural competition on a fun parlour game. Maybe checkers or Trivial Pursuit or Monopoly. You should play these games with your wife to establish where the supremacy lies. You could even just play cards. If your wife is good at math, you could play cribbage. If your wife is bad at math, you could play cribbage and have a chance of winning. But I wouldn’t recommend it.
My advice is to play hard, but lose. And be a gracious loser. Compliment your wife on her expertise and ability. Make her cajole you into playing these games and then continue to lose. Let her feel the great pride that comes from being a winner. It will put a spring in her step. She’ll feel good about herself and be sympathetic to you. But most important, she will expect more from herself and less from you.
You can cheer her on as she climbs the corporate ladder. You can tell everyone that she makes way more money than you do. And make sure she’s there when you say it. Then give her a kiss. She’s a winner and you’re not. You’ve been forced to play a supporting role in the marriage. While she’s away at conventions or annual board meetings, you’re fishing with your buddies or going to football games. While she’s stressing over the pressures of mergers and acquisitions, you’re deep-frying a wild turkey in the back of your pickup truck.
And be sure to keep reminding her of how proud you are. Keep the praise coming or she could suddenly be jealous of you. And when she does finally get a minute of free time, whip out that cribbage board and let her trounce you again. A painful reminder of which one’s the champ and which one’s the chump. And pretend to be a little upset when you lose. Tell her she’s so lucky to be the smart one. Meanwhile, you’re so smart to be the lucky one.
YOU’RE AN IDIOT
At some point in your marriage, your wife is going to turn to you and exclaim, “You’re an idiot!”
Now, you may be sensitive enough to take this as a hurtful criticism, but if you’ll just pause for a minute and take the long view, this could be one of the best days of your life. But before we get to that, we need to examine the details surrounding the accusation.
Let’s start with the exact wording. Was it simply “You’re an idiot!” or were adjectives added, as in “You’re a complete idiot!” or “You’re a total idiot!” or the always popular “You’re a stupid idiot!” (With this last one, you have the option of pointing out the redundancy of the word stupid since there’s no such thing as a smart idiot, although I wouldn’t recommend doing so unless you enjoy eating at drive-thrus and sleeping in your car.)
While it’s true that adding adjectives emphasizes the message, it doesn’t necessarily make it more negative. However, if the letter F is heavily involved in said adjective, that’s not a good sign. For our purposes, let’s assume that the wording is more on the mild side and implies some opportunity for reconciliation.
Now we have to look at the tone. Let’s start with the pitch and amplitude. If it was below 50 decibels, it’s almost a compliment. If it’s over 110 decibels, you’ve got a problem. And what were the physical dynamics when the sentence was said? Were you both sitting? Was she standing? Was she standing on the kitchen table? Although you may feel hurt and rejected, this whole incident can work in your favour.
The first step is to not overreact. In fact, don’t react at all. Just take it all in and think about it. Go beyond the words and try to determine her inference. Did she say “You’re an idiot!” like it was a total surprise to her? Or did she say it as though she had suspected it all along?
This second situation is the one you want. If your idiocy was a surprise to her, you’re going to have to continue being an idiot until she lowers her expectations. When a wife thinks her husb
and is smart and competent, every time he does something dumb or incompetent she takes it as a personal insult. She feels he has the brains and ability to do things properly but didn’t because he doesn’t care enough about her. It may not be true, but if that’s how your wife feels about it, the truth is irrelevant. On the other hand, once she has you recalibrated as a useless idiot, anything you do that’s not half-bad will be greatly appreciated.
However, the moment your wife accepts that you’re an idiot is the moment you have to stop being one. That’s because there is a very narrow range of idiocy your wife will accept. If you overshoot the mark, your wife will wonder why she married you and it will negatively affect her opinion of herself, which will be your fault and will put the marriage in jeopardy. On the other hand, if you’re not idiotic enough, she will raise the bar. So to keep the perfect balance, you have the choice of either being a smart person who occasionally does idiotic things, or an idiot who occasionally does smart things. I recommend the latter.
As we get older, our memory starts to fade and with the second option, you would forget to do the smart things, which won’t hurt you, but if you choose the first option you will forget to do the stupid things, which will prevent you from being an idiot, which is idiotic.
So when your wife says “You’re an idiot!” look hurt and hide your gratitude while you silently give yourself an “attaboy.”
MAKING YOUR MOVE
Whenever you want to do something that you know your wife does not want you to do, you have to stop and think. In the early years of marriage, you will probably just go ahead and do it on the basis that you’ll have more luck begging for forgiveness than asking for permission. But, as I’ll explain in another section of this book, acquiring lasting forgiveness from your significant other is a fool’s game with life-changing consequences. So I recommend the “asking permission” route. In fact, I’d even suggest you try to get her to give her your blessing in the activity.