Better Spouses | Toward a Fantastic Marriage

TOWARD A FANTASTIC MARRIAGE: How and why Domestic Discipline works.

An essay by Vivian (part 1).

Do you remember how your husband treated you when you were first dating? Was he more thoughtful then? Did he look forward to being with you? Didn’t he try to please and impress you? If you’ve been married for any length of time you’ll probably find that the man you married is a bit (or a lot) differnent from the man you’re married to. Lets talk about the reasons for that difference.

When your husband first became interested in you, he was unsure of the extent to which you were interested in him. He wanted you and he wanted you to want him. He looked to signals that you were interested. He thought about every word you said, every facial expression and every subtle inflection of your voice. He paid attention! And when he was not with you he analyzed all these things looking for clues, clues to help him understand how to “win you over” and clues as to how he was faring in his pursuit of you. He thought about you!

You may not have noticed it at the time because you were too busy trying to win him over, looking for clues yourself. Odds are that the more difficult you made it for him to win you over the better he treated you and the harder he tried to please and impress you.

One of the diffences between men and women is their romantic/sexual attention span. A woman, generally, is focused on keeping the partner she has won. A man is wired differently. Once he has won his prize or acheived his goal he is prone to look toward the next conquest. So, as a woman begins to nurture the relationship, the man begins to neglect it. This is why women so often become bitter or dissollusioned in marriage. Her efforts at nurturing her marriage and pleasing her husband only serve to reinforce his sense that the chase is over. He becomes complacent. He expects more and gives less. Even if in his true heart he loves you and wants to spend the rest of his life with you, on another level he became bored with you the moment he realized he “had” you. This is one of the reasons men are more likely to be unfaithful in marriage. Even for those men who are not technically unfaithful, this dynamic causes a sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness that often leads to other undesirable behaviors such as gambling, pornography, drug and alcohol abuse, workaholism, get rich-quick schemes, an overindulgance in fantasies about other women and simple irritiability. All of those things deprive you, your marriage and your family of your husbands active involvement and attention.

Beauty and power

These are the things that pull his strings. A key component of every man’s sexuality is awe. When he sees a beautiful woman’s face or an attractive figure he is drawn almost against his will. The power that beauty has to take his attention is not lost on him. He is awestruck and overcome by that power. Have you ever noticed how men behave toward a beautiful woman? They fall all over themselves to please her in some way. Even when there is no way such behavior will result in a sexual experience men become the willing servants of beauty. Think about it. You’re husband’s in a traffic jam. He’s mad. Somebody tries to cut in ahead of him. He curses and revs his engine and inches up to be sure the other car doesn’t get an inch ahead of him. Another car comes into view and wants cut ahead of him. A pretty face peeks out and waves a delicate hand. What does your husband do? If he’s anything like mine, the same man that cursed and screamed at the car before suddenly becomes gracious. He smiles and nods and lets the lady pass. In this situation he may have his wife and kids in the car and be travelling through a place he will never be again. So there’s no chance he thinks he’ll ever see that woman again. Still, the instinct kicks in. There is power he cannot resist and he is amazed at his own helplessness. He is in awe of those who can elicit that helplessness. And the most important thing I’ve found is that a man is most helpful to a woman when she makes him feel helpless.

Power and beauty

The preceding observation is obvious to most women. We feel it far too often. We see our husbands looking at other women as if they were goddesses and looking at us as if we were mere functionaries, striving to be helpful to women they hardly know and ignoring the needs of the woman who dedicates herself to him and his family. Sometimes we become angry and resentful of our husbands, knowing that it is simply not right that he looks at other women with the passion that rightfully belongs to us. Sometimes we get down on ourselves, feeling unatractive and taken for granted and cheated out of his affection.

Although there are some exceptions (women who are so beautiful and remain so beautiful that they can inspire their husbands with that beauty even after years of marriage) for most women, even attractive ones, it is not possible after years of cohabitation and child bearing to become beautiful enough to inspire the kind of awe that will motivate her husband. So, what can a woman do?

She can understand that this. Not only is there power in beauty, there is beauty in power! The “take my breath away” kind of awe that a man feels when he sees a stunningly beautiful woman is similar to the feelings he had as a young adolescent toward women of power in his life — teachers, neighborhood moms, and strict women in general.

In order to make your husband and better man and a better spouse, you need to make him eager to win your approval and fearful of earning your dissapproval. You must exert the kind of power that grabs his attention, makes you beautiful to him and takes his breath away. You must make him adore you again!