For the Married Ladies

To follow up on Robb's For the Ladies post, I thought I'd add some thoughts from a married man's point of view. Like Robb, I'm not claiming to understand a thing about women, but I might be able to help a few married women figure out a few things about the men they married, since there is nothing more annoying than listening to a group of married women bitch about their husbands. So here we go:

• First and foremost, do not keep trying to change things about your husband - it's too late for that now. That's what the whole dating process was for; you had your chance to make any final adjustments to your future husband's attitudes, opinions, fashion sense, and personal hygiene, and if you didn't take advantage of it, then shame on you. Once you took those vows, you're bound to the "for better or worse" part. And this goes for the guys too - if you think that you'll be able to fix all those little things you don't find so endearing about your girlfriend/fiancee AFTER your wedding day, to quote Rob Halford, you've got another thing coming. This is why living together before you get married makes such good, practical sense - it might go against your values, or your religion, or your family's wishes, but think about it - would you buy a car without a test drive? Would you buy a house without a walkthrough?
  
  
• While we're on the subject of dating, let's talk about sex. Everyone's familiar with the tired cliche about how women stop wanting to have sex once they get married. But is it a cliche if it's true? The biggest complaint I hear from my married guy friends is that the passion in their marriage slowed down significantly or stopped not too long after the honeymoon. And it can't all be because every guy starts being a dick after he gets married. A few of us, maybe, but this is too widespread of a phenomenon to be a coincidence. So here's some more helpful advice, ladies: sex while you're dating is like running a marathon. You have to set a comfortable pace that you can keep up for the whole race. So where am I going with this metaphor? If you and your man were having sex 5 times a week before you got married, it can't drop to 5 times a year by your first anniversary! If it sounds like I'm being sexist and saying that it's the ladies job to make sure there's passion in the marriage, think about this: I have never - never ever never - heard a man complaining to the guys at work about the wife wanting to have sex all the time but he was too tired or not in the mood. So when it comes to sex, it's usually up to the woman as to whether or not it's going to happen. This leads to the next point...
  
  
• I know this is going to make me sound like a real pig, but here's another simple reason why it's important to make sure that your love life doesn't dry up after you get married: If you are not having sex with your husband on a regular basis HE WILL HAVE IT WITH SOMEBODY ELSE! See, I think that a lot of women can be perfectly happy in a marriage even if there isn't a lot of sex. Part of this I think is because women are just wired different than men, and part of it is because women can find satisfaction in other areas, such as giving birth and raising children. So while I'm not saying that it's every wife's duty to make sure they keep their husband satisfied, I am saying that you have to understand that if you and your husband aren't having sex on a regular basis, he probably feels that he is losing out on something, or worse, being forced to give up something that's very important to him. And that really only leaves him with two options: 1) continue feeling like he's losing something he cares about a great deal and blaming YOU for the fact that it's gone, or 2) try to find it somewhere else. Neither option bodes well for the long-term success of the marriage Here's my opinion - if after a year or two (or a kid or two), a woman finds that she isn't interested in her husband sexually, she wasn't really in love with him and never should have married him in the first place. The same goes for the guys, except as I've stated earlier, men losing interest in having sex with a wife who wants to have sex with them is seldom a problem.
  
  
• So here's my last insight for married women - never underestimate the power you have over us men. We may not always show it the way you want us to show it, but most of us really are madly in love with you. Men don't like giving up the idea of freedom or the idea of never being with another woman, so if we overcame that and decided we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with you, you must be very special to us. So let us know that you think we're special too. And if that means expressing it physically, even when you don't want to or you had a bad day, just do it - because we are basically simple creatures at heart, and if you make us feel loved there is nothing you can't get us to do. Not to be crude, but never underestimate the power of a blow job or a quality sheet-soaking session!

Again, I don't claim to know anything about women, and my knowledge of men is admittedly limited to my own thoughts on the matter, but hopefully something I've written will be helpful - or at least amusing - to somebody...