Lately, I have been seeing more and more of this lady, “Sugar” coming across my tumblr dashboard so I decided to check out her advice.  I’ll have to admit, she has a way with words, but this one struck me as typical of our culture right now:

http://therumpus.net/2011/06/dear-sugar-the-rumpus-advice-column-77-the-truth-that-lives-there/

A few of the letters reminded me of the “Woman Store” joke that floated around a few years ago:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/relationships/276172-joke-husband-store.html

I don’t know where to begin…but this type of thing wouldn’t have happened in the “golden age” where June was donned in high heel’s kissing Ward as he exited for work, and had the boys lunch packed by 7:15:).  No, this is a new time!  We are free now baby!  We still want to be romanced and loved and adored, but when we get sick of it, or it doesn’t meet at least 92.6% of our expectations, then it’s time to move on.  Sorry.

It is no shock that the universally lauded, “Eat, Pray, Love” is so loved by those with birthday’s fifteen years before mine.  

Hear the message?  Find you.  Be you.  You.  You.  You.  You complete you. 

The movie should be called, “Eat, Self-worship, Love”.  Pray?  Sure, when it serve’s your purpose…which brings us back to Sugar’s take on life.

Do vows made in your twenties matter or are they invalid because you didn’t have all of the life experience you have today?  

Is a child more important than a husband or wife?  

Is your spouse temporary, but children forever?

Marriage is work.  Yes.  Even if you have one of those mythical “the one” relationships I nauseate some of you with.  They take time.  Communication.  Forgiveness.  Your spouse will get busy at work.  Fatter.  Will change from moderate to Conservative or moderate to Liberal.  They will spend time with your kid’s in lieu of you at times.  His jokes will turn from funny to sarcastic and not funny.  Her requests will turn into “nagging”.  

Get over it!  Grow up!  I had seventeen years with an absolute stellar woman that I agreed with 85% of the time, but she wasn’t perfect.  And you know what, I damn sure wasn’t either.  I am in a marriage now with a second wife that doesn’t see eye to eye on EVERY SINGLE ISSUE.  Doesn’t do what my first wife did.  Doesn’t look at me like Donna Reed looks at Jimmy Stewart in, “It’s a wonderful life”.  Does that mean I toss her when things don’t work out or I decide one day, “I just think I need to find myself and when I do, then I’ll find someone that fits my new self”.

This grass is always greener b.s. that the selfish among us try to peddle to you is a big fat L-I-E.  Another relationship is still a “yard” you have to mow and weed eat?  

My wife now is a blast to go to concerts with, play golf with, and go to the gym when we our schedule’s allow.  My first wife did NONE of those things, but that didn’t make her less enjoyable to be married to when I look at all of the differently great things she brings to my life.

Let me break this to you.  In three, five, or fifteen years, people change, not their core, but they change.  The great marriages grow together and change…but change in a way that compliment’s the marriage.  Do you understand this?  The marriage.  The team.  Not the individual is what matters when you decide to marry someone.  

The lie is you.  The truth is we.  

If she wakes you with a kiss every morning and brings you coffee.  If he still looks at you without saying anything and you know he is saying, “I love you”.  If she respects you.  If he dote’s on you.  If he spends time with the kids because his dad didn’t.  If she cooks because her mom didn’t.  If he still holds your hand in bed.  If she still says, “It’ll be alright”, after your boss stabs you in the back.  If he still makes you laugh.  If she still understands you better than any three of your best friends.  If he shows up when he says he will.  If she calls you in the middle of the day and it annoy’s you because she cares about you…

Dump them.  You deserve better.  You deserve to find someone that will make your heart race faster than the jackass you married. Have sex with you four days per week after ten years of marriage and two kids, because your wife is now a prude.  Read every single thing you write on your blog and think you are a genius because “he is too stupid to understand”. You deserve someone that will go to the gym five times per week because she wants to always look attractive for you.

Can I send you some more late breaking news?  You may not be as great as you think you are.  I know I’m not.  I am self-centered.  Like my alone time.  Complain when I am not getting my way.  Think I am always right.  Love to take advice when it fits exactly what I already believe to be true….and guess what?  You probably have your own list if you are honest with yourself.  

If they still put forth effort after a few years of figuring out you aren’t Superman or Wonder Woman…and they still desire to make your life better…and still honor your requests…you are pretty lucky.  I am not saying keep the bar low and give points for showing up.  I am saying you need to keep the bar realistic and understand that people change over time…and so do you.  I want you to understand that a vow should mean something more than a 10k wedding or a nice honeymoon to Jamaica or crap, you buying dishes at Crate and Barrel together.  

…And do me a favor.  Instead of sleeping late on Sunday morning, get up, get ready, and go to one of the ‘fancier’ restaurants in town and seek out one of the ‘gray-haired’ fogey’s sitting at a table together (A happy ‘fogey’ mind you, not the one’s with their arms crossed staring at one another).  Offer to buy their lunch in trade for their stories about their lives together so far.  You’ll hear stories of triumph and failure.  Dreams lived and dreams not.  You’ll hear about the jobs they took and one’s they didn’t because he or she was more important than a higher paycheck or a cool title on a business card.  You may hear even hear how at one time, they considered leaving one another (because almost everyone has thought it, even the happiest), but they didn’t, and their lives are better for it.  

And lastly, know that I don’t make a dime from writing all of this.  And in the ‘tumblr world’, I lose hard-fought follower’s every time I try constantly not to offend so my ‘follower’ list stay’s sufficiently high…so that I feel like a popular human being and all is right in my world.  I say all of this because I have lived this stuff and continue to.  I don’t click twenty website’s a day to get some cutesy phrase that I can re-write, hoping you will re-blog so that I can celebrate my 7000th ‘follower’.   I have loved and lost and love again.  I want you to know the truth as I have learned it so far…that may be debatable…that may not fit for you…but has no agenda, except to help you recognize what decent marriage can look like, the true joy of an on-going relationship with the creator, and the greatness that being a Dad can be.