on men, part one

I am going to start a series of posts about the men in our lives.  I don't know everything about the topic, but I do know a little bit, and this little bit was hard earned, hence it is a gift to whomever cares to listen.  It will come in short posts that need to be individually digested.  I would love love love to get your guys opinion on the topic, since I am hoping that I will learn something out of this sharing of knowledge as well.

I am happily married to a wonderful man, MrH.  He is older than I am, and much wiser in a lot of respects, but when we got married, we each had to learn how to make the relationship work, because if my memory serves me right, the first year of marriage was a little rocky.  We even thought of divorcing during our honeymoon.  We were not very serious about it, but it reflects the fact that we used to have real conflicts, real hurts from this relationship.  Nowadays, after learning how to treat each other in a more nourishing manner shall we say, we just about never fight.  I can't remember the last fight we had, it must have been almost one year ago, around the time when we lost Adrian and we were both raw and tired.  And it was not a remarkable fight either, it had to do with our speed of recovery being different, and frankly I think with the enormous stress we were under.

I cannot speak for him, but I sometimes give my girlfriends tidbits of advice from what I have learned, and it crossed my mind that I should put some down in writing, in case I need to re-read them at a future date (when I regress under stress again, perhaps).  Here is one that I really need to remember:  men really need to make us, women, happy.  It is part of their DNA.   Just like we, women, need to make our men, and our mothers, and our kids happy (and everything else that moves as well), men are also hard wired to make their women happy.  They need to know that their mate is satisfied with the life that she is leading (that he is providing, in man-brain speech).  They need to know that their Christmas present made us happy.  They need to know that their hug made us feel special.  MrH needs to hear that I appreciate him putting the soup in the fridge and especially folding up my laundry when all I asked is for him to bring it upstairs, so that I can fold it.  This effort that they make on our behalf, it is something that they need us to recognize and appreciate, or else they wither and die like an unwatered plant.  It is NOT a weakness on our part to say thank you, I love that, I really appreciate that.  It does not mean that he will get lazy and complacent.  It does not mean that he will keep score and ask us to reciprocate in kind.  They just need to feel like they PROVIDED for us something, something that we value, that made our lives a little better.

And, just as some women are about to say "but he doesn't do anything right", we need to remember that he does his best.  And his best, like our best, is not perfect.  However, it needs to be acknowledged as the gift that it is, even if it was not what we hoped for, even if we could have done it better.  He could not have done it better.  He could not have guessed our mind.  He could not have measured/bought/sold/made X decision better.  He did his best to please his woman, because he really is hard wired to do it, and it comes naturally to him.

Any thoughts?