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2008-11-20  COLUMNISTS | Communication in marriage not always easy
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November 17, 2008
I have in my spare time made a study of the marriage contract. I am no lawyer, but as participant in the agreement, I would like to know what my duties are as well as any beneficences that may be my due.
Of course, like any husband, I find it hard to study said document because as near as I can discover My Lady Wife has the only copy. Therefore I am always left with questions, but few answers.
For instance, my wife can laugh all evening at Jeff Foxworthy making jokes about marriage, children and his zany in-laws. I make the same joke and I get the hard freeze for three days. I know she has a sense of humor, so why doesn't she see the humor in my stories?
I mean, I laugh at the things she says all the time. She will be going on about some issue she's having at work and I'll just have to laugh or burst. She'll cock her head, give me that laser shot with those cold blue eyes and: BANG! Hard freeze again.
You would think the longer one is married, the easier it would be to stay out of the doghouse. Actually, it appears to work the other way around.
It all goes back to why women shouldn't be in the army. I was in the army and the first thing my drill sergeant told me in boot camp was this: Never volunteer. If ordered to take that hill, go you must. But never, ever volunteer.
Of course the idea there is, the officers always have a really dirty job they want somebody to do, and the easy way to get someone to do it is to ask for volunteers. What the D.I. was saying was, never let the officers off the hook.
My wife was never in the army. But she would have made a great officer. She can size up the situation and determine what should be done faster and better Ulysses S. Grant ever did on a battlefield.
Now here is why women don't belong in the army.
She says: The dog needs to go out.
I say: unmf. (Unmf is a pretty good response. It indicates a degree of listening, but it does commit to the taking of any side or the acquiescence to any plan.)
She says: I said the dog needs to out.
I say: Unh hunh. (That glibly assures her I have received message loud and clear. But it does not obligate me to do anything.)
She says: The dog hasn't been out since this afternoon.
I say: She hasn't? (Ignorance of the facts is nine tenths of the law in husbandly jurisprudence.)
She says: No, she hasn't.
This is the standard wifely reply. It maintains the status quo of the situation, but keeps the pressure on for a response.
Silence on my part.
This is tricky, because a non-responsive response ups the ante, and I have surrendered the moral high ground. This could be construed as ignoring her, which of course it is. But it could be merely the short attention span of most husbands that lasts precisely from the snap of the ball until the referee blows the play dead.
She says: Oh, all right. I'll do it myself.
Game over. I say: Didn't you hear me dear, I said I'm taking her out right now.
This entire exchange could have been avoided if my wife had just asked me to take out the dog. So why don't I just take the dog out at the first suggestion? Because I like to hear the words.
This is why women should never be in the army. They hate to give orders. They merely want to be obeyed. They prefer to suggest and have the attentive husband, ever attuned to her mood or emotional state, understand and act immediately to satisfy her wish.
Hey, men have fantasies, too. That doesn't mean I expect to get a 78-inch flat screen TV and all my autumn Saturdays off to indulge the NCAA.
So how do we communicate, then? Well, to start with, we both know who is going to walk the dog.
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