Quick, She’s Gone, Let’s Get that Project Done!

I’ve been on a theme here about being romantic with your wife while she’s out of town. While distance can cause challenges for romance, that doesn’t mean that we should give up on romance when she’s away. For that matter, why not take advantage of the time to make a super homecoming for her. There’s no such thing as overwhelming her with too much romance, so stack up those romance points while you can.

Women identify with their home. I’ve talked about this before, specifically mentioning that when the home is a mess, she feels like she’s a mess. Conversely, when the home gets a face lift, she feels almost as good as if she’s received it (without the pain).

I’m a bit of a handyman, so I’ve always got some sort of project going on around the house. Sometimes, those projects get started one weekend and don’t get finished for months. It seems like there are always other things that come along, keeping projects from getting wrapped up. Anyway, you can be sure that those unfinished projects bug my wife, just like they bug yours.

If she’s out of town for a few days, it’s a great time to take advantage of the time and get a project done. Having her out of the house means that she’s not going to have to see the mess you make, doing the project. Not only that, but you won’t have her telling you how to do it (an added benefit for you).

When I was a teenager, my mom went out of town for some event over the weekend. My dad took advantage of the opportunity to redo their walk-in closet. He pulled everything out of it and redid the interior, adding shelves, half height clothes rods and shoe racks. When she came home, everything was back in the closet, all organized and in its proper spots.

That really made an impact on my mom. He hadn’t even talked to her about the project, but had decided on his own to do it. So, when she came home, it was a total surprise. She’d been complaining about not having enough room in the closet, and now she had enough.

The idea here is to time it so that the project is finished before she gets home. That way, she won’t be bothered by the mess; instead, she’ll be presented with the finished project. That will be almost like giving her a gift. The gift will have even more impact if the project you do is something that she’s wanted. 

Home Décor

You know, it may not be all that important to you, but how your home looks is really important to your wife. While you can be happy anywhere, with any type of furniture, with or without pictures on the walls, to her those things are important. The home is the place of the family; the most important people in your wife’s world. So that makes her home important to her as well.

Women like to decorate their homes. I can just imagine a couple of birds, building their nests. The guy would be making sure that the sticks they use are strong enough to support the weight of his family and are well attached to the branch, for security. On the other hand, she’d ignore all that and be concerned about how soft it was, putting a leaf here or a flower there. In fact, if you counted on her to build it all, it’d probably be beautiful, but missing the floor. He’d be sure to have the floor, but it would look like a garbage can.

Well we’re really not all that different. Women complain that they could leave a basket of clean laundry in the middle of the living room for a whole week, and as long as it wasn’t in the way of the television, their husbands would ignore it (except to step over it). We just don’t pay that much attention.

I’m not saying that you should become an interior decorator, but it sure wouldn’t hurt for you to open your eyes and see what your house looks like on the inside. You might even see something that you like (that is, something besides your wife).

It would also do wonders for your wife’s appreciation of you if you took a bit of an interest in how the home is decorated. No; I’m not talking about hanging a deer head over the fireplace. I’m talking about figuring out what she wants it to look like, and helping make it that way. Is she going for a modern look? Or, maybe she’s into antiques? How about retro, is that her look? You don’t know? Not surprising. You know, you could always ask.

Yes, believe it, or not, you can ask your wife what decorating style she’s going for. And while that may make you look like you don’t know anything about interior decorating; it’ll also make it look like you are interested in her and what she wants. That’s the important part.

Okay, now that you know what style she’s after, what can you do to help? Does some wall or some room need to be painted? Does she need a knick-knack shelf for the wall? Could you maybe find something decorative on e-Bay that would fit the style she’s going for?

Remember, when you take an interest in what she’s interested in, she sees it as you taking an interest in her. So, your taking an interest in how the house looks directly translates in her mind to an interest in the family, along with you valuing her opinions and desires. That’s important, because that’s dealing directly with who she is.

Facing Problems Together

Have you ever read Willard F. Harley’s book, “His Needs, Her Needs?” It’s a rather interesting book, showing the five most basic emotional needs for men and women. If you’ve never read it, it’s worth picking up. Doesn’t even take all that long to read.

Amongst the needs that Harley states for women is Financial Support, he describes it as “She needs enough money to live comfortably.” “Live comfortably,” now, there’s a tricky term. What may be comfortable to one definitely isn’t to another. The filthy rich people out there call themselves “comfortable.” So, if we go by their definition, you’d better be a millionaire. Yet on the other end of the scale, in Veggie Tales story of “Madame Blueberry” the French family living in a tent was more comfortable than the Madame. So, according to Big Ideas Productions, you need to get rid of your house, and pitch a tent in the park.

Actually, comfort really doesn’t have much to do with how much you have. It has a lot more to do with what you do with what you have. How you live isn’t just a result of having money, but of using what money you have in a way that makes you comfortable. C’mon now, let’s be honest, you really don’t need a 14 bedroom mansion to be comfortable, do you?

Okay, so if we don’t need that huge mansion, does that mean that we really need to move into the tent? No, I wouldn’t suggest that extreme either. Regardless of how happy those veggies were in the tent, I don’t think your wife is going to be any more comfortable there than my wife would be. No hot baths, no running water… just a little bit short on the creature comforts. While us guys can handle that pretty good, our wives really can’t.

So, where’s the balance in this equation? Well, it has to be somewhere in between. Let’s just shoot for middle class. Actually, any sort of middle class will do, just as long as it’s middle. Now, how does one live comfortably within those limits?

As I’ve already said, it’s not so much what you have as what you do with it. The first rule of comfort is that you can pay the bills, when they come in, without having to worry about them. If you haven’t seen it already, let me tell you, your wife can put you to shame worrying about the bills. She’s an Olympic champ at that and you’re a rank amateur. So, if you have trouble paying the bills, she’s not going to be comfortable, no matter what.

The next thing I’d have to say that is necessary is that you have some money set aside every month for fun. Yep, entertainment is an important budget item. The reason that it’s important is that we all need a chance to relax and unwind. Not having that opportunity builds stress; and that’s another place where your wife can make you look like an amateur.

Thirdly, I’d have to say that you need to have enough to eat. Here’s one place that many families blow it. They spend way too much on food, because they’re too lazy to cook. Eating out all the time, even in fast-food joints is expensive. If you’re taking your family out to eat all the time, you’re throwing money away.

No, I’m not saying that you can’t go out to eat; but what I am saying is to make it reasonable. Don’t get yourselves so busy that there’s no time to cook. Oh, and by the way, you can cook too. Don’t make your wife do it all the time. If you don’t know how, now is a good time to learn (warming up frozen prepared foods isn’t cooking).

Finally, if you’re going to be comfortable, the home you live in and the cars you drive need to look and work descent. That doesn’t mean that they need to be new; nor does it mean that they need to be perfect. What it means is that you need to fix whatever is broken. Many couples spend a huge percent of their income making payments on two cars. That’s the biggest money waster there is. By the time you finish paying for it, the car is worth about 20% of what you paid. In the meantime, you’ve paid as much per month for those cars as you paid for your house.

My wife and I drive older cars. Hers is a ’99 and mine is a ’96. However, they are both clean, run well, and in decent shape. Hers looks almost as good as it did when it rolled out of the showroom and mine would if I got it an Earl Sheib $199 paint job. The only reason I don’t is that it’s the car I drive in Mexico, and I don’t want to look like I’m driving a new car.

If your furniture is starting to get run-down looking, cover it up; make it look good again. If your kitchen is looking drab, paint it. If your carpet is wearing thin, put a rug over it. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to make your home look comfortable and in good repair. More than anything, you’ve got to spend a little bit of imagination, making things look better. That might cost a few bucks, but more than anything it will cost you a little bit of elbow grease. Cheap.

If you could do those four things, you could honestly say that you have allowed your wife to “live comfortably.” Why is that important? So that she’ll feel secure; that feeling of security will translate directly into a feeling of being loved.

Honey-Do

Well, now that the Superbowl is over, whatever are we going to do with all that extra time that we don’t need to spend in front of the television, keeping up with our favorite team? Yeah, I guess there are other sports we could watch; but, you know, there’s really more to life than keeping up with your favorite sports team.

I think it would do us good to step back for a moment and think about the price that our wives pay for us to be armchair quarterbacks. There are a lot of Sundays (and other days) when she has to take care of everything, from the kids to the paper boy, just because we’re addicted to watching a bunch of overgrown boys fight over a ball.

Now, I’m not saying that sports is bad, nor am I saying that watching it is bad; but, I will say this, many of us go to unhealthy extremes with it. When the game becomes more import than our kids, that’s bad. When it becomes more important than our wives, that’s really bad. When it becomes more important than God, we’re on the fast track to hell.

So, don’t give up watching, just put it in balance. Whether or not your favorite team wins this weekend really isn’t going to matter next year, let alone ten years from now. It’s a game, enjoy it, but don’t let it dominate your life or your home.

So, let’s go back to that original question, what are we going to do with that extra time? You know that there are lots of ways that we can choose to spend that time, now that we’re not keeping track of the NFL. We could go fishing, or take a nap, or maybe even take that time to do something for our wives. Wow, there’s a concept!

How many of us men dread the famous “Honey-Do List?” I know that I’ve dreaded it at times. When I look at it, it can seem to be overwhelming. Why, if I was to attempt to tackle that list some weekend, I’d never get any rest; and I’d never get through the list, either.

Why do women have to write those darn lists, anyway? How about this, they write them because they can’t do those things themselves. Your wife probably doesn’t know how to change the oil in the car, or fix the leaky faucet, or do something about the crack in the foundation. Even so, those things bother her; most of all, they bother her because she doesn’t know how serious they are.

When a woman’s home is in shambles, she feels like she is in shambles as well. You’ve got to remember, women identify much more with their homes than we do as guys. We tend to identify more with our jobs. Since she identifies with the home, when the home has problems, she feels like she does too.

Let me tell you a little secret about that honey-do list. She isn’t expecting for you to do it all in one weekend. She’s just expecting you to do it. If you pick on large or two small things to do every weekend, she’ll suddenly feel like you’re taking care of everything. It’s amazing how that works. One step in the right direction makes her feel like a million bucks.

Your wife needs a hero. She married you so that you could be that hero for her. When you take care of the things that need taking care of, she feels protected. But, when you ignore those things, she feels vulnerable. So, dealing with the honey-do list is actually an important part of helping her feel good about your marriage. Gosh, that almost sounds like being romantic.