Men... Misunderstanding Women for 100,000 years.

I'm no expert on the female experience. I'm no Don Juan or Casanova. I'm just a big dumb hairy male. I'm so male that my wife sometimes looks at me with that, "Did you just ACTUALLY say/do/think that?!?!" expression. Now, I know she loves me. I know that because she's still here. My bride isn't the type to suffer fools and that one thing convinces me that she is the one human being on this globe that could possibly ever live with me and take care of my spawn.  And she does an incredible job of doing that. She doesn't think so even though I tell her at least 10 a day.

This is one of the "chicks getting fuzzy" things that keep me puzzled and I know I'm not alone here. Why do women constantly ask the opinion of the nearest male and then totally ignore it? Seriously, most guys don't really care what other people think of us at least the guys I hang out with anyway). We spill a glass of milk and it's just spilled milk. A woman (particularly a married one) spills a glass of milk and suddenly she sees herself as a lousy human being. The miraculous ability to transform a mole-hill event into a Mount Everest sized Catastrophe is the one God-like power women seem to hold.

Caveat: Realize that I write this even though I fully expect the inevitable ass-beating that my wife is sure to hand me. I ask her to proof-read everything even if it s only to see the aforementioned look on her face. Hey, I married an English teacher (I think I have a fetish for teachers) and I fully intend to take advantage of her grammar-naziesque ways. The reason I do not fret is because I know that when she smacks me in the shoulder I know I've won. Quote: "I don't have to be right, just more right than you".

Examples of how right I am:

I think my wife is a beautiful woman. She doesn't. She thinks she's gained too much weight. She thinks I couldn't possibly find her attractive. I think she's full of shit and should take my opinion since obviously I'm right. Besides, I've tried explaining to her, "I did that to you".

Right after I said that it dawned on me. Not that I hadn't considered it before but I just hadn't thought of it in context. Most of the physical changes in a woman occur due to childbirth, child rearing and dealing with the stresses that occur because of their responsibilities. Particularly my wife. She was a worry-wort anyway but after the events of the last 9 years it has gotten detrimental to her health and I am at wits end to fix this.

Before we moved from Texas, my wife was diagnosed with Ulcerative Collitis, it's a malady of the lower gastro-intestinal tract where your immune system starts to attack your lower GI tract and cause ulcerations (at least that's what happened to my wife). She was prescribed all kinds of medications and as been under the threat of developing crones disease. At the time she was in her late twenties. Shortly after moving up here, my at the time two-year-old son was starting to regress in his development. He wasn't talking and he was detached. After nearly a year he was eventually diagnosed with autism, along with a huge percentage of children his age. He was part of the huge and sudden upsurge in the disorder in the late nineties / early 2000 and it hasn't shown signs of slowing down.

With all the strain of worrying for our son she neglected her own health and had a huge relapse with her UC. She started losing a lot of weight and I was seriously worried I was going to lose her. Then, if that wasn't enough, she had an episode that damn near tore me in half.

One night in 2000 we had an evening together and watched a play put on by a local theater group. On the way back home she seemed a little tired and just went straight to bed without saying much. We both went to bed as I had to go to a training session early the next morning. While I was up getting ready my wife woke up. I walked past her and she asked what I was doing up. I had told her a few days before but reminded her of the training. She asked me what time it was and I walked away. A few seconds later I walked back by her. She asked me the exact same questions and didn't appear to be herself. After this happened one more time in less than a minute it scared the shit out of me. She wasn't retaining short-term memory information. I have dealt with people with Alzheimer's disease and my wife was acting just like them. I called in to work and took her to the emergency room. For the next 12 hours I answered the same three or four questions over and over again while they ran tests. Nobody would give me any answers and I was terrified that I was now beginning the first day of the rest of our lives. I was staring into the potential future of having to work, take care of my wife AND autistic child, raise my daughter so she wouldn't miss out on her life and THAT'S when how important my wife was to me finally sunk in. I completely and totally depend on her for everything. Some of it is because she obsesses over a lot of things and if SHE doesn't do it she would drive me nuts asking about it. But, regardless of why she does what she does, I don't think I could do it. Not all of it AND work a career, some important things would get lost in the shuffle.

I don't know how single parents do it. I have a lot of respect for those that can pull it off and I have absolutely NO desire to experience it myself.

After badgering the ER staff and being ignored by our primary care physician I finally got a plausible explanation from one of the other ER doctors whom I have a lot of respect for. She told me that the blood-work showed a huge amount of salicylate's, a base ingredient in aspirins and in er medication that she was taking for her UC. She had these huge horse-pills that she was taking and my wife had a problem with swallowing pills (some kind of mental thing she got from her dad). Our primary care physician allowed her to crush up her medication and mix it with fluids. The problem was two-fold. my wife has an honest to goodness sensitivity to medications (my son does as well). Very few doctors seem to believe us when we tell them this and tend to ignore it. And that's what this one did. The other problem was that the medication he allowed her to crush up was designed and intended to be time release. It had a coating to alow the medication to be slowly introduced into the system. Instead, all of it was being introduced at once so her body was storing up the excess salicylates into her lives and the build up eventually led to a release of ammonia into her blood stream that short circuited her short-term memory.

It eventually wore off and she regained her short-term memory. However, the 24-hour period surrounding the episode doesn't exist for her and she has lived in fear of a repeat ever since. Sometimes neglecting her medication. Right after the episode our primary care physician refused to give us a direct answer to what had caused it. While I had a good answer that I was confident was the one we couldn't get our doctor to tell us an official diagnosis. I got so pissed that I called our clinic and told the nurses that if our doctor wasn't on the phone in 8 seconds to give me an answer, I would be in his office in 8 minutes to take it from him. He got on the phone, he admitted it was the crushed medications and the build up of toxins. We changed doctors.

My wife is now hypersensitive to her physical health. Most of us when our heart-rate goes up, we ignore it or realize that we had just done something energetic. We recognize a rational cause and we move on. My wife can't. When her heart rate goes up, she starts to worry that it's a heart attack and develops a panic attack. Bad gas or a case of diarrhea, we take an over-the-counter med and be done with it. My wife believes it to be a relapse of her UC and it triggers a panic attack. People who aren't accustomed to panic disorder would say, "just stop". If she could she would. I can see it in her face. She KNOWs that she's being irrational but she can't stop herself.

I know that this all sounds like I live with a terminal nut-case. Far from it, you have to realize that all of the described conditions have occurred over a number of years. She has gotten better and continues to improve.

Having to deal with all of this have made me very active in the reflective department. I know guys that have divorced their wives for petty and stupid shit. Usually they shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. Being married isn't mandatory. Life doesn't give you a free toaster (that's what aunts are supposed to give you at the reception). You don't get a gold star by your name.

Some men and women are not the marrying kind. They are either too selfish or too independent. Those aren't necessarily bad traits as long as you recognize them in yourself and try not to inconvenience another human being with them. You give up a lot of yourself when you get married, at least you're supposed to. Two people who get married and then try to act like roommates have missed out on the best and hardest part of being married. They won't ever shift into the different phases of love (Passionate, Compassionate, Companionate). They stay focused on what initially attracted them to their mate and won't allow themselves to mature together. AN attractive teenage girl will develop into a young woman, the young woman (when they have kids) develop into middle-aged women fairly quickly and they continue to age and change, both mentally and physically. If you can't be flexible enough to accept what they become you will never be able to be happy with them.

Ladies, men also change. Not as drastically as you but we do. We get less patient with all of those "cute eccentricities" you had when you were twenty and all we cared about was your round ass (and my wife had the greatest ass that could possibly exist and only me and her doctors have ever seen) and firm boobs. If your personality isn't livable, a guys gonna get tired of your shit in a hurry. If daddy made you into his little princess, you'll probably be a sour bitch when you hit your thirties (Paris Hilton anyone). If you are neurotic in your twenties you will get worse as you get older (trust me on that last one). Thankfully, my wife's father made her into a strong and independent thinker. While that's maddening at times it's a great deal of comfort for me to know that if anything happened to me my wife would be strong enough to handle a post-Mike life. I don't know if I'd fare so well but she would. She may worry the piss out of things but when something HAS to be done, she just does it. 

Sorry everybody but I married the only worthwhile human being left on the planet.  I leave the rest of the refuse for you others to fight over. If anything happens to my wife I will probably NOT remarry. I am too impatient to deal with petty horseshit. I would NOT be going after a younger woman. Fuck no. I'd rather swallow a bag of glass and wash it down with battery acid than try and explain life to some ditter-head.

I don't understand my wife, not completely, but I know I don't have to. She's perfect for me. There will always be a more attractive person than the one presently under your arm but if that's all your after don't get married. A person who would marry and commit to another human being and then callously cast them aside because they've out-grown their bikini (especially if the growing had to do with bearing children) is undeserving of their ability to draw a breath. They should be made to swallow a drano-bleach mixture at the divorce proceedings. On the same token, a woman who would marry a man and then try to change them into something that suits their purpose or ideal is equally worthless.

I think the key to a happy relationship has only one possible answer: truthful communication. You tell a person BEFORE you get married what an asshole you are and they can hardly complain about the surprise. You tell your girlfriend BEFORE the engagement that you are addicted to sex and will be trying to undress them every five minutes (that's what I did anyway). You tell them what you honestly expect out of life and them and give them the opportunity to decide what they want. You can't go into a relationship pretending to be something you aren't. That's why it's vitally important to NOT meet a prospective mate in a BAR. What dumb-ass thought that was a good idea?

Ladies, are you faking your orgasms? Stop being a dumb bitch and tell the idiot it hurts or is uncomfortable or whatever it is. Tell him to go a little more to the left and be happy. Guys, think your wife looks fat in something, FUCKIN TELL HER. She might be upset but she will at least know she can count on you to be honest. She knows those white slacks make her ass look like a metro-transit bus, she's not blind so don't lie to her. That's a test and you just failed it. The correct answer would be, "Honey, you know I don't answer those stupid questions". Ladies, STOP asking us if these pants make you look fat. You don't trust us to dress ourselves but you want our opinions on your wardrobe? What, are you crazy?

The truth is always a stronger foundation than a lie. Unlike a lie, you only have to tell the truth once, a lie you have to re-tell and reinforce every five minutes to keep that alternate reality from collapsing on you.

I guess the bottom line is not to make your mate figure you out or learn to understand you but to tell your mate everything so they don't have to.