My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life (16 page)

Even the most gentle, mild-mannered men thrive when they get a little appreciation. When I was a kid and living with my aunt and uncle, my uncle Joe never said much. He was a soft-spoken guy, tired from his long days at work. He and
Aunt Norette scrimped and saved, and after many years of sticking to their budget, he was able to purchase a twenty-four-foot sailboat. He loved that boat like a family member. And every once in a while Norette would get him talking about sailing, and even though I was a tiny child, I could see new shades of his personality I’d never seen before. Whatever the man version of blossoming is, that’s what my uncle Joe was doing beneath the glow of Aunt Norette’s interest and empathy.

There’s that famous, droll Virginia Woolf quote about how women were trained to act as mirrors, reflecting men back at twice their normal size. It would be easy to smirk if they didn’t benefit from it so much.

One of the basic agreements a couple makes is who’s the male and who’s the female. It usually breaks down along obvious gender lines, but not always. And the point isn’t who’s the one who strides out of the house at seven a.m. with a briefcase and who takes the babies to play group, it’s the agreement you make when you commit.

I wish this was my own clever idea, but it’s part of the wisdom according to Dr. Patricia Allen, an L.A.-based cognitive behavioral therapist and expert on communication in relationships. She’s got a big cult following, and several bestselling books, including
Getting to “I Do”: The Secret to Doing
Relationships Right
and her most recent, written with Don Schmincke,
The Truth About Men Will Set You Free . . . but First It’ll P*** You Off.

Dr. Pat Allen (like a superhero, she’s known to one and all as Dr. Pat Allen; her children probably call her Dr. Pat Allen) says that when you get married, its key that both parties understand that one of two things is happening: either you’re providing the female energy and Mr. Charming is providing the male, or you’re assuming the male role and he, the female. In a long-term relationship the roles may switch. Men, as they get older and their testosterone levels drop, tend to get all nesty and interested in snuggling and watching a movie; women, on the other hand, once the nest is empty and their estrogen is in retreat, are like, “I’m off to raft the Grand Canyon. See ya.”

This role reversal often happens gradually over time. That’s natural. But one important thing to remember is that you should never flip the switch on your understanding with your partner, especially not during the middle of an all-out fight. The people responsible for wedding vows in the
Book of Common Prayer
should tuck that in somewhere: that we vow not to pull the rug out from under the other guy by switching gender roles in the middle of a spat. If you’ve agreed in calmer moments that you’re going to provide the male energy, you can’t suddenly flip out and say, “I can’t take supporting your ass anymore! Get a job or I’m outta here.” Or, if you’re rocking the female energy, you can’t throw a plate of spaghetti at Mr. Charming’s head and scream, “I’m tired of
cooking and cleaning and taking care of the kids! I’m going back to get my MBA!”

The masculine-feminine dynamic is more complicated than it might seem on the face of it. To be truly feminine means being soft, receptive, and—look out, here it comes—submissive. My own level of submission and commitment to Laird became greater when I had my kids. I’ve bowed down to this family on every level I can. That said, to run a household you’ve got to be a badass. I keep myself from going insane by this paradox by pretending I’m in a nature documentary about, say, wild mustangs, where you’ve got the lead mare who brooks no shit and keeps everyone in line, including the stallions, and the lower subset females, who are sweet and cooperative and go along to get along. I’m one or the other, moment to moment.

Laird and I argue. The disagreements are genuine, but they’re on a sliding scale of importance.

One of our ongoing arguments is whether to get Mr. Speedy neutered. Every time I take Mr. Speedy to the vet, I get a lecture. Laird adores Mr. Speedy, and worries that if he gets his balls lopped off Mr. Speedy will become Mr. Slow Poke. It’s become a huge nuisance; everyone in the neighborhood takes a dim view of Mr. Speedy wandering the streets humping everything in sight. But Laird stands firm. Once, when he was away, I thought about just getting the dog fixed, but now Reece and Brody have taken up the cause. “No!” they cry. “That’s Dad’s dog. You can’t get rid of his balls!” (And now, balls have become a huge topic in our
house. Once, someone told four-year-old Brody that the softest part of a horse was his nose, and she retorted, “No, it’s his balls.”)

The more serious arguments revolve about his (infrequent) criticism of the way I organize his business matters. Recently, in putting together our new website, we shot three thousand (yes, thousand) pictures of Laird and I doing individual workouts for men and women. The photographer was disorganized and the whole thing wound up being a lot more effort than we’d anticipated. When I groused about it he said, “Well, you know, the decision to hire him started at the top.”

“I take full responsibility for hiring him,” I said.

“You asked me what I thought and I told you it was a bad idea,” he said.

“No, actually, I didn’t ask your opinion at all,” I said.

A friend said her husband has a rule, and it’s a good one: “You can tell me what to do, or you can tell me how to do it, but you can’t do both.” That’s pretty much how I was feeling at that exact moment. I got in the shower, and Laird followed me in.

“Hey, let me fume a little,” I said. And he backed off.

Usually we fight when we’re tired, overworked, and frustrated.

When an argument is over, it’s over. Once he’s apologized and you’ve accepted it, or you’ve apologized and he’s accepted it, guess what? It’s done. By accepting the apology you’re saying you’ve also agreed to move on, and not belabor the issue a second longer.

If you’re not ready to do this, if you feel like you need another seven minutes (or seven hours or seven days) of rehash, then
say so
. It’s completely permissible to say, “I’m sure I’ll forgive you before the end of the next Ice Age, but it’s not going to be today.”

But all of this—the dedication to keeping sex alive, taking daily opportunities to give your guy some props, cultivating empathy for what it’s like for him in your marriage and in the world, and making an effort to fight fair—is only in play when your partner is committed to the relationship.

What do I mean by this? It’s not simply being under the same roof sucking up the same air and eating your mac ’n’ cheese.

I had a friend who’d gotten married pretty young. She had a great guy. Smart, funny, cool. If she needed the tire replaced on her car, it was done the next day. What he never got was that part of his husband job was also to take a little time to ask my friend how her day was, or to stop and tell her she looked pretty that day. Weirdly, he never asked what she’d done that day, or even where she’d been. They got along, but there was this place where they didn’t intersect.

It’s not as if we need to be monitored, we don’t need a chip implanted in our asses, but we do need to feel as if our guy is keeping an eye on us, is watching out for us. Mr. Charming,
if he is to be truly charming, needs to know when to step it up on this front, to realize that you’re not his drinking buddy, his mom, his sister, or his daughter. You’re his queen. And you need to be treated that way. This isn’t chivalry, exactly. It’s more like when you mist a flower and it perks right up.

Laird is as good at showing me this type of attention as he is at surfing, but I’ll tell you this: if, in a few years’ time, it was all me, all the time, with the Shiny Eyes and the Interludes and the compliments, and I’d made sure I’d communicated my thoughts and feelings on his lack of commitment and got no response, I would seriously reevaluate.

If you’ve got a guy who’s out there actively screwing around, who’s more interested in succumbing to his hardwiring than in making an effort to be in a relationship with you, then don’t bother. It’s time to move on.

Most men think it’s their own gender out there shaking the trees for someone new, but women can truly excel at being unfaithful. Our reasons for doing it are generally varied and complicated. Most of us aren’t “Ooh! I’d love to tap that,” which is pretty much the beginning and the end of the male impulse. Women step out for a number of reasons: the need for companionship, intimacy, tenderness, affection. Sometimes we’re throwing down a gauntlet. Show me the chick who has to tell the back of her video-game addicted husband’s
head she’s unhappy two dozen times, and I’ll show you the chick who gets it going with the pool boy.

Men are straightforward. Their wives aren’t putting out, so they sneak in a nooner with the temp. But women are devious. We’re better liars and better manipulators and just all around better cheaters. It’s amazing to me that the CIA isn’t completely comprised of females. We’re shifty and, when we get to the land of cheating, ruthless.

Oh dear husband, you tool, I have cheated on you, and not only have I cheated on you, but see that toothbrush you’re brushing your teeth with right this very minute? He brushed his teeth with it only hours ago.

A guy would never do that.

But let me tell you: no good ever comes from it. If you’re going to go down that road, you might as well just have the courage to leave. If your Self on Monday, who hasn’t yet had the interlude with the pool boy, could have a conversation with your Self on Wednesday, after it’s happened, she would probably say, “Don’t do it. Not worth it.”

But for some reason those two Selves never seem to talk.

The worst of it is not that you’ve betrayed someone to whom you’ve made a promise, but that you’ve broken your own code; most of us don’t aspire to cheat, be devious, or betray. And we don’t feel good about ourselves after we’ve done those things.

All this said, I do believe in the value of a Get Out of Jail Free card, especially if we’re talking a one-night stand and it’s not connected to a web of dishonesty.

You’ve got to trust your instincts to tell the difference. If you have the sense that your guy is keeping a lot of his life hidden, there’s some dishonesty there. If he spends a lot of time away from you that’s unaccounted for, or spends a lot of time going out with the guys and getting toasted, or if he quickly closes his computer when you enter the room, or takes his phone into the bathroom with him (to text in secret or to prevent you from seeing his texts), something’s up, something he’s keeping from you. You’re no longer sharing a life.

But if the foundation is solid and the relationship is good, you really can forgive, forget, and move on. Life is long and often complex, and humans are, by their nature, deeply flawed.

And we’re not princesses, after all.

Not long ago I read a magazine story entitled something like “I love my kids and hate my life.” It was about how, despite how much we love our children, and how empty and loveless our lives would be without them, we parents are basically miserable. Mothers are less happy than fathers, and the more children you have, the less happy you are. The author wasn’t talking about joy, about the mystery and miracle of unconditional parental love, but about how day-to-day life sucks when you’ve got kids underfoot.

The piece went on to talk about how part of the misery might be a result of all the hyperparenting going on, the over-the-top ambition middle- and upper-middle-class parents
have for their children, and the sheer daily horror of being in the car so much, “Driving Miss Daisy” as a friend calls it, shuttling kids hither and yon for hours on end, all day long.

True confessions: I’m a little amused by all this outrage.

What did people
think
having a family was going to be like?

My four-year-old can tell you that the commercials are make-believe, why do adults seem to have trouble with this concept?

Buying into the white-picket-fence scam begins at the wedding. No, I take that back: any single chick who’s out there planning her wedding before she’s even met the guy is setting herself up for a big reality smack up the side of the head.

Somewhere along the way the wedding ceremony has morphed from a man and a woman celebrating their union in front of family and friends, to a celebration of the bride’s need to be princess for a day. The focus is no longer even on the couple; it’s a day of lavish overspending so that the chick will feel magical, so she will feel as if her life as a boring single person who lives on premade food from Trader Joe’s and watches five hours of
Law & Order
reruns on a Saturday night is about to end, and she’s going to be a Mrs., starring in her own edition of the West Elm catalog.

This never happens. There are books and television shows
and movies galore that are being released into the culture every seventy-two hours that refute this version of matrimony; there are cousins and college roommates and high school best friends who get drunk on occasion and spill the beans about the reality of married life; there is the divorce rate, which hovers just under fifty percent and has for forty years.

And still, the myth of the white picket fence remains.

The best thing that can happen to a couple is that on their wedding night, she throws up and he stinks up the bathroom with his man farts. Instantly, they become real to each other.

So, one way to avoid having your completely unrealistic expectations dashed to smithereens is to attempt to understand what you’re getting into. Keep your head on straight. When it comes to the wedding, never lose sight of the fact that going into debt for what is basically just a party isn’t worth it. Even if it means you get to wear a tiara. Not worth it. Just ask MasterCard. They don’t care if you were a princess for a day, they’re still charging eighteen percent interest. When it comes to Mr. Charming, remember last summer when his allergies were in full bloom, and he flung himself on the sofa for a week and watched all of the Star Wars films, and sneezed and moaned and his mother came to visit and made his favorite cobbler and rubbed his feet and whispered about you behind your back? That is what you’ve married.