What do you bring to your relationship?
Home Grown
I mean, if you have to list the qualities, the positive behavioral traits that you bring to a relationship, how would you respond? The relationship I’m most referring to here would probably be marriage, but I guess a somewhat serious dating relationship would qualify as well.
As a man, well, you don’t even have to ask, we hate questions like that, and questions like these, “Are my arms flabby? What are your goals? Which shoes look better with this outfit? Honey, what do you like best about me?”
Well, your arms look good for a woman your age. My goals are to, ah…to live a long life of marital bliss, and then die? I would always go with the shoes that are the most comfortable; no one ever notices your shoes anyway so why worry about it. Sweetheart, I love the fact that your brother likes to fish, and that your Daddy owns a tractor and just about every tool in the world, and you’re a good cook too.
See, we are pathetic creatures. Men, most men, are not tuned into the same frequency as women. What I would consider good, solid answers, my wife would skin me alive, boil me and then stomp me flat with a pair of impractical, yet cute, open toed, high heel shoes that match her purse.
The trick here is to ask her first and then follow her lead, “Darling,” I inquire as I warm her morning coffee. “If I were to ask you what do I bring to our relationship, how would you respond?”
Well, I did ask her and she answered without hesitation, “Security, protection and you make me feel loved.” What? Did she anticipate that question, or was it too easy, no ums or ahs, just security, protection, love…bam, bam, bam, more coffee please.
Security and protection - I am the Royal Canadian Mountie of our relationship. I am Dudley Do-Right and she is my own sweet Nell.
I thought for sure height would have been in the top three. She is always asking me to reach things in the top cabinets, dust the top of the refrigerator (because I can see the top of the refrigerator) and get spiders off of the ceiling. Isn’t height a good quality to bring to a marriage?
Now, this column is not really about my wife and I, it’s more about my daughter and her friend…the boy. This is difficult for a father of daughters, this dating thing; I know it would be much different if I had sons. I was once one you know, a son, a boy, a teenage boy…yes it’s difficult to be a father of daughters.
So, when this friend, the boy, appeared, I wondered, what is it that he could bring to this relationship that a father could not provide? Ask my daughter and, well; you get the roll of the eyes and the shaking of the head thing that teenagers are so good at. Maybe it’s the same for her, security, protection (he’s a pretty big guy) and the feeling that some one other than your family “cares” about you. (I can’t bring myself to say the “L” word.)
As an over protective father I may appear to complain at times, but I really don’t have anything to complain about. This friend, the boy, is a lot like me in many ways (that ought to burst his bubble), my daughter has even so much as said this to me. “You know Daddy, he’s a lot like you,” she’ll tell me. Yes dear, I know, remembering what I was like at that age, that’s what concerns me.
The other evening we returned home from supper at my wife’s parents home and there in the driveway sat a wheelbarrow full of composted chicken manure, a gift from my daughter’s friend, the boy…excuse me, I mean my daughter’s friend, the fine young man.
Composted chicken manure is a fine thing to bring to a relationship if the father is a gardener and when tomatoes, peppers, and other vegetables figure into the picture. Though I rarely see this fine young man eat vegetables, it makes me wonder - what’s in it for him? On a similar note, I’ve also heard that elephant manure is also great for the garden, so, if there is a teenaged boy out there with a pet elephant, call me — I do have another daughter.
When David Curtis is not searching for a meaningful relationship with composted manure, or embarrassing his family, he teaches Biotechnology at Bethel Middle School. He can be reached at dcurtis@haywood.k12.nc.us.
