I am not an emotional man, and apparently being in touch with your emotions and sharing those emotions with women is something they crave like I crave a good McDouble with no onions or pickles. So, in a effort to crack the code of German enigma machine I call my wife, I recently read a book called “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality”. Now first of all, I haven’t finished a book in at least 10 years and mostly use them to put me to sleep like most people use ambien, but I convinced my self I could do it. One night I decided I needed to sleep in the woods and for some reason my wife said ok. As I packed up my gear I told her and my neighbor I needed a book and our neighbor brought me this one. I headed out for some peaceful reflection to be alone with my thoughts in the woods. As I passed this punk teenager that thought I somehow inconvenienced him by turning left at a green light and decided that he needed to make me aware of his frustration by pulling up next to me and flicking me off, I shared my emotions with him and proceeded to turn onto the dirt road to where I was going to camp. After setting up camp in the middle of the woods like freakin Bear Grylls with a hammock and a head lamp I quickly realized that the woods at night by yourself is scary as hell. I started reading simply to distract my self from every Blair witch project sound that I heard. I read about how we communicate in our relationships is a direct reflection of the communication in relationships that we grew up seeing. This point wouldn’t sink in for a couple of weeks but we will get to that. I woke up to the coyotes howling all around and I was pretty sure that the last human sharing of emotions that I would have was with that punk teenager the night before. As I prayed for the coyotes to not eat my feet off, the sun came up and I had made it! I didn’t get a chance to catch a fish with my bare hands and bite in to it but I still felt pretty manly because this is what manly is right? So it turns out the answer is yes and no. So I already said that I’m not an emotional man but to further that point, I have cried twice in the last 8 years. The first is when we went to Chicago for a dear friends wedding that my oldest daughter was going to be a flower girl in. She wouldn’t walk down the isle in rehearsal but when it came time to walk for the real thing, I was overwhelmed with something that felt like it could be emotion at my little girl walking down the isle perfectly and my face started leaking uncontrollably as I hid in the back of the wedding hall. The second was two weeks ago when that same little girl was in a horse show and the horse she was about to ride spooked on the girl that rode before her and reared back and scared everyone half to death. While she was warming up I was very nervous and must have been near some cut onions because my eyes started leaking again. She did an awesome job and was able to put her fears aside and take control. It is very true that being a man changes in definition when you have children. That little girl and my other kids literally make me a better person. I had s conversation with her and our Hispanic neighbor over sushi where she pointed out to her friend that everyone in my family is divorced, that while there were different circumstances for each of them, the communication in relationships that were exemplified in my youth is an unfortunately very common way of interaction in today’s society. So if the way we communicate in relationships is how we have seen communication in relationships in our youth, then I need to do a much better job of communicating with my wife because I want the little girl that makes my face leak to have a healthy perspective on communication in her relationships so that the next time I see her walk down the isle I can know that I have prepared her for life by being an example of how to deal with conflict and communicate effectively. That day won’t happen for awhile and while I will work harder to be a better example, if someone hurts her, I will stab them with a fork because I’m still a man.
