The Path of True Love...Is Paved with Good Intentions

My husband does not so much ignore hints as cultivate a willful obtuseness. It’s absolutely no use to hint away and hope he will pick up on something you would like him do, you have to resort to direct measures. Generally I don’t have a problem with this. In my opinion, you simply can’t hold people (men in particular) responsible for things that you only wished they would do, and assumed they would know. However, my husband has a talent for defeating even my cheerful directness. When I say “I would really like you to do something sweet for our anniversary Honey.” He says “The anniversary of buying the house? Do people celebrate that?” If he’s feeling especially creative he counters with “Letty, the verb ‘sweet’ cannot apply to an action, it’s virtually impossible to do something sweet.” To which sophistry I reply precisely “Please buy me flowers or candy with a card. Preferably a card with some type of poetry on it, and not one where you’ve crossed out ‘birthday’ and written in ‘anniversary’ with a Sharpie.”

Given this background, it should not surprise that the week prior to our anniversary found him asking wistfully Wednesday afternoon as I headed out the door to the grocery store “Does it ‘count’ if I give you some cash and you get flowers for yourself while you’re there?” Refusing to be beguiled by his puppy dog eyes, I responded emphatically “No, it does not!” and headed out the door. Embroiled in the frenetic pace of our lives these days, we went to bed Friday night without a whisper of plans to celebrate ever being referenced again. It was then that I heard a soft whisper from my sweet man. “I was going to spend the whole afternoon tomorrow taking you around Chicago and seeing all of these incredibly fun things as a way to make our anniversary special, but I just go so busy I had no time to plan anything, and now…I have nothing.” He sounded so woeful I just had to smile. Snuggling in close I told him softly “That’s okay, I was going to write you a sweet note every day this week telling you why I loved being married to you...but I didn’t.” Laughter soon consumed us and we giggled away thinking of the extravagantly good intentions of the other. And that’s when I decided that sometimes it really is the thought that counts, with or without action attached.

So, if you have good intentions some day to do something wonderful for your spouse that just doesn’t happen, share those good intentions. What you meant to do might be just as good as what you actually do. And then together you can both figure out how to make something happen. For us, we celebrated the Sunday of our anniversary with a no-holds-barred game of Blokus. On Monday he took me to a fabulous fancy restaurant I have always gazed longingly out the window at whenever we drove by (recall, I said the man was ‘willfully obtuse’ not ‘stupid’). And he might not have gotten a weeks worth of notes, but he did get a carton of his favorite rocky road ice-cream with a great big bow!