Why I Love My Wife - Reason 01

Today is an engagement anniversary for my wife and me.

I have been doing a lot of computer writing that has edged out blogging.  But time to remedy that with a new theme!

I mentioned in November that I had started reading Manosphere blogs.  Let me say now that there is nothing like reading comments from a bunch of men who have or had unhappy marriages to make me appreciate my great marriage.  One of the first things I did after encountering these blogs was to write down lots of reasons why I love my wife.

And what better day than now to finally get around to processing those as blog posts?

Here is the first.

(Tangent #1: With nearly all of these I originally wrote them as "she does..." but later changed them to "we do..." to emphasize the healthy marriage and avoid giving the false impression that she is a saint married to an old goat.)

(Tangent #2: For anyone new to my blog, know that I purposefully avoid using my wife's first name.  We want those searching the internet for her name to find her professional work, not this blog.)

1. We know how to show respect to each other.

This one is a bit difficult to write about, simply because modern American culture does a terribly job at teaching people how to show respect.  So I need to be specific, which will sound overly clinical about a dynamic that is quite natural to us.  Here it goes...

We are polite with our words.  We say "please" and "thank you" to each other, and usually "you're welcome."  We ask requests instead of making demands.

We are polite with our body language.  We do not stand in a way that boxes in the other, we start conversations a bit angled (rather than parallel), we give each other enough space, we do not move too quickly.

We appreciate each other's ideas.  We ask each other for advice.

We compliment each other's good habits.

We forgive each other's mistakes and never bring those up again.

We seldom have disagreements.  On those rare times when we do, we avoid disagreeing in front of the children or in public.

We give each other priority.  Over the years we have established little ritual acts of kind subservience towards each other (how we get each other tea, etc.).

What are other ways to show respect?  If I have not listed something it is probably due to insufficient brainstorming, not that the something is lacking in our marriage relationship.

UPDATE: I did think of one way to show respect we neglect.  When in face-to-face conversation and holding an object, it is most proper to hold it by your hip rather than in front of your chest.  (See any James Bond film with Sean Connery, how Connery holds a glass or pen.)  Holding an object high can send the minor body language signals "I want something between us" or "I am holding this high and aggressively."  But my generation was never taught this, and my wife and I know neither of those signals would be truthful between us.