Have a New Husband by Friday (6 page)

So what does this mean? If you, as a woman, are giving your guy hints about something you want him to do, and he’s not getting it, it’s because he’s wired to be . . . guess what? A man! But make a direct request and he’ll most likely hop right on it—
if
you need him, respect him, and fulfill him.

Part of the problem for both men and women in relationships is simply this: a man thinks he understands a woman, and a woman thinks she understands a man. But I want to let you in on a little secret: you don’t understand your husband nearly as well as you think you do.

If you want to test me on this, write down a list of what you think is most important to your husband. Then ask him. You’ll probably get a few right if you’re a good observer, but chances are also good that you’ll have a lot of surprises. How could there not be? You’ve never been a male, after all!

How can you best understand your man? Just as you learned about critters in science class by identifying them and then observing them, getting to know the creature that is your husband and observing him in his habitat can be extremely helpful in increasing your understanding of him as a male. Think of it as going back in time on your own personal safari, because who your husband is starts with who he was as a little boy and what his habitat was like.

The Little Boy He Once Was

Your husband’s experience as a little boy has had a profound impact on who he is now as a man. The way his mother treated him, the way his male peers respected him (or didn’t), and the way others looked on him—all combined to create the man you married.

It all intensified with your husband just before he hit puberty. One of the toughest acts on earth is being a boy between the ages of eight and fifteen. By the time he’s eight years old, a boy is no longer considered cute and certainly not adorable. If your husband was anything like me, he probably looked a little funny, maybe even a little creepy.

Have you ever noticed how body parts grow at different speeds? Ears can overtake the head, for instance, or the head can overtake the body, creating a truly comical character. Not to mention the damage a well-placed zit can do to any adolescent’s self-esteem.

While such a boy is too big to be adorable, he’s too little to get any respect. He doesn’t have biceps to speak of, so older boys will push him around. He is slowly, painfully changing from a boy to a man, so he’s struggling with a Porsche-size engine in the body of a Hot Wheels car.

Then it happens. Your husband wakes up one day around seventh or eighth grade and finds his first pubic or chest hair, but it probably isn’t soon enough (or thick enough) to keep him from humiliation in the school showers. There, the older, fully-haired, fully-developed Neanderthals snicker at the, ahem, less-than-gigantic proportions of Johnny’s little jimmy.

When I was in junior high swim class, the boys swam in the nude. We’d come out of the locker room, naked as jaybirds, and sit on the edge of the pool until the teacher finished taking roll. One guy in that class, Alan, was hairy from head to toe, like an orangutan that hasn’t had a haircut in a long time. He was huge in every significant place—and fully a
man
. Guess who had to sit right next to him during roll call? Little Kevin Leman, whose skinny white chest had a sum total of one hair—a little spaghetti noodle that I was tempted to darken with a felt-tip pen so everyone could see it. Let’s just say that as I looked down below my waist, well . . . I looked every bit a boy. See why boys learn early that competition is the name of the game?

It’s interesting that in a recently built high school, the boys’ locker room has open showers, which has been the typical design for years, but the girls' locker room has single shower stalls with curtains. Your husband never had this protection,
and when a boy doesn't develop as fast as his peers, he can't hide. He's going to be ridiculed, and that hurts. I know a 46-year-old man who still
vividly recalls getting hung by his underwear on the flagpole outside his junior high.

Not only are boys often underdeveloped, but some of us are just plain stupid. In my much younger years, I was eating spaghetti at my mom’s friend’s house when I passed on the sauce in favor of the butter.

“Kevin,” my mom’s friend said, “you should have some sauce. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

That was all I needed to hear. I piled enough sauce on top of those noodles to drown a small rat!

That night, after I got ready for bed, I pulled back my pajamas just as my mom walked into the room.

“Kevin, what are you doing?”

“I’m looking for the hair.”

When I explained, my mom had a great laugh, but I was humiliated.

Preadolescence is a tough time for boys. If your husband was the typical boy, he received neither affection nor respect. He was too big to be cuddled in public but too small to be respected by those just slightly older than he was.

Many adult men I meet today still carry shame and guilt about how they “underperformed” as boys. Since many of them grew up in an age when learning disabilities were not recognized as such, they have grown up feeling just plain dumb and often act reserved, because they’ve learned it’s better to be quiet and to be left alone than to speak up and be laughed at.

Boys learn early that competition is the name of the game.

Why Does My Husband Act Like . . . a Man?

One of my funniest moments as a therapist occurred when a woman started complaining to me about her husband. “I just don’t understand him,” she said, describing many perfectly normal male traits. “Why does my husband act so much like . . . like . . .”

“A man?” I suggested.

“That’s it!”

If you’re a woman who, like this one, never had any brothers, your husband is likely a complete mystery to you at times. So let’s clear up the mystery a little. Boys are uncomplicated. They’re competitive, they do goofy things, and they play rough. And they grow up to be men who are competitive, do goofy things, and play rough.

They’re Competitive

While girls huddle in groups on the playground and discuss who’s popular and other such topics, the boys argue about who won the last competition. By nature, boys are competitive. They want to win. It doesn’t matter whether they’re playing a game of Monopoly, tossing around a basketball, or trying to stomp on and kill the highest number of ants. They want to be the best. When they grow up and have a driver’s license, they naturally begin counting the number of cars they pass on the way to work. They also compare salaries and the sizes of their offices. Males never really stop competing.

Why does your husband not stop to ask for directions when he’s lost (and you’re in the car with him)?

A. It’s beneath him.

B. He loves to solve things.

C. It’s too unmanly to ask for help.

D. He doesn’t want any of those cars or trucks he worked so hard to pass to get by him.

All these things might be true of your man to a certain degree, but the best answer is . . . D! With boys and men, competition is the name of the game.

Young coaches quickly catch on to this competitive nature. It’s one thing to give a boys’ sports team a drill, but if you want to ratchet up the intensity, make the drill competitive—put half of the team against the other half.
Then
you’ll see the boys give their best.

A city in the Pacific Northwest decided competition among younger boys was a “bad influence,” so the coaches decided to stop keeping score at baseball games. They asked the boys to play their best, and then afterward, when the boys asked who won, they were told, “It doesn’t matter as long as you played your hardest.”

The experiment never worked because many of the boys kept score anyway. They cared about winning and losing—and why shouldn’t they? One of the most important lessons in life is learning how to lose, get up, and keep going. Many of these same boys will be applying for jobs where only 1 out of 10 or even 1 out of 1,000 people will be chosen. They need to learn how to compete, do their best, and face either the pleasure of accomplishment or the pain of falling short.

Competition is one reason that Xbox Online is so wildly popular with boys. The competitive nature of boys is such that brothers will fight to the death over unsolvable disputes—who gets the last piece of pie or whether or not the last runner was tagged out in a game of baseball. Your husband grew up in this world, always fighting for his fair share.

I heard of one hilarious—and typically male—incident when a mother caught her two boys arguing over who would get the first pancake. The mother thought she had a golden opportunity to provide a moral lesson, so she said, “If Jesus were sitting here, he would say, ‘Let my brother have the first pancake. I can wait.’ ” The older son turned to his brother and said, “Okay, Ryan, you be Jesus.”

They Do Goofy Things

I can’t count the number of stupid things I did as a kid. Even more, I craved the attention that doing goofy things—like eating Milk-Bone dog biscuits—brought me. And my wife tells me that nothing has changed to this day. I guess she’s right. She gets a regular dose of the goofiness of boys every time I’m around my buddy Moonhead.

Here’s what I mean. Every year Williamsville Central Schools in New York inducts people who have distinguished themselves in their careers to their “Wall of Fame.” One year I was given that honor.

Now, there’s something you need to know. All of us have miracles in our lives. I’m a walking miracle—there’s no two ways about it. I graduated fourth from the bottom of my class in high school. I was in a reading group with a girl who ate paste. My high school counselor, with good reason and just cause, told me in April of my senior year, "Leman, with your grades and record,
I couldn't get you admitted to reform school." Yet all these years later, I have my doctorate. And an even greater miracle, I met my wife while I was a janitor.

So picture me back at my old high school six years ago. Some of my old teachers were still there. I’m sure they would have loved to see me hanging there on a rope. (Let’s just say my antics were not appreciated when I was in school.)

I can’t count the number of stupid things I did as a kid. And my wife tells me that nothing has changed to this day.

What made it more special was that my mom—who had always been my champion, always believing I’d be something even when I was a screwup—was in her ninetieth year. I got to take her with me. At last, for a few minutes, my mother saw her son in high school when she could be really proud of him for something. It took a lot of years, but it finally happened.

Anyway, during the ceremony, the high schoolers were exceptionally well behaved for high schoolers. (Believe me, I’ve been in a lot of high schools where the kids are rowdy and disrespectful; these kids were great.) When it came time for my award, I got up from my chair to receive it and began to walk across the stage.

Someone yelled out, “Hey, Socks!”

You see, I always wear wild socks. Whenever I’m on TV, you can catch me in shocking pink-and-white-striped socks, or red-and-white checkered socks, or maybe even socks with M&M’s on them. It’s sort of my thing.

Well, when the principal of the school heard this, he was embarrassed. Immediately he admonished the kids in the most patronizing of tones. He reminded them of their status as the Billies of Williamsville South and that the school had always prided themselves on being a cut above all the others.

But I knew something the principal didn’t. Guess who had yelled out, “Hey, Socks”? It
was
a kid from the high school—but one who’d graduated when I did. It was none other than my 59-year-old buddy Moonhead, who was sitting in the audience with his wife, my wife, and my sister.

Women Talk

My husband is a football nut, and I resented that for years. The team in our city isn’t even very good (they’re perennially one of the worst teams in the NFL), and he’d spend hours watching them play. I couldn’t understand the draw.

Then I heard you speak about what’s important to men and got a new perspective. With my own money that I’d saved up for something special, I bought my husband the “NFL Ticket”—you know, where you get to see every NFL game on cable. His response? WOW. He loved getting to see every game of his favorite hometown team. When I made the decision to do that and to stop nagging him about watching football all the time, guess what he started doing? Folding the laundry while he watches the game! Those results I’d never have guessed.

Tammy, Virginia

After the presentation, we went to get a bite to eat. We were laughing and hollering over his “Hey, Socks!” comment. Our wives were shaking their heads.

You see, one of my pet phrases is true: the little boy or girl you once were, you still are. I’m not sure that men really grow up even when they’re on Medicare. In fact, research shows that women tend to love a sense of humor in a man (I’m sure glad my Sande does!)—that’s one of the real drawing points in attracting a woman to a man.

When even grown-up men get together, they get playful. They act like 4-year-olds.

So there I was, just having received a Distinguished Alumni award, and Moonhead and I—both of us in our fifties—started to wrestle in the cafeteria line. Moonhead put me in a headlock.

It was a good thing the little old blue heads behind us didn’t have cell phones, or they probably would have called 9-1-1. Moonhead and I were play wrestling like two otters next to a stream, but in this case, we were 240-pound otters.

I could tell what our wives were thinking.
Oh, here they go again.

Some wives would be saying, “Why don’t you two just grow up?” But our wives know better. They just let us continue. You see, they realize that we’re simple guys at heart and we’re playful. That’s just a part of who we are.

At our table they even let us continue insulting each other, as men who like each other do.

“Hey, fat boy, what you gonna eat?” Moonhead asked me.

“Well, larger-than-most, I’m thinking of having the chicken parmesan.”

I could just see the concerned and shocked looks aimed at us from the next table.
What is wrong with these people?