Doctor Love’s Valentine’s Day Advice for Girls
Call Me Dr Love
Let me begin by saying I dislike Valentine’s Day and always have. I think an act of love on a random day for no particular reason has far more meaning than a bouquet of flowers, a box of candy, and a mushy card given on a day when you have no real choice but to do it.
That said, every girl loves a good valentine and my girl is no different from the rest. She loves roses, assorted chocolates and sentimental greeting cards just as much as the next girl. It is a genetic predisposition for the female of the human race.
Every girl wants to be loved. She wants to be someone’s “prettiest girl in the whole wide world.” She wants to be the apple of some man’s eye. She wants to be the princess.
But too many princesses end up with fat, selfish, warty toads. They live the fairy tale in reverse: they kissed the prince and he turned into a toad. Your main man Dr. Love is here to make some suggestions for avoiding a life with a lily-pad squatting toad…
- Beware of the “hot” guy. It is a rare thing indeed for a pretty boy to be faithful and true to one girl for a lifetime. If a guy is overly impressed with himself, he will never be overwhelmed by you. Monogamy is a difficult enough concept for the male of the species to begin with. There is not one “hot” guy in a million who can constantly be told he is gorgeous, constantly be fawned over by “hot” girls, and remain faithful to one lover.
- Look for the guy who thinks you are beautiful over the guy who thinks you are “hot.” Beauty is rare. It is precious and enduring. Beauty is love. “Hot” is lust. It is also a fleeting, flavor-of-the-month thing. Fifty years hence, you will probably not be on anyone’s “hot” list. But to some man, you will remain the embodiment of beauty.
- Remember that wealth is not a virtue, but neither is poverty. You may believe that all you need is love…until the rent comes due. Or, you may think you can live without love if the square footage is adequate. You need both security and intimacy. Don’t buy into the concept that you have to choose one or the other.
- Look for character rather than a character. He may be the life of the party, but if he has no internal compass governing his motives and guiding his actions, when they turn out the lights, the party will be over.
- If you get sick and cannot make a date and he comes over with soup from your favorite deli, if you don’t want him to see you looking like death warmed over and he ignores your complaint and comes over anyway, if he spoon feeds the soup, if he kisses your fevered forehead and doesn’t even see the dark circles under your eyes, if he says—and you know he means it—that you never looked more beautiful and he never loved you more than right then, say “I do” and live happily ever after.
True love is…
More fragrant than a dozen fresh-cut roses…
Sweeter than a box of chocolates…
Truer than the words of the finest Hallmark card…
Worth the wait.
Marriage: What No One Tells You, But Everyone Should Know
Listen up, kids. Dr. Love is in the house. I am here to give you the real scoop on this thing called marriage, so pay attention.
Seriously, though. Donya and I went to a movie for the first time in umpteen years last Friday night. We thought that new Vince Vaughn flick, Couples’ Retreat, would be some good, old-fashined, knee-slapping fun.
It was sort of funny here and there, but not hilarious. The message of it, however, was heavier than I foresaw. (Who ever heard of Vince Vaughn having a message, anyhow?) It was also pretty much right on. I could tell by the uncomfortable silence in the theater, the odd nervous cough here and there, the shuffling of restless butts on seats, that there would be relationship talk going on when folks left this flick.
Delicious!
The best line in the movie, says me, was near the end, when the respective couples were beginning to figure some things out and recommit to their partners. Vince’s character said to his wife, “That therapist thinks we have a problem. We don’t have a problem.”
His wife readily agrees.
Then, Vince says, “We have a million problems. But that is just life. I think everyone has problems. Marriage is not about solving every problem. It’s about commitment. It’s about facing them together, working through them.”
(Something like that. I paraphrase.)
Man, that’s it!
Couples call it quits every day because they get so lost in their troubles that they think they are incompatible. If they were really meant to be together, they wouldn’t be so different. They wouldn’t have so many issues. They would be happy with each other all the time.
They go to church and see these couples with the pleasant smiles pasted on their faces, who seem to have it all together, and they think, “Man, my marriage sucks!”
Here’s a news flash you won’t get anywhere else: sometimes, marriage DOES suck.
You think it is supposed to be easy, painless, to take two individuals and meld them into one identity? You think there won’t be some discomfort there? You think there won’t be sacrifice? You think it won’t be work?
It’s about commitment.
Sometimes, that is the only thing that will keep your bags unpacked. I promise you that.
Here is my ingenious, cost-free insight on marriage in a nutshell:
Marriage is not always about getting it right. Sometimes, it is about making it right.
If you cannot say, “I am sorry” and mean it, then your relationship is doomed. And if you cannot say, “I forgive you,” and do your dead-level best to mean that, then you have no chance. Forgive as much as you can. Forget as well as you can. And when you cannot forgive or forget, and you just have to fight it out, remember this: you can never really “take back” anything you say. Once it is said, it is said forever and it cannot be unsaid.
So, fight. Don’t brawl. Fights have limitations, rules. You know, no hitting below the belt. Stuff like that. Brawls have no rules, no restraints. Fighters have a fighting chance. Brawlers don’t.
I don’t know if I have an ideal marriage. I don’t know what an ideal marriage is. I do know that my wife felt poorly last night and crawled into the recliner with me and fell asleep in my lap while I watched Monday Night Football. We woke up in the same bed this morning, ready or not, to take on another day. I expect to do the same tomorrow.
That’s pretty good.
How To Spend a Life
If love is what I get from You
Then you can bet I’ll give it too
‘Cause all I really want to do
Is spend my lifetime loving you.
¶
When friends all leave or fade away
And the sun still shines on another day
Just know that I am here to stay
And spend a lifetime loving you.
¶
As youth succumbs to the march of time
And the road you walk becomes a grind
Take heart, my love, you know that I’m
Gonna spend my lifetime loving you.
¶
When death comes to call for me
And time gives way to eternity
I know my final words will be,
“I spent my lifetime loving you.”
¶
For Donya, Love of my Life on her __th Birthday
Unbroken
Morning Devotion
I have just returned from a family gathering on my mother’s side. My Aunt Nelda and Uncle James hosted it on their gorgeous, sprawling west Texas ranch. They called it Camp Granky, in honor of my maternal grandmother (whom I named as a toddler when I could not manage calling her “Granny,” which my dad wanted to get me to call her, just to aggravate her, because she said she was much too young and pretty to be a granny – and she was right). What a time we had!
All of us cousins are grown now. We have our own families. We are scattered across three states. We seldom see each other. So, this gathering was like rolling back the clock to a simpler time.
Many of the most vivid memories of my childhood revolve around a white framed parsonage in Mineral Wells, Texas. The humble home of Big Granddad and Granky was always abuzz around the holidays. Most every Thanksgiving and Christmas, their four daughters and their families would converge on the little house (though it seemed, as everything in childhood does, much bigger to me then) and it would come alive with their laughter and chatter. The only son, like me, was still a kid.
Aunt Nelda
We were a family. Tight-knit. Kindred spirits. And loud. Some families are quiet, reserved and sophisticated. They sip their coffee or wine and speak in hushed tones about the state of this or that. Not us. If you were quiet at the Henager family gathering, you went unheard. We were too busy laughing at the silliness of Granky or Aunt Nelda…or a corny joke told by one of the dads.
The adults were busy shuffling the dominoes and trash-talking their way through another game of 42. The kids were trying to remain unpranked by Uncle Troy (that son who was still a kid, but the oldest one). Then there were the endless ping pong tournaments between the male cousins and our uncles. There were backyard football games, where a flash of brilliance could forever establish you as a Henager family Hall of Famer.
Granky and the women were baking things that filled the air with their sweet aromas and tasted like pure slices of heaven. Big Granddad could often be found peeling pecans with his pocket knife…the same one he sometimes used to trim his fingernails.
Kids Everywhere!
My wife was sort of the unofficial photographer, chronicling the revelings of Camp Granky ’09. Last night, I sifted through those pictures, savoring every precious moment. Admittedly, it wasn’t the same as back when. Big Granddad and Granky are gone. So is Dad. A couple of the uncles are no longer in the picture. One of the sisters and the brother couldn’t make it. Some old faces were missing and plenty of new faces were there. Little rugrats, the offspring of the cousins and their mates, were everywhere. Watching them laugh and play and fuss and cry reminded me of us back then.
Time takes its toll. Everything, it seems, changes. People change. But love…love never dies. The strong family bond remains. The faith of our fathers and mothers remains the strong cord that binds…every bit as much as sharing a gene pool.
And the circle remains.
Unbroken.
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The JourneyMan by D. Gene Strother is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at genestrother.com.
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