Dear Mike,
...You've heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the "unhappy marrieds" and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it.
Some men feel their masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own lives all the locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn't know won't hurt her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three am, a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this relationshp disappears.
There are more men griping about marriage who kicked the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame. There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as you put in it...Let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving you masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life... It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you shouldn't ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you to be late coming home...
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of the day knowing someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his footsteps.
Love, Dad
ps. You'll never get in trouble if you say "I love you" at least once a day.
(quoted from Time September 29, 2003)
-Jerome K. Jerome 1859-1927
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Lord Chesterfield 1694-1773
Vincent Van Gogh 1853-1890