Fine Tuning

I don't know what it is but, music has been inspiring a lot of my writing these past few days. I heard a golden oldie this morning... Lauryn Hill's "Ex Factor". Remember that? It got me to thinking about women... all of the women of my past and how they made me the man I'm still becoming. That's a mouthful ain't it? This isn't a post about any one woman but, about all of you and how I thought I had you figured out. You see...

Over the course of a lifetime, I made hundreds of mistakes in my relationships. These gaffes were partially the reason they didn't work out. After each failed relationship, I would ask myself if I had learned anything. Sometimes, I actually did learn something and then other times, it was quite evident that I didn't because I would usually make the same mistake again that I made in the last relationship. But, during those quiet times when I managed to step outside of myself and actually take stock of what I did wrong, the warning signs that I would have seen (if I'd been looking) helped me develop a program... a program of fine tuning.

I would often console myself by saying, "I'm gettin' closer to who I need to be. Next time, I won't do such and such... next time, I'll do this or that... next time, I'll have this or incorporate that." It didn't matter because, for all of my fine tuning, nobody was fine tuning my choices so, whatever deficiencies I was working on within myself, I was still finding myself attracted to superficial and high maintenance women who I could not afford financially or emotionally. My brother, on the other hand, always dated the type of girls that I (and my mother) wished that I could be dating... smart, self-confident women who weren't bad on the eyes either.

I remember asking him why it seemed that I always brought the drama while he managed to avoid it. (He wouldn't have as much to blog about as I do here... at least, not as far as his relationships are concerned.) He would always say, "I don't attract drama because I don't have time for it. When you have other things to do, you don't have time to be bothered with it. When I see drama coming, I run as fast as I can." This is why, when I met my wife and she was drama-free and I was nearly as fine tuned as I could be at the time, I couldn't understand it. (She had her own drama but, it didn't involve me or us). I wanted to make sure that if she indeed was "the one" so to speak, that I at least would be in a position to be successful.

Now, what is successful in a relationship or marriage? What is? Everybody wants and thinks they are going to be successful. I figure, successful is anything that's going to last and work. In the months before I got married, I talked to a number of divorced women about what didn't work in their marriages. They told me that one thing was, their husbands couldn't be trusted with the money. They spent it all and lights went out, water stopped running, and phones went off... and, in one case, they both wound up out in the street because they lost their home.

I resolved to always make sure that the bills were paid on time. I have a pretty practical wife so, we practically split everything down the middle and in 19 years of marriage, nothing has ever been cut off or threatened to be cut off. To my knowledge, we haven't missed a payment on anything (knock on wood). The other thing these women said went wrong was, their husbands had "wanderlust"... they couldn't keep their eyes and other body parts off of and out of other women. As much as I love women, I said that I would never cheat and so far, after 19 years of marriage I haven't done that either.

But, the main thing they said that ended their marriages was the lack of appreciation and simple acknowledgement for their spouses. This, I'm afraid, is the hardest one... the one that slips by all of us in the day-to-day raising of children, paying the bills, living, and hustling. You see, I couldn't fine tune that because I hadn't lived enough to understand that I had to do that yet. I didn't even understand that total concept until after I had been married for a while... that it's nice to tell your wife she looks good (other than, of course, when it's time for sex)... it's okay to hold a hand... and, it's okay to say thank you. It's also great to have someone to lie down next to you after the world has beat the crap out of you. Even if that's all they can do to help you, it's still nice to have that. It would be even nicer to say that once in awhile.

So, in closing, this is my way of saying "thanks” for all of that. I'm still working on that fine tuning. I'm almost there. I'm almost who I'm striving to be...