A Bowl of Cereal and Becoming a Mindful Husband
Testosterone. That simple word was the guiding principle for the first 30 years of my life. It shaped my environment, outlook and behavior — without my even knowing it.
Growing up with three brothers, an old-school Italian father and a doting Italian mother speaks for itself. In college I lived in a fraternity — the definitive boys-will-be-boys setting — and after graduating, I lived for several years in the proverbial bachelor pad with three male roommates.
I became a product of my environment, an environment that often engendered juvenile and impetuous behavior.
In all those years of living with other guys, one thing became abundantly clear to me: while single guys tend to be, at times, self-centered and immature, they let things slide. For instance, when I was living with my roommates, if I made dinner for myself and didn’t offer them something to eat, they didn’t care. If I made weekend plans that didn’t include them, it wasn’t a big deal.
Becoming totally comfortable with and accustomed to a pervasively cavalier attitude that is inherent in such a male-dominated environment, I felt right at home. Mowgli, the “man-cub” in The Jungle Book, behaved like a wolf because he was part of the pack and that’s all he knew. I acted and behaved like a typical guy because I was part of the “pack” and that was all I knew. Right or wrong, guys like me who grew up in a testosterone-laden ecosystem often saw the world through a prism of machismo, sophomoric banter, and selfish behavior.
Unknowingly, I accepted that this is how life is. I couldn’t know what I didn’t know.
Enter my future wife.
My wife and I met in 1991, and unlike many couples, we did not live together while dating. We married in the fall of 1994, and shortly thereafter, I got my first “husband” wake-up call.
One morning, I walked into our kitchen and said good morning to my wife, who was drinking a cup of coffee. I poured myself a bowl of cereal and joined her at the table. As I was about to enjoy my first spoonful of Cheerios, she asked, “You know, did you ever think to ask me if I might want some cereal, too?”
My feckless response was to ask, “Oh, do you want some?” and she said, “Not really, but that’s not the point.”
Not knowing where this conversation was headed, I asked, “So what is the point?”
I could see by my wife’s face that she was getting frustrated. She sighed and said, “The point is you never ask me if I want something that you’re having. Couldn’t you think about me and offer me some cereal so I don’t have to ask? It’s about being considerate. It’s about thinking about someone else before thinking of yourself…it’s not always just about you.”
I just sat there staring at my cereal bowl while my Cheerios got soggy. I didn’t know what to say. While I understood what she was saying, it took me a few days to realize that, although I was physically living with my wife, I was still mentally living with my “pack.”
Doing something the first time usually involves a learning curve, and that curve typically ranges from flat to steep. Being a newlywed and/or living with the opposite sex for the first time (sans my mom) are no exceptions, and for me, the learning curve for this virgin territory was as steep as the face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
While Frank “the Tank” in Old School may not be a relationship counselor a la John Gray, he knows his stuff when he said, “Suddenly, you get married and you’re supposed to be this entirely different guy.” I didn’t realize I had to be a different guy.
When I proposed to my wife, I knew I was ready for marriage. I knew I loved her. I knew that one day she would be a wonderful mother to our children. When we were engaged, we talked endlessly about what our lives would be like as husband and wife. We chatted about where we wanted to live, where we would take vacations, our career aspirations, our favorite names of our children-to-come, and even the breed of dog we most wanted.
However, what I didn’t fully comprehend and what we never discussed while engaged or early on in our marriage was what my wife was expecting of me as her husband. I’m not talking about being faithful, honest and supportive of her. Those were a given.
Although she didn’t tell me, my wife was expecting me to be an attentive, thoughtful, considerate, and more sensitive person. Now that I can act as a Monday morning quarterback, these are reasonable expectations. But at the time, nothing in my prior ecosystem prepared me for fully understanding and gleaning these qualities. My brothers (despite the best efforts of our mom) and my guy friends didn’t think twice about being selfish, thoughtless or crass with each other. That’s just how we were. I was now living with a person who was the complete opposite, and my wife was also expecting me to be more mindful, a word I am certain I never heard while living with other guys.
To say this was not an easy transition for me, is an understatement. For decades, I had just been one of the guys, and being one of the guys was antithetical to my life and role as a husband.
A leopard, they say, can’t change its spots. Could a guy who was naïve — perhaps clueless — about the nuances and idiosyncrasies of a woman’s mind, needs and behaviors change his very nature?
Sort of.
After hearing “It’s not always just about you” from my wife, I understood my world had changed.
While I sincerely tried to be more considerate and mindful, I just couldn’t escape my past that easily.
Not too long after the cereal incident, I invited my brothers and a friend over to our house to watch a football game. Our den had an easterly-facing wall that featured floor-to-ceiling windows and French doors. As a result, the room got ample sunlight in the morning. We hadn’t put up curtains because the room was in the back of the house and there was no need for privacy.
The byproduct of having a wall of windows was that the glare from the sun made it difficult to watch TV in the morning. This wasn’t a problem until football season began, and I found myself watching 10 a.m. games under intense sunlight. Although the sun’s glare would permeate the den, when I watched a football game by myself, I just angled the TV set away from the glare. Problem solved.
The morning I was expecting the guys was especially sunny and I quickly realized it would be tough for the four of us to watch the game with the room consumed by sunlight. I then had (what I thought was) a great idea. All I needed to do was block the sunlight from coming into the room. I went to the laundry room, grabbed an old blanket, a hammer and some small nails, and proceeded to nail the blanket up so it covered the windows and blocked the sunlight. Sure, it was a Rube Goldberg job, but I was proud of my solution — that is, until my wife arrived home (before the guys showed up) from church and saw the faded old blanket hanging there.
Our conversation went like this:
“What is that (the blanket) doing up there?” she asked.
I said, “It’s just up there to block the sun so we can watch the game.”
“Take it down,” she said.
I said, “But it’s blocking the sun from — ”
My wife didn’t let me finish my sentence. She said, “I don’t care. Take it down. Do you think we live in a barn? That’s so random. How would you like it if we showed up at someone’s house and they had a dirty old blanket hanging over the windows?”
I tried to explain to her that the guys wouldn’t care, but she cut me off mid-sentence and said, “Take it down. Now!”
Down came the blanket.
Later that day my wife explained to me that what’s readily acceptable to my brothers, my friend and me is not acceptable to her (or most wives she knew, for that matter).
Those two incidents happened fairly early on in my marriage and while I tried to use them as learning opportunities, every so often, even after several years of marriage, I would revert to my old ways. While I didn’t regress on purpose, at times, it was as if I doubled down on my uncouth behaviors.
Did I say or do something foolish at social gatherings that embarrassed my wife? Check.
Did I disappoint her by not planning or giving her something for her birthday one year? Check.
Did I upset her by dismissing her intuition as being thin-skinned and overly sensitive? Check.
Each faux pas I committed was followed by a lesson learned. Eventually, after accumulating these marriage debits, I realized it’s one thing for someone to accept a guy for who he is; it’s another thing to be married to (and put up with) him. I didn’t wake up one day and have this epiphany. Like a glacier moving across the North Atlantic, it happened slowly. But I realized that if my wife and I are to be married until our Social Security checks run out, I had to make some changes. I had to become more mindful. I had to change my very nature, which had been instilled in me decades earlier.
In our more than 22 years (and counting) together, my wife has shown amazing patience with me. She has remained true to the person she was on the day I met her.
Me? Well, I am mindful, but I still occasionally mess up. As the youngest of our three daughters recently said to me, “Dad, you’re like Mom’s fourth child.”
Bob Marsocci is the author of You Exhaust Me, A Clueless Guy’s Guide to Marriage.
