I sometimes wish I could record the conversations between my friend and I. She speaks words of plain truth, and hold no punches back, even the ones that hit below the belt. I often walk away disliking her, and later thinking back and having to grudgingly admit she was right, not always, but often enough. It helps that she speaks from a woman's perspective, and doesn't bother to cover up what is the truth with honey coated words to bolster a man's ego.

So tonight we went to the movie 'the ugly truth'. It was funny and not a bad movie not great but a laugh here and there. The interesting thing was the conversation it sparked afterwards over burgers and beer at a local pub. While similar to the conversation I last posted about, it too touched on the subject of lies and the truth. We talked about whether such things were actually important and why lies happened.

The same truth came forward, you can't really ever tell when your partner lies. You don't know when a woman fakes an orgasm, or the number of men shes has been with prior to you. You will never know if your actually the biggest man she has been with, or actually the smallest. My friend explained that a woman has no reason to ever tell the truth.

Ultimately such numbers, sizes, etc are all there merely to feed the male ego. As long as we men care about such things, the answers from our partners will always be the same. Your the biggest, very few men, you give me multiple orgasms each time, I would never have sex with a man I didn't love.

I find it fascinating that as long as the truth matters to us men, that we shall never have it. Should the answers cease to matter, women would tell us the truth, but we would no longer care enough to ask. It almost sounds like enlightenment.

In a way knowing such a truth brings a feeling of peace, freedom, and a bit of sadness. Peace and freedom knowing that I can never know sets the mind free from ever having to wonder. If it cannot be attained then there is nothing to consider any longer. Sadness because I feel the desire for truth, but know that I cannot truly ever know for sure that the answers are true. The questions like my friend explained actually matter not at all.

Knowing would not change my opinion of my wife, but I know her answers are tailored to make me happy. An odd thing that, my wife would lie to make me happy, but were I to know that she had lied it would make me sad. Which would you choose the lie that makes you happy or the truth that might not?

Consider for a second, you wife goes out with friends gets drunk while hanging out, and ends up sleeping with another man. Your relationship is great, if you never find out you live another 60 years in marital bliss, if you find out you divorce and become a bitter man for the next 60 years. Which would you choose the truth or the lie?

I suppose I am rambling a bit, while siting there we talked at much length about somewhat philosophical ideas about relationships etc. I found these thoughts going through my head and sought an outlet where I might write them down to study another day and perchance to think about them at length. Hopefully these thoughts will somehow allow me to become a better man, who cares for what is actually important, and maybe even allows me to make her happy.

An interesting conversation occured today while talking with my mother. It was again on the topic of perception and how each person percieves the world around them. My mother asked a question of me that gave me pause for a second. She asked 'what if your wife doesn't notice all the work you have been doing for her?'

It was an interesting thought, and one that deserves some consideration. I have known people that only notice the negatives in situations. While my wife is not one of these people, there may be times when a lot of effort to make her happy will result in the exact opposite. If my actions make her unhappy am I supposed to take consolation in my effort?

The more I thought of this issue the more I realized that I am unable to affect the perceptions of others. Each person makes a choice each and every moment to decide how they will percieve the world around them. Events beyond my control could very well change my wife into a woman who would never be satisfied with anything I do.

A meteorite could also strike me dead right at this moment. I thought, I considered and then I realized that all this thought was a simple waste of my time. I cannot affect how my wife will perceive my actions. I cannot stop meteroites from falling. These things are beyond my control, and to worry about them would eat my mind from the inside out.

I love my wife, and with anyone you love, you must show it. They must know without a doubt that you truly cherish them. I will savor each day and find what happiness I may in the little and big things that occur in my life. I will march forward and love my wife in the best way I know how and let life happen as it may. I will live my life such as I would have wished it the day I lay upon my deathbed.

Should my wife not percieve the things I do for her, it will not matter. In my mind I will know what I have done. What matters is that I do my best to make her happy.

So the last few days have been going well, I have ramped up my exercise to three a days (running in the morning and before bed, and swimming at lunch). I had been very happy with my progress however it has somewhat stalled as my father is visiting from out of town and wanted to order pizza, and had also brought a large tray of brownies. Sigh, so the diet restrictions went out the window for the last two days, but I am hopeful that the exercise will allow me to maintain the weight that I have lost.

When I am on my own again I hope to continue on my journey to being sub 200 lbs. should I make it I think it will be the first time I am under 200 in the last eight to ten years. With luck my wife will be impressed with the new slimmer me. Sadly she didn't notice last summer when I lost 25 lbs. If nothing else I can console myself with the 'at least I am in better health' line.

I am reading the massage book and think I will start with foot massages and work from there, the other thing I have been thinking about is where to do massage in the house, as supposedly the bed is too soft for good pressure. At present I am considering using a futon on the dinning room table with a nice fuzzy towel as a cover? I will have to do some more research, there has got to be a website about it somewhere.

I read something today that got me thinking a bit. In the book I was reading it was talking about letting go ones expectations in a marriage. The idea being that things will never go exactly as you expected them, and to base your happiness on having things happen the way your imagination has set them up is doomed from the start.

It got me to thinking though. What are my expectations for these changes I am trying to make, and will I be disappointed if they don't make my wife happy?

The exercise and doing one thing a day to make my wife happy has been going so so. I wanted to lose another 10 pounds or so, but haven't been putting as much effort into it as I think I should despite trying to exercise a little every day. I need to step it up if I want to impress my wife with a slimmer me upon her return. I resolve to put more effort into it, and I will let you all know how it goes on the next actions post. Perhaps a daily log of food intake vs exercise?

As for the one thing a day, I have started the sending of the cards and will be continuing for another 15 days or so until I have sent them all. I emailed my wife with the general happenings in my life, and of course sent my love. All of which is tempered by not really being able to see my wife's reaction to anything. I hope she likes the effort I am putting forth, we shall have to see upon her return.

Since I cannot think of much more to do, as usual I have turned to myself for improvement. I guess I am one of those self help/self improvement nuts. I enjoy trying to learn/acquire new skills. It is something I think simply adds to who we are as people, the more we can do the more we are. I once spent six months (every day off) with a man who has become a good friend helping him build his house from the ground up. I did this to gain skills in carpentry, construction, and general house building/repair.

In the past I have also bought and studied some other books which I thought would help me to make my wife happier. These have ranged from relationship psychology books (not really sure these actually helped) to books about the female body, and how best to stimulate and pleasure women. I think as a man this is very important to study since I don't think most father son relationships in America really cover it. My parents left most of it to the public education system, which great idea is to give you anatomical charts and then make you carry a 10 pound bag of flour around to make you understand what will happen if you get a girl pregnant.

Anyway for the men reading, or the women who want to buy to leave it where they might see it, I do recommend the book 'She comes First' by Ian Kerner. It is a must read. Continuing in that direction today I picked up a book about massage. While I considered myself no slouch in this department, I can't say I have really gone out of my way to give my wife massages. Often she complains about being ticklish and declines the massage.

However last year on her return from Japan instead of waiting for her arrival I jumped on a flight and surprised her at the connecting city. While there I had rented a car and scheduled a hour long massage at a local spa. I then took my daughter to the Zoo and we had a good time while my wife got the stress of a long flight from Japan with our daughter rubbed out of her system. I wasn't sure how it would go since I know how ticklish she always seemed to be whenever I tried to do the same. However lo and behold she had an amazing experience and was very happy.

All of this tells me, it is not a massage that my wife dislikes, but rather my massage skills are not up to par. So I bought 'Massage, mind and body' by Larry Costa and will be studying it for my wife's return. Once I have had an adequate amount of time to study it and decide how best to apply what is inside I will write a review of the book and whether it was worth the fifteen dollar investment.

As always I am doing this to make Her Happy.

I promised to explain this idea for making my wife think about me although she is far away. I am not sure where I had originally heard it, or even if it was anything similar to what I eventually did, but it went basically like this. Romantic husband/boyfriend out of the blue starts sending mail to his wife/girlfriend. They live together so he is basically mailing it to his own house, with his significant others name on the address. He does this for 10 days or so, mailing one a day, so that she recieves one letter a day for ten days (I am guessing on the day number).

I think it was my wife who had mentioned it to me some time back about how romantic it was. I agreed completely, and even if I hadn't, I still agreed completely. Actually, I did think it was a wonderful idea.

As I sat in my apartment thinking 'what can I do' this idea came to me. I decided to make cards with short notes telling my wife about things going on here, or how much I missed her, etc. Each card was just meant to be a reminder of me and my love for her. These cards were not shouting "I LOVE YOU", but rather simple messages that implied it.

The next thing I did was create a puzzle message with the cover of each card. I proceeded to paint a letter on each cover, which when put together tells my wife that I love her and miss her. On the interior messages i tried to create a nice script on the interior by using calligraphy, which I learned way back in high school. To be honest maybe I should have left what I learned back in high school, I am really rusty with calligraphy.

My foremost thought after completing all the note cards, was a wish that I was a better artist. It is not that I can't create nice art, but that it has been such a long time that my skills are horribly atrophied. If I were to try for perfection, I can't say that I would be any happier with the outcome, and I would probably have taken days longer to finish it at all.

I am hopeful that in this case my intent is more important then my actual lack of skill at the moment. I will just have to practice art and writing for future potential projects. I can only hope that the intent will shine through and make her happy.

The other day a friend and I were talking when the subject of what I was doing in my spare time came up. What followed was an awkward explanation of this blog and my hopes and aspirations for it. I found it a little hard to explain what I was trying to accomplish and why I was posting it on the Internet.

However as I spoke I found that the process of talking aloud to someone else helped me to solidify my intentions and grasp of what I want. An interesting analogy came about in our discussion. My friends has two roommates, a couple of college students, who according to her just don't 'see' things.

What did she mean? It was primarily her complaint that they didn't clean up around the house, simply because they didn't notice it was dirty. Of course, before things could get out of hand, she had already stepped in to clean it up. So in the lives and perceptions of these college student age roommates of hers, the house was clean magically!

The thing that most interested me in this was the idea of perception. What we as people see and notice. What our habits cause us to unconsciously miss, and things we do without realizing it. My goal is to make my wife happy obviously. However it in my opinion is simple, and yet complex.

Simple in that it is the simple everyday actions and thoughts that allow us to have wonderful, happy relationships. Complex in that often we miss these simple things because in our perceptions they do not exist, or are beneath our notice. When we do something to irritate our significant others, very few people will say they did it on purpose. More likely you will hear that it was unintended, or an even more defensive stance such as 'why should it matter?'

I want to notice, I want to see. Yes it is simple, but it requires being able to notice the little things. It requires a change in my perception, which I think is a complex change overall. My goal in this blog is to write down these things, these observations, so that I can analyze and re-analyze, and perhaps even get the opinion's of others later down the line should my own analytical abilities fail me. I want to see the dirt that would irritate my wife, the habits I have that make her annoyed.

I want to be a husband worthy of my wife, and one that makes her happy.

So over the past three days I made an attempt to establish 2 new habits. These were a regularly scheduled exercise time, and doing one thing for my wife each day. My major thought after three days has been, 'hm that could have gone better'.

I suppose it should have been expected considering when people start anything new, results are usually a little poor in the beginning. I exercised 2 out of the 3 days, and skipped the middle day do to being stuffed. Looking back, I think I could have at least gone walking. I think I should have put forth more effort.

As for doing something for my wife each day, I sort of did it 2 out of 3 days. Day one ended up being a phone call, which, while it was a form of interaction, I can't say it was different then any other phone call. What am I trying to say here? I want to be different, to consistently do new things, I count the phone call, but wish it had been something more. I don't have a clue as to how I would make a phone conversation into something more, but I think that it might be something worth looking in to in the future.

Day two was a bust for my wife as well, nothing got accomplished. I suppose in my defense I did see a movie that day and go to a barbecue with my mother, brother and sister until late in the evening. It is going to happen but, I need to persist around days like that and make sure to establish my new habits firmly. As for the third day I actually did two separate things for my wife.

The first was to organize for flowers to be delivered to her in Japan. (I had the help of a good friend who is fluent in Japanese) The flowers are actually for our fourth wedding anniversary, but I can't say I really think they are a great gift. I am not sure if I am a little odd here, but to me a gift should be something that is more about time then money.

Time is something that is limited to each person, where as money often isn't. My point is that it took me all of 15 minutes to get those flowers sent to my wife. 15 minutes is not a lot of my time. Granted, the time it took me to earn that money should also be counted, sort of. What the flowers do say is that I remembered, and cared enough to let her know I remember that date. However that's about all I think that means.

My idea of a good gift that means something is usually something that you can use, or something that inspires emotion in you. I think that the amount and time and effort put forward into creating/acquiring said gift go along way towards inspiring emotion. The reason I don't like flowers is that they don't really take a lot of effort to accomplish.

The second thing I did was to create a series of cards I plan to send my wife. I think these actually are a decent gift. However this particular blog has gotten a little long, so I will end it here and continue my discussion about these cards later and how I think they will make her happy.