Watching the Today show this morning* while folding the world's largest pile of laundry and drinking the world's largest cup of coffee, there was a segment on an editor from Esquire who participated in a brain scan to determine how men feel love in the areas of lust, romance and commitment after being married for ten years and having three kids (which was surprising in and of itself since a slightly balding, pudgy, married dork is not what I think of when I here the phrase "editor from Esquire", it's more a perpetually single, spray tanned, European-cut-pants-wearing, metrosexual). I immediately hit record knowing that when Today is actually airing an interesting segment the baby is most likely to wander out of the room, dismantle one of the baby locks in the kitchen and empty and bulk-sized container of oatmeal all over the floor, and I had to see if the results were what I predicted they would be.
The first area tested was lust. For each area they showed, let's call him Brian, a series of photos to see how much his brain lit up in the appropriate areas. The picture they showed Brian of his wife was of her, topless, photographed from the back, wearing a sarong on the beach. I'm not talking Penthouse here. It was an amateur photo, seeming like it was taken by Bri on vacation. So my first question was, are people really taking these kinds of pictures? I get it when you're really young and careless about the numerous ways in which compromising photos can be disseminated with the click of a mouse, but the Mrs. was on set with him and the picture must have been taken recently or she's looked thirty-eight for a long time. Call me a prude, but were Hubby in the MRI tube, the most he'd have to look at would be a blurry picture of me in a bikini taken by his mother on a family beach vacation (if it weren't for her there'd be zero photographic evidence of my children's lives) - and in those I'd probably be holding one of the kids. H-O-T.
So, predictably, Bri's brain lit up in the "sex related" areas upon viewing the pictures. Or I guess I shouldn't say "predictably" because there are plenty of guys who are no longer attracted to their wives after their bodies go through the rigors of gestation and birth, and there's a special place in hell for them, but the Mrs. seemed to have held it together and wasn't wearing mom jeans, so Bri had a good shot at scoring high on the lust test. But don't they all? I could be covered in baby puke, eight weeks postpartum, and H would walk in the room as I'm changing my top, see me in a ratty nursing bra, and he'd still try for a grope.
Romance was the area in which poor Brian tanked. His romance area was as dark as the circles under my eyes during the scan no matter what the picture (oddly enough they did not show us the photo for this area, but what is a romantic picture anyway?). Again, predictable. After ten years most men consider taking out the trash to be a romantic gesture which IT IS NOT. But folding and putting away the laundry without being asked? Be still my beating heart.
And lastly, the results for commitment. Brian's brain lit up like a Christmas tree when looking at pictures of Mrs. and the kids which, after ten years had better be the case. So, while I was not surprised by the results overall, it was the strength of the reaction in the commitment areas that got me thinking. I figured that the long-married man would still be up for sex in the laundry room, and maybe not so into roaming he aisles of the local Hallmark store, but I never thought that maybe men actually transfer their romantic energy to commitment energy the longer they are hitched and wondered if we give them short shift. We think the romance dies, but maybe it just matures. A lot of lip service is paid to keeping the romance alive in marriages - dates nights, flowers, etc. - but what of the day to day things men do to show us how much they truly do care?
The lyrics of "Do You Love Me?" from Fiddler on the Roof get me every time and really illustrate the point, even though it's the wife singing the words:
For twenty-five years I've washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked the cow
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?
Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I've lived with him
Fought him, starved with him
Twenty-five years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?
I love the no-bullshit attitude about love in this song. That the way you love someone is not with all the Hallmark bullshit, but by working for and with them. Maybe ways men express their love evolve from the easy - remembering to buy a card for an anniversary** - to the difficult - getting up and going to work and not just filling a seat in a cubicle, but working your ass off, maybe at a job you don't particularly like, to support your family. Maybe they need to be given more credit for that. Perhaps the way they express their love isn't the flashiest or makes us feel like we're eighteen again, but a flashy teenager is not who I want next to me toiling away at the Sisyphysian task of raising a family.
So hats off to Bri and H and all the other men who prove their love in all the ways that could be called "boring". I'll take boring, because that kind of boring is what lasts, as long a we still fool around in the laundry room.
* While I maintain the ridiculousness of the stereotype that all stay at home moms do is sit around watching daytime television, there are days when I simply need some adult conversation, even it if it is one sided and with the nauseating Kathy Lee Gifford.
**Let this serve as your last reminder, H. The anniversary is THIS Friday.
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