I Ain't Much to Look At…But My Wife Is!: A Man's Guide to a Long, Successful Marriage

By Arnold E. Harner

Marriage: Best Friends; Battles; Phases of Love; Biology; and Parenting; get all this right and youll have the perfect marriage; right? Come on! Dont be an idiot! No-one can give you the perfect recipe for getting a marriage just right. We are all different; with different upbringing, attitudes, wants, desires, needs, and baggage. Although making a marriage work isnt rocket science it does require a good amount of common sense, and a great amount of selflessness. It means at times giving more love than you get, and being ok with
that. It means being devoted to that special woman as long as you both shall live. It also means using your head for something more than a hat rack and making good, sensible decisions. Be the strong loving husband and father your wife desires and deserves. Marriage is an ever-evolving dance. No man and no secular book will have all the answers youre looking for; but this collection of life experiences and relationship research is one great place to start!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781465330185

Arnold E. Harner

Freelance author, speaker, musician and playwright Arnold E. Harner lives just outside Atlanta with his wife of thirty years, Lisa. Relationships are his interest, and forming a great marriage relationship with his wife, his passion. He has been a professional speaker and teacher for over twenty years and strives to share his thoughts and insight with humor and compassion. His strong and loving relationship with his wife has helped him gain membership in the ranks of cancer and openheart surgery survivors.

Book preview

I Ain’t Much To Look At . . .

But My Wife Is!

A Man’s Guide to a Long, Successful Marriage

61627-HARN-layout.pdf

Arnold E. Harner

Copyright © 2009 by Arnold E. Harner.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Make Sure Your Wife is Your Best Friend

Chapter 2

Pick Your Battles

Chapter 3

Change Your Definition of Love Along the Way: Phases of Marriage

Chapter 4

Buckle Up! Mother Nature’s About to Visit!

Chapter 5

Give the Gift That Keeps on Giving: Love and Laughter

Chapter 6

Don’t Make Your Wife a Single Parent!

Chapter 7

It’s Okay to Be Number Two

To my wife, Lisa, who has been my best friend for over thirty years.

Preface

First of all, let me say that I don’t have an MD, PhD, OG, or LMNOP after my name. I’m just a regular fifty-something-year-old baby boomer who’s been married to the same woman for almost thirty years. I’ve been with her for more years than that, and I can’t imagine my life without her. I think that, along with a lot of research, qualifies me to share with you guys seven areas that I’ve found will make for a long and successful marriage.

If you’re like most guys, you don’t really care to read a lot (unless it’s the pages of Sports Illustrated or Playboy for the articles), so I’ll try to keep this entertaining and to the point. If you’re in a serious relationship and ready to commit to the marriage scene, engaged, a newlywed, or been married for a while, I hope you’ll find something helpful in these next few pages. Like I said, I’m not a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, or even a counselor, but I have interviewed hundreds of men and women – most of them married a minimum of twenty years – and compiled their results as well as my own thoughts in the pages of this book. I hope this collection of information and insight will help you on your life’s journey with your wife, especially if you’re still young. After all, it was Benjamin Franklin that said, Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. When it comes to marriage, maybe you can develop wisdom quicker than I did. Life is a series of lessons, some we learn from to make our lives better, and some we don’t. This book is full of commonsense ideas and strategies you can use to make your relationship with your wife (or future wife) so much better. There are a lot of tools at your disposal found in these pages; use them wisely and often. I’m not a genius, but I’ve tried to learn from my mistakes and from the wisdom of others. Common sense goes a long way to making life easier and to making marriages last. By the way, kudos to Dr. Phil for parlaying commonsense life’s lessons into a multimillion dollar pot of gold!

Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.

 – An Wang (Wang Computers)

Chapter 1

Make Sure Your Wife is Your Best Friend

A friendship like love is warm; a love like friendship is steady.

 – Thomas More

I believe the Free love, if it feels good do it battle cry of the me generation is a bunch of crap. With the divorce rate peeking in 1981 with almost 53 percent of marriages ending in divorce, the me first mind-set hasn’t worked out too well for us. However, according to Divorce Magazine, the divorce rate has been steadily declining since 1981. In 1990, it was 47 percent. In 2000, the divorce rate was 42 percent. And in 2005 the divorce rate had dropped to 36 percent. Wow! You’re probably saying to yourself, This is great. The divorce rate has fallen over the past twenty-five years from almost 53 percent to only 36 percent. What a great trend. People are actually staying married. In a way, you’d be right. But as Paul Harvey would say, And now, the rest of the story. See, the thing is that the percentage of heterosexual couples who have gotten married has dropped in the last twenty-five years too.

What’s the deal? Why aren’t as many couples getting married? Well, we could blame it on a lot of things. One thing might be that growing up in a single parent or blended family home has something to do with it. A study done by Rutgers University in 2005 concluded that only about 63 percent of American children grow up with both biological parents. Sadly, this is the lowest rate in the Western world!

A lot of people who grew up, and those who are now growing up as children of divorce, tend