Patton studied Rommel. Fischer studied Spasky. You study Tae Kwon Do, or fantasy football league stats, or whatever. Anyone who ever wanted to be great in his craft studied it as a practice. And you must study your wife. It is the only way to be good at this and to have even half a chance at moving from surviving to thriving in marriage. But how?
You live with her, right? So wake up and pay attention. Notice her habits, how she goes about her day, what she chooses when nobody is watching. You need to become a student of this woman. Here is a short list of what you might consider as the required study areas for this new expertise you are going to build:
- Ask her women friends what she likes and dislikes. They know a part of her that you may never see, or that she may be too nice to discuss with you.
- Look through her memorabilia, you know, photo albums, scrap books and the like. Does she have a drawer with keepsakes in? If you don’t feel like it is a violation of “off-limits” territory, look through it and get a new look at your woman.
- Watch what she wears both when she dresses up for an occasion and when she dresses down to relax.
- What does she do to unwind? Where is her favorite place to go?
- We realize we repeat this ad nauseum but listen to what she talks about. But here is the thing you should do with it – look for the pattern. What do all these themes suggest when taken as a group?
What else could you study?
Here’s the bottom line: You cannot claim to love your wife if you do not know her well enough to look at her daily with compassion. You must learn enough about her to know that when she hurts it is her reaction to something, that when she is angry, you know what it is in her that she is trying to protect. The more you know about her the better you will be able to look with compassion and understanding at her. Having compassion is not feeling sorry for her – it is a deep understanding that carries with it an ability to alleviate her suffering itself. When you do this, her moods will not trigger your “equal and opposite” reaction, but instead will be fielded with compassion and understanding. When you know her that well, your ability to love her through whatever she is feeling will heal and nurture her. And that, brothers, is loving her!
