Wanted to throw out a couple of links for you all.

Make it Better’s list of 8 Reasons to Date a Dork. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself…really!

The Manival #3 is up at Schaefer’s Blog. Read it, Digg it, Stumble it, then come back here and read some more.

The single most helpful instruction I’ve read about making money online has been through Grizzly Brears’ website, How to Make Money Online for Beginners. Great step by step instruction on increasing the CTR of Adsense ads.

Coming up today on A Good Husband: Dealing with the pressures of being a man, husband, and father.

For those of you who don’t know, Twitter.com is an invaluable resource. I like to tell people it’s like a cross-breed between instant messaging and social networking. Like my Facebook account, I can add hundreds of friends, but when I send a message out on Twitter (short, limited to 140 characters) it goes out to all of my friends. The best thing about Twitter? I’m friends with a bunch of people that I could never get face time with, but they actually respond on Twitter. It’s like being able to get short, extremely valuable consultations for free.

In the spirit of Twitter, here are the ways Twitter has helped my marriage:

- Given me good ideas for dates.
- Met local people who had advice for good local restaurants.
- A little cheering section when I need encouragement (guys say, “yeah, I did that too”).
- Lots of random ideas for blog posts about marriage when reading other people’s tweets.
- Spawned intense discussions on my blog (and others) about marriage.

Follow me on Twitter.com and join the discussion!

My wife goes crazy when wives get upset at their husbands for not getting them gifts on Mother’s Day. I find it rather amusing. What’s going on with that?

I am often amused at how commercialized holidays are. Here in America it’s as if buying things on holidays has become a national pastime. From Wikipedia:

“For example, according to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts — like spa treatments — and another $68 million on greeting cards ^[2]. Mother’s Day will generate about 7.8% of the US jewelry industry’s annual revenue in 2008. Americans are expected to spend close to $3.51 billion in 2008 on dining out for Mother’s Day, with brunch and dinner being the most popular dining out options ^[3].”

Even my church goes out of its way to provide flowers for all of the mothers on Mother’s Day.

Now, I’m not saying that celebrating motherhood is bad. Far from it. I love my mother and always will. What I don’t understand is why men have to feel obligated to get their wives who don’t have children something for Mother’s Day.

Usually I advocate doing more for wives. Today, I have to say that I’m tired of hearing about how women should get something simply because they may be mothers some day.

Is that so bad?

This is a post in the Good Husband Series. A series meant to highlight husbands who go the extra mile to care for their wives.

Just in case you hadn’t noticed, I wanted to point out my subscriber numbers in the top left. A Good Husband finally broke 100 this weekend! Also, be sure to tune in tomorrow for the second edition of the Manival - a blog carnival for men!

When I was a teenager, I had a really, really bad temper. Throw chairs at people bad. I overcame it but every once in a while it sneaks back up on me. I had an experience yesterday that reminded me to be ever watchful of my temper.

I lost my temper on the basketball court.

What I usually do in this situation is brood about what I did and sulk for a little while. What I realized this time, however, is that I can take what I have learned about apologizing to my wife and apply it in this situation. With that said, here are my steps for apologizing:

Feel bad for what you’ve done. Remember when you were a little kid and you hit your sister? I don’t because I’m an only child, but for those of you who do, what happened when Mom found out? She told you to apologize, right? Most little kids will grudgingly acknowledge that they’re sorry, and we call it good. This doesn’t work for adults. In order for an apology to be effective, it must come from the heart.

Admit what you’ve done wrong. A personal pet peeve of mine is the propensity some people have to apologize for everything. They perceive someone getting upset and they automatically apologize, even if they haven’t actually done anything wrong. If you actually feel bad for something, at least to yourself, you should acknowledge what specifically you’ve done wrong.

In the context of my marriage, this is sometimes a challenge for me. Sometimes my wife is upset and I have no idea what I did wrong. These are the times when I have to just suck it up and ask what I did wrong, then try to listen very intently.
Ask for forgiveness. This is the step that many people just jump to right off the bat. As my wife so often tells me, saying “I’m sorry” just doesn’t cut it sometimes. Make it less about you and more about what the other person needs, which leads to my next point.

Make restitution. Just asking for forgiveness is often not enough. Sometimes you’ve cost someone an opportunity, you’ve ruined a beautiful dinner that your wife had planned, or broken your child’s favorite toy. It’s really only a true apology if you can make better what you’ve taken away.

Don’t do it again. Perhaps this seems a little bit obvious, but if you apologize for hitting someone, and then do it again, you’re not going to be seen as very sorry, are you? The same thing applies to ruining dinner, yelling at someone, or forgetting to respond to an email.

Some additional thoughts:

We must remember that apologizing is not weakness. I know a guy who refuses to apologize. He’s a real stereotypical “man’s man” kind of guy. Very full of himself, loud, obnoxious, and belligerent. He refuses to apologize and it drives every one around him crazy. If he would just apologize when he knew that he had done something wrong, then he’d probably be a lot more tolerant.

If you find yourself apologizing over and over for the same thing, you’re doing something wrong. Perhaps you keep doing that thing over and over again, or perhaps you’ve not properly made restitution.

Last week I wrote a post about how much time is appropriate to play Xbox in a day. Turns out that the appropriate time is about 90 minutes, with my wife. We borrowed Guitar Hero II from a friend last week. My wife, who is a complete video game neophyte, actually had a really good time rocking out to the likes of Thin Lizzy, Guns N Roses, and The Rolling Stones.

I’m impressed with the current generation of games that are out. When I was a kid, it was all fighting games and fantasy RPG’s. The sports games were junk and had no appeal. As the technology advances games like Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and others make video games more interesting to a wider audience (read: girls).

To quote Art of Manliness:

“The Manival is a blog carnival for men. The idea is each week a different man blog will aggregate the best man posts from around the man blogosphere. The first edition was a big hit! We received 20 manly submissions that would put hair on any man’s chest who read them. Next week, A Good Husband will be hosting the Manival. If you have a man post that you would like to include, submit it with this handy submission form. Submissions are due by next Monday.”

I’m trying out a new sidebar widget. On the right hand side you will notice the Skribit widget. If you have any suggestions on what you would like A Good Husband to write about, simply click on the What Should I Write About header and type your suggestion or question. You can also vote on suggestions that you like!

Let me know what you think!

So, I did it. I went and bought Rock Band for the Xbox 360. I played it with my wife for about 2 hours on Saturday, 2 hours Sunday night, and another 2 hours on Monday night. We’re officially addicted. This is the first video game that my wife has actually liked.
The month of March has been a lot of fun. There’s been a lot of growth throughout the Man and Daddy blogging community, and A Good Husband has benefited from that a great deal.

My favorite posts for this month have been Discovering Dad’s post on What Moms Think About Marriage, The Man Page’s List of Dads on Twitter, Frugal Dad’s suggestions for changing your way of thinking about saving, Persistant Illusion’s letter to America’s Husbands, and Art of Manliness’ Manival and the series on living a virtuous life like Benjamin Franklin.

Growth over the month of March basically tripled, hitting 9,789 unique pageviews. I flirted with 100 subscribers towards the end of the month and ended the month with 89 - so close! I promised myself that once I hit 100, I’ll publish one of those little Feedburner icons that shows how many subscribers I have.

The most viewed posts on A Good Husband in March were:
10 Ways to Be a Good Husband
Husbands, Dads, and Social Media
GSP is a True Gentleman
Effects of Pornography on Marriage
My Husband Plays Xbox Too Much

The top websites that referred traffic to me were:
ArtofManliness.com
AnneofGreenGables.com
WifeAdvice.com
NormalMormons.com
BeingMichaelsDaddy
I also got some nice traffic from StumbleUpon and Alltop.com.

With all of the media coverage in Texas surrounding the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), I feel compelled to speak out. Many of you know that I am an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), commonly called Mormonism.