This weekend, I’m taking everything I own and sticking it in someone’s truck and asking them to drive across town with it. That’s right, I’m moving. I hate moving. You hate moving. Let’s just get that out of the way, right now.

As a husband I find it difficult to maintain my cool with my wife when I’m moving. It’s stressful, and it’s expensive. Every time we move I think, “We have way too much stuff. Ugh.” Luckily for me, my wife, and our marriage, I have learned the fine art of asking for help.

No Man is an Island

It is the stereotypical male that stands around silently suffering doing things he doesn’t want to do, which are necessary, without asking for help. Old schools of thought imply that asking for help is weakness, less than manly. Guys, that’s just not true.

Wives are amazing. Especially my wife. She has got all the goods when it comes to intellect. When we decided to move, she swung into action, planning how we would pack, and she did all the packing herself while I was at work during the day. There was some limited help from me with the heavy lifting, but for the most part, it was all her. Seriously? Wow. She deserves that Cheesecake Factory Chocolate Mousse Cheesecake that I bought for her last night. Her only rule was that if she asked me to help with something during the packing process, I had to just say, “That’s a genius idea honey. Of course we’ll do it your way!” I then added a big cheesy smile like Dick Van Dyke.

The Law of Reciprocity

One of the funny things about the not asking for help thought process is that many of those men who won’t ask for help are more than willing to sacrifice to help others, but they refuse to ask for themselves. If you are willing to help other people, you should receive help in return. That’s how the universe operates. Luckily for me, I’ve always been the kind of guy that’s willing to show up for others when they need help moving. I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve helped friends move. I’ve moved a lot of pianos, washing machines, chunks of solid iron…and I’m not a very big guy, people!

My friends are there to help me out. I have to be one of the luckiest guys in the world. When Lissie and I decided that we were moving, we mentioned it to a few friends, and now we have 4 - 6 strong guys coming over Saturday to help us move our stuff. My wife has girlfriends willing to help her come and clean up. How great is that? We even have a friend who just moved into town, literally days ago, who is willing to come and help us.

God is good, and he blesses me. Prayer is a mighty form of asking for help. Plus, how can you feel less manly asking God? You already know he’s bigger, faster, stronger, and smarter than you. There’s no shame in asking someone like that! Of course, it helps that our church has Articles of Faith that deal with this situation. You Mormons out there know about the Fourteenth Article of Faith which states, “We believe in helping people move. Any size of house, any size of moving van. Yea, verily, and verily thus if there is a person within the sound of our voice who hasn’t yet moved, we will help them move and the Relief Society shall then bake them funeral potatoes.” If you’re not Mormon and you get that joke, well, then you must live in Utah.

Working at being an island is hard work. An acquaintance of mine knew that he and his wife were moving last week. He knew weeks in advance. On the day of the move, it was over 100 degrees. He didn’t ask anyone for help. He didn’t reschedule the move for a weekend so that the heat would be less or so that a few people could help. He and his wife moved everything on their own. I remember how cranky doing that made me. I can’t imagine what it was like in that kind of heat.

In all seriousness, fellas, it’s okay to ask for help. If my friends weren’t helping us, I’d be a angry, stormy mess and this whole moving into a new apartment experience would be much less pleasant.

Hey everyone!  The Manival is back!  It was such a rousing success last time, that I have gladly accepted the opportunity to host again.  Just in case you don’t know, the Manival was started by Brett at ArtofManliness.com and for the past 3 months has been circulating around the internet, showcasing the best articles on Manliness that manly bloggers have to offer.


BTW, the pic to the left is from PersistentIllusion.  It was used for the Manival before, but I love it so much I had to bring it back.  Thanks Persistent!

Relationship Advice:

A Husband presents Make Out With Your Wife posted at iamhusband.com.

Bob presents Don’t Axe Me About That posted at Stormbringer’s Thunder.

Fatherhood:

Apparently some men are feeling a little need to lay down the law as Derek presents Discipline :: Stick To It posted at The Man Page and Dad of Divas presents Maniverse #9 - On Becomming a Disciplinarian posted at Dad of Divas.

Mike Carr presents Dadosphere Launch Contest posted at Dadosphere.

Corey Allan presents Man Up: Tuck Your Kids Into Bed posted at The Simple Marriage Project.
  
Some great (and slightly off-beat) how to’s:

Kevin presents Manliness Trait: Treat The Speaker As The Most Important Person In The Room posted at Return To Manliness.

Dr. Awesome presents Dog Names posted at To Every Man A Manswer.

John presents a great self searching post, Harrowed Parent: How to Be a Man posted at Harrowed Parent.

Dustin Boston presents How Ditching My Gas Lawn Mower Made Me Love Cutting the Grass posted at dBlogIt.

Andrew presents A Gentleman’s Guide to Dinner Manners posted at Primer.

Well written musings on manhood:

Scott Moore presents House Arrest posted at Always Leave You Wanting “Moore”.

Jeff Tincher presents Why Can’t I Relax? | Daddy`s Toolbox posted at Daddys Toolbox.

Israel presents Don’t Ignore the Man Boobs on My Chest posted at Fat Man Unleashed.

James Hills presents Rock and Roll, Video Games, and Uber Chic? It’s Hotel Sax Chicago! | Mancation Hotels | Man Tripping posted at Man Tripping - Guys Weekends and Mancations.

babbo presents Time: The Slippery, Fleeting Thing That Doesn’t Really Exist posted at Daddy Brain.

Join all of the greatest male bloggers over at Miserere.org for this week’s Manival - a collection of the best articles written on relationships, parenting, sports, combat & courage, and even some how-to articles.  Started by Brett at The Art of Manliness, the Manival has hosted an incredible array of talent.  BTW, I’ll be hosting (again) next week, so submit your article here

My personal favorites this week?  I just discovered Silly Dad via the Manival, so I have to give him props for his How to Balance Being a Parent with Being an Artist.  If any of you have been paying attention, you’ll remember that I’m also an artist, so it strikes a special chord with me.

You should also thoroughly enjoy 20 Reasons Husbands Should do Housework by John at Harrowed Parent.

Go check it out!

After I got married, my social life suffered.  It took a while, but I got things rolling again with a (mostly) new group of friends.


Perhaps not unsurprisingly, most of these new friends were married.  Sure, I had a few single friends, but most of them were out doing things that I had little interest in doing - like dating and finding girls to date.  Single guys just seem to have a different mind set.  It’s not bad, I understand it.  It’s just different.

The weird thing is that it seemed like my married friends were more interesting.  Instead of talking about that hot something-or-other, we were talking about politics, religion, kids, and literature.  Different priorities, I suppose.  It’s not that I didn’t talk about those things before, but it mostly happened in classrooms, not in living rooms.

The biggest thing that changed about my social life after getting married was the structure of my socializing.  Before I got married, I had friends that I could just call up and hang out with, or I could even just show up at their house.  We could just sit and shoot the breeze or go grab a drink (a non-alcoholic, non-caffeinated, usually carbonated drink).

After marriage, everything became even more task oriented than it was before.  Instead of just calling up a friend, I began finding excuses to socialize.  There would be a new movie that my wife didn’t want to see, so I’d find some other married guys to go see it with.  A few of us started a regular RPG gaming group (If you don’t understand RPG, that’s okay - you’d just make fun of me).

I’ve been married for almost six years and I still do it.  Perhaps I feel like I have to justify the time away from my wife.  I’m getting together with a good friend this weekend to watch the UFC fight (btw, if anyone actually thinks that Forrest Griffin can beat Rampage Jackson, I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona…)  If there wasn’t a UFC fight, we wouldn’t be getting together.

Then there was the time issue.  Initially, when I started hanging out with guys again after marriage, I would go out at 5 PM, for two to three hours, and I felt like I had to go home, or at least check in.  I was that guy - the one that all of my friends rolled their eyes at, and, I’m just now realizing, this was probably the biggest reasons my single friends thought I was so awkward to hang out with.  If you can follow that last sentence, you are very good at imagining what my tortured punctuation means.

After a little while, I went too far the other direction.  I’d go out with friends and stay out until one or two in the morning without calling my wife at all.  That didn’t go over too well either.  I’m happy to say that now my wife and I have struck a pretty good balance.

Now, all that said, what good did this do my marriage?  Find out in the next post…

Enjoy this article?  Check out these posts:
How My New Social Life Saved My Marriage
How Marriage Hurt my Social Life

Yesterday I read SavvyDaddy’s rather profound exploration of what I consider to be one of the strangest phenomena of marriage and fatherhood: the crumbling of male social networks.

SavvyDaddy talks about how becoming a Dad was rough on his social life, not because he became too busy, but because everyone else around him thought he was too busy.

Before I got married, I was a bit of a socialite. I had lots of friends, went to lots of parties, and pretty much never wanted for company. I had a group for sports, a group for video gaming, a group for church activities, and there were a fair number of friends who crossed over between those groups.

When I was first married I didn’t care about my social group for a little while, which is perfectly normal, I think. I focused on my wife because our marriage was so new and it made me so happy. After a few months however, I began to want to spend some time doing things that I had been doing before, like playing basketball, gaming, or what have you. Of course I wasn’t looking to invest the same amount of time as I did previously.

The difficulty I had was that now that I wanted to go back to those previous activities, I found I had no one to do them with. Friends that were formerly people that I spent enormous amounts of time with suddenly couldn’t find time in their schedules. I even had one friend tell me that he didn’t want to hang out with me. When I asked him why, he told me it was because I was married!

I was devastated. I know that the traditional stereotype is for men to be loners and not need anyone. That’s what the man cave is for, right?

Wrong. Every guy needs a buddy or two, and I need a social life!

It took some time to readjust. After a while, I began venturing out with people from my new church congregation. I tried joining a club or two during college. I even tried to hang out with some classmates. It was strange to me how long it took, since it wasn’t like I moved to a new state. I was in the same area that I had lived for 8 years.

After about 18 months of marriage, I had finally found a couple of guys that I felt comfortable around, that had similar interests to mine, that I was really good friends with. About six months after that one of my best friends from high school got married and we started hanging out again. Another friend moved back to my part of the state and we got together again.

Finally, after about two and a half years of marriage, I had a group of friends that felt somewhat similar to the group that I had before - guys that I could call up to go see a movie, grab a bite, or just hang with for a little while.

It’s amazing what that did for my marriage.  In the next post, I’ll talk a little more about that.

Just in case you’ve been hiding under a rock and don’t know about the Manival yet, hop on over to ArtofManliness.com and join us in reading this week’s tips for the best articles on family, manliness, fashion, and more.

My personal favorites this week?

Sprezzatura.  Don’t know what that word means?  I’m going to start using it more often.  It’s an old word for what amounts to chivalry now.  Great word.  I like words.  Read the article written by Alessandro.

Chivalry is not dead.  Paul Cat refutes my assertion that chivalry is dead because men are killing it.  It’s about time someone disagreed with me.  I was getting a little full of myself.

Image courtesy of think2ink.wordpress.com

Men may not comment much on Daddy Blogs. They also may not comment much on websites about how to be a good husband. Men also, apparently, don’t think much of chivalry. You know where they do comment though? They comment on websites about how women are entitlement princesses, gold diggers, and whores.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have come across a couple of blogs that I originally thought were about male empowerment and becoming a better man. As I read posts however, and read comments and participated in the discussions, I discovered that these sites were more about enabling men who don’t want to step up to the plate and make the world what it could be.

These men have several flawed arguments for not stepping up.

- Feminism teaches women to disrespect men. While certain elements of feminism are anti-male, that’s not what feminism is about. Modern feminism is about women taking their rights into their own hands, being strong enough to stand for those rights, while at the same time still owning the right to be feminine in speech, dress, and manner.

- Women don’t want men who are strong leaders. Also not true. Women want men who are good husbands, fathers, and friends. Part of being a man is stepping up and using those uniquely masculine traits to make the world a better place. Glenn Sacks can come up with all the examples he wants of crazy, spiteful women whom no one would trust. Meanwhile, there are millions of women who quietly wish their man would step up to the plate, or who proudly support the man they married - who is a strong leader in the family and the community.

- Women now get better treatment than men in the media. I wish this fallacy would go away as well. While it is definitely true that man bashing is now in vogue with the media, that doesn’t mean that the degradation of women has lessened to a noticeable degree. We still see women as sex objects in advertising, the sexualization of little girls, and depiction of women as vapid, weak willed airheads. Too bad stereotypes are such easy advertising tools.

There are men out there who step up to the plate, don’t get me wrong. If you’re a Daddy blogger reading this, you’re most likely one of them. The Daddy Bloggers of the world have to understand that we live in a skewed world view, however, and that there are still plenty of men out there who sincerely believe that:

- Chauvinism is okay.
- Men don’t have to be leaders & providers.
- Pornography, voyeurism, and casual sex are okay.
- Physical, Emotional and Sexual Abuse are okay.

So how about it? What are you doing each day to help the world be a little bit better place? Do you stand up for what it means to be a real man? Do you stand up for chivalry?

Related Posts:
She Can Do Better Than You
Duties of A Husband
A Good Husband is a Real Man

Discovering Dad asked his readers what brings out the kid in you? I have always thought that a good husband should be able to let loose and play (I do have a degree in theatre…) a little bit. And, of course, a good husband will, in most cases, become a good father. If you can’t let your inner kid loose when you’re a father, when can you?

For the last two Summers I directed Beauty and the Beast and Seussical the Musical for a children’s theatre camp in Los Angeles. I led 116 kids, 20+ staffers, and a handful of crew members to produce a musical of epic proportions.

I loved the experience. I had a wonderful, wonderful time.

I got to be silly.

Each morning we led the kids in vocals and physical warm ups.

I taught them how to perform. They taught me how to play…er, something like that.

Even though they sometimes drove me crazy

They were all absolutely adorable

and I made friends for life

I’ll always remember my two summers in Los Angeles and what a joy the kids were. I love being able to let loose and let these kids know that it’s okay to let their imaginations run wild and try any crazy thing that might come into their heads.

Come on guys. Don’t talk bad about your wife. It’s pretty much the opposite of being A Good Husband.

The other day I was telling my wife how irritated I get when I hear men engaging in wife bashing. You know what I’m talking about. Guy gets irritated at something that his wife did, or he arrives late to the game and everyone gives him a hard time, so he starts talking about how it’s all her fault, listing everything she did wrong, and then looking around for sympathy.

Some other guy feels bad for him, even identifies with the situation perhaps, and then chimes in, “Yeah that totally sucks. One time, my wife…” Pretty soon, everyone’s joined in and the men are laughing and joking and…trash talking the women that they chose to spend the rest of their lives with.

Something is wrong with this picture.

You might chalk it up to a guy needing to save face in front of the boys. You might blame it on him not thinking that what he’s doing is wrong.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it’s never okay to talk badly about your wife, for the following reasons:

You chose her. Presumably, unless you are living in an arranged marriage, you chose to marry your wife. You met her, dated her, spent a lot of time with her, and asked her to marry you. Chances are she hasn’t changed much since you married her. If you didn’t like it then, why did you opt in?

You made a vow to protect her and cherish her. Most marriage vows say something to that effect. Even if you made up your own vows or simply went to the county courthouse and eloped, the idea is the same. Marriage is a contract that implies a certain amount of duty to each other.
She should be the priority. After making sure that your own physical and spiritual needs are met, your wife should come before work, school, friends, and family. Looking good in front of the guys and scoring points with your coworkers should never step in front of that.

You look like a spineless coward. Only the most craven of men think that making fun of a woman is funny. It takes a real man to stand up and say, “Hey, I love my wife and if she needs my help, then I’m going to give it, even if it takes time away from the guys.” Which brings me to my next point…

Next time you hear a man bashing his own wife, do her, him, me, and every other guy a favor and just grab the nearest tack hammer and brain the guy. The world will be a better place.

Welcome to the second edition of the Manival. The Manival is a blog carnival that brings together the best posts by man bloggers written with men in mind. I’m really excited about the response we got for the first edition. We received 21 great submissions for the second Manival.

If you’re ready to man up, here ya go: