I don’t know what this means…

Jeff Hentosz almost nailed it. Where I grew up, it seems that sniping, snarking and outright ridiculing your dearly beloved seems to be how people deal with issues. Yanno, rather than actually talking them out with their spouses.

However, in our experience, NOT bitching about your spouse (especially at the behest of your spouse) is what gets the “whipped” tag. Apparently, all the macho men are supposed to demonstrate their independence from whippery by showing how uncaring and badass they are when it comes to haytin’ on their ladies. OTOH, the ladies would be mortified to be overheard saying something positive about their men, lest they be mistaken for one of those disgusting Stepford wives who are willfully blind to the popular notion that men suck and women are better off without them, period.

It’s relationship 101, as imagined by “Married With Children.”

@Andrew

Hubs and I have come to the mutual conclusion that we both got remarkably lucky, especially considering our situational options and the personality bell curve inherent in our collective cultural upbringing.

If our lives had followed predictable paths, I’d be married to some southern redneck loser, with 3 kids and a job cashiering at WalMart, while he’d have been pulling a dark-thirty commute both ways to the nearest factory trying to keep up with the whole wife/house/kids trifecta. Or in prison. Even odds there, and not specifically because of anything he was doing. It’s just where a lot of bored, broke and angry Southern men end up.

But I really think those behaviors of mine that you’re lauding are just a natural by-product of the fact that I’m 90% geek, ergo innately practical (unless I fail my saving throw vs shiny), essentially devoid of traditional romantic notions, and almost entirely incapable of suffering fools gladly.

But that other 10%? Pure woman, baby, right down to my auxiliary burrito storage facilities. Which are, nicely enough, fairly evenly distributed for optimal balance of mass and efficiency of movement. Gotta love good genes.

1) Never buy roses.

I wouldn’t make that a hard and fast rule. I love the smell of roses, so when I’m getting myself flowers, I usually add some roses–as long as they’re the ones that smell good, not the ones for show (If I want roses for show I’ll buy dried roses).

I haven’t been able to grow roses very well–just the smaller, tougher species, that 1) don’t smell quite as good, and 2) drop their petals in a day or so.

Now I want to go buy myself some flowers, since the current bunch are really starting to wilt.

1) Never buy roses.

This is just way to cliche’d. This despite the fact that roses are my favourite flower. In my last house I had a 17′ x 35′ backyard and I managed to plant about 30 rose bushes; obviously most were mini’s.

2) Never try and arrange the flowers yourself.

Florists are the pro’s at this. Having dated a florist’s daughter, I learned that flower arranging was the part of the job they liked the best. I am also no good at all at flower arranging. It all adds up to leaving it to the florists to do the arranging.

3) You don’t have to spend too much money.

I pretty much tell my florist, I want a $10, $15.00 or $20.00 bouquet and I get a nice one. Flowers are really one of those things where it is the thought that counts.

4) Don’t make flower buying a regular habit.

It keeps it special when you do buy it. With my last girlfriend, I would keep an eye out on when the bouquet started to bad. Sometimes it happened after two weeks, sometimes after three. I then thought about buying flowers. I figured if it became a routine that every saturday I bought my girlfriend flowers, they would stop becoming special.

5) Don’t buy yellow flowers.

No particular reason for this. I just don’t like yellow flowers.

cheers
Andrew

But it’s a random holiday. Which means it could crop up again next week, next month, or in the middle of the summer.

Geeky Girl:
What’s funny is the fact that some wives would feel like their husband must have done something wrong and had to order flowers.

Well that’s because some men like my husband just never think to do things like this.

Which is why I buy myself flowers. Because I get enjoyment without wasting time dropping hints to the man who is incapable of picking them up. (I mean that in the best possible way. I adore my husband, but he isn’t so good with gifts and or spontaneous, so I just buy myself things I want, and it works out well for everyone.)

As to why flowers–because aside from pointsettas and Christmas cacti, neither of which have floral scents–my garden and plants are done until the crocuses and snowdrops come up in spring.

I’ll stick my nose in and guess that Soni is talking about demurring when conversation among respective groups of friends turns to “Our husbands are such thoughtless slobs,” or “Why are all these chicks such basket cases” and so forth. Among many of the guys I knew in school, this behavior was likely to elicit cat noises and proclamation of adjectives such as “whipped.”

I’m guessing that this related to the, “Oh…nothing *sigh*” phenomenon. ”

I’ve heard that women such as you exist. Never seen one. Your hubs is a lucky man, though I don’t know if you’d think so.