Laws of Attraction

I was reading my sister’s blog about how she built her marriage, and now her family, on a love of cool cars. I know that their marriage has a lot more going for it than just cars but it illustrates the intricacies of attraction. I met my husband when I was still a dumb kid. Oh, I thought I was an adult and had everything worked out in my life, but that didn’t stop me from falling for him without consulting any sort of “good mate” checklist before saying “I do.” I had met his parents once and I hadn’t run a credit or background check. My parents couldn’t see the attraction—we had nothing in common as far as they could see, but I loved his smell (the animal part of attraction) and I loved him. Case closed. We got married. We’re just a few weeks away from our twentieth anniversary and a lot has happened during those years. We discovered that we have loads in common. My husband lives for the home-improvement project. There is nothing he would love to do more than remodel an old house top to bottom and he’s practically done that with the home we live in today. As it turns out, I love those projects just as much as he does. I plan, he builds. But that’s not the only thing we have in common—actually the list is extensive. We both like boating, and we’re both ridiculously ambitious, we love our kids—but we’re not really baby people, we like our alone time and we love to cultivate friendships.


My question for today is this: How did a dumb kid like me fall for my perfect match without even knowing I was doing it? And how did it take a bunch of analysis for you to fall for your perfect match, or did it just happen?

I read an interesting book called Blink by Malcolm Gladwell where he explains that we make a lot of lightning fast calculations in our subconscious before making a decision and that generally, when we try to rationalize that decision we fail miserably. We can’t explain why we know something is right—we just do. Our failure to make a good decision often comes after the fact, when we’ve already made a speedy decision, and we begin to analyze and question that decision in an effort to make sure that we’re making the right one. So maybe that’s the secret to attraction--instantaneous evaluations being made in a part of our brain we hardly know exists. We don’t know why a guy gets us firing on all cylinders—he just does, and as we spend years building a life together we slowly uncover the reasons why our subconscious was so mesmerized with him in the first place. Makes sense to me—what about you?

The Protector

It’s date night and my husband and I sneak off for a really good hamburger and a really big bag of popcorn topped off with a coke the size of a garbage can. We are watching the new Robin Hood movie mainly because I’m hoping that Russell Crowe will be “Gladiator” hot in this movie instead of “State of Play” hot where is body had gone to pot but he was still intellectually stimulating.


As the movie progresses, I catch myself being pulled in to the love story between Robin Hood and Maid Marion. All love stories pull me in—I’m a chick, but this one is different. Marion has been on her own for ten years, in charge of a large farm and equally large group of people and she is more than capable of the task. Shortly after Robin Longstride arrives and assumes the role of her husband, we see Marion begging the Friar to return the seed that the church has collected as a tax. She argues that her people will starve if there is nothing to plant. She appeals to his heart in every way she can, but he won’t listen. Heartbroken, she rides away but Robin promptly leans over and threatens to tell the church about the Friar’s extracurricular activities unless he hands over the seed. That night Robin and his men take the seed and plant the fields that Marion has painstakingly prepared for planting. When Marion wakes, she finds Robin sleeping in front of the fire his face sweaty and his clothes dirty. The look of love on her face reveals every woman’s heart. It says, while I am completely capable of handling everything on my own, I don’t want to. What I really want is someone to take care of me. Be my protector.

I love men. Somewhere deep in the sole of every man is the need to be a provider and a protector. When men embrace their essence, they shine. As women, we have fought long and hard for equal opportunities and we deserve them but we still need men. I wish all men understood just how much. If they did, I think there would be less affairs and broken homes. When I watch news stories about another girl being hurt at the hands of her boyfriend, I wonder why we are having such a hard time teaching our sons their role in the lives of women. Maybe it’s because we don’t let men know how much we love them for being men. Today I am going to let my husband fill my car with gas and I’m going to thank him for doing it. I am going to ask my son to hold open the door for me and for the woman coming in behind me. If the battle for equality has taken something away from our men, I want to give it back. I want them to know that I need good men and I am now recommitted to teaching my sons how to become good men.