Brothers, (You Can) Get It Right

Excerpts from Chapter One

Many of us want to be good and faithful husbands and want to ensure that our wives are happily married. Many of us brothers want successful marriages.

It is possible for two lives, from different backgrounds and different histories, to come together in marriage and live happily ever after. It is possible for us to be great husbands and to have happy wives. Because of this conviction, I am inviting you, my brother, into an intimate conversation to explore the nuts-and-bolts of marriage and to crack the secret code and make it happen.

I will tell you that there are days that I do not like my wife, when I am not cherishing her, when I fail dismally in my efforts to honor her as the royalty that she is. On those days, the thing that keeps me grounded is my commitment to the commitment that I made to her. Recently, I had a great conversation with a woman who had recently lost her husband after forty-five years of marriage. She made a simple yet profound assertion. “I did not always like him, but I never stopped loving him.” That kind of devoted perspective is what keeps a couple together rather than claiming “irreconcilable differences” every time they hit a marital “bump in the road.”

Men do not have a problem with commitment. In fact, we are experts of commitment. Take for example the issue of sports. Many of us brothers love sports—not just one or two games but several sports. Recently, I was hanging out with some friends and was amazed at the depth of knowledge that the brothers had about football. I heard men reeling off statistics and fine details about past seasons and former players. One friend explained that for years he would brave inclement weather, freezing temperature, blistering rain, and snow simply to watch a game. Then there are those of us who plan our family time around broadcast times of football and basketball games. This goes on in and out of season. We are committed to the sport of choice.

Take the issue of work. Have you ever wondered about the devotion some men show toward their jobs? They hardly ever miss a day, they take homework at the end of the day, they often work overtime, and they would not think twice to cut vacation time to return to the office to complete an important project. There is a primal drive that energizes a man about his job. Now I know that you might be thinking about some brothers who are not motivated to find a job or others who do not care much for what they do. I would like to think of those as the exceptions. The rest of us gain a deep satisfaction from our jobs. Like the physician who runs from one hospital to the next to see patients, or the engineer who is always on-site to ensure the construction is executed well. Others include the accountant who spends long hours at the office, especially at year-end, the truck driver who makes sure that the products are delivered to distant warehouses on time, and the college professor who peers through microscopes and working on extensive formulae in the lab every day. When a man loves his job, he is truly devoted.

You see, whether it is sports, career, friends, politics, or women, men show astounding commitment to something that they love, something that generates indescribable pleasure, something that makes them feel important. Some men are committed to negative activities, such as drug trafficking or alcohol consumption, continued infidelity, or a life of crime. The point is that we might not use the word commitment, but we live it from day to day. In the same way, and with the same passion and zeal, we are called to demonstrate commitment to our wives. Once a brother acknowledges the worth and significance of his wife—that she is priceless, that she means everything to him, that she is the most important person in the world, and that he can never last a day without her—he is transformed into a committed husband. After that, it becomes second nature to be faithful, to be respectful, to be kind, and to be devoted and thoughtful.

If you buy into this argument about being committed to the commitment, you are on the right track and your wife would be impressed with you. Please understand, however, that it is not child’s play. This type of commitment is not for the faint of heart. Marriage requires courage, stamina, bravery, and dedication.

As we reason together through the chapters ahead, let us know that we can get it right. The double meaning of the title of this book is deliberate. When you read it with the parentheses, it is an encouragement from one husband to the other. When you remove the words “you can,” you end up with a command from the Commander-in-Chief, the one who created marriage, the one who expects us to step up to the plate and make our marriage work. We should not let Him down, and we should not let our wives down. When things go wrong at work, as they invariably do, we men dig our heels in, roll up our sleeves, and find ways to make things right. When our favorite team does not make it to the playoffs, we analyze and strategize, because that is we as men do: we fix things.

Essentially, this business of marriage is therefore not to be entered into lightly or ill advisedly. Some of you reading this book might be already married and might have moments when you wished you had not done so. Not all is lost. As we engage in this conversation, know that it is a man-cave environment. We intend to look at some hard issues, but in the end, we know that we will be stronger, better husbands.