Once when I was a cube dweller, toiling away at my computer, I received a call from the company operator asking me to come up front. When I arrived, she pointed to a gorgeous bouquet. My favorite wildflowers exploded from a vase. As I returned to my desk carrying the gift, at least half a dozen co-workers smiled and asked the significance of the day. "It's no special occasion," I replied. "My husband sent them 'just because.'"
"Wow, what a romantic guy," several commented. I sensed they might be a tiny bit jealous of my knight's seemingly spontaneous attentiveness.
The truth is, my husband is one of the world's greatest guys, but he's about as inherently romantic as a water tank.
So why on earth did he send me flowers for no ostensible reason?
Because I asked him to.
Maybe you're smarter women than I, but when I married, for some reason, I was absolutely certain Steve would understand me and know what I needed without my having to say a word.
But after a few years of marriage, it hit me one day, like a bolt of lightning, that he had not a clue about what emotional support looked like for me. It's not that he was unwilling to do what I needed. It was that I had never told him.
So when he sat as unmoved and silent as a totem pole when I poured out my heart, he didn't know that what would help would be a hug or barring that, an occasional grunt to notify me that he was actually listening and not trying to figure the odds on the next Lakers game.
How could he know that on my birthday, I would not be ecstatic to receive either a black satin bustier or an alternator?
And why would he think that his idea of a great vacation, traipsing through dozens of ruins over the age of 500 years, would depress me?
He thought and acted as he did not out of some desire to annoy or hurt me, but simply because I'd made a terrible mistake. I'd assumed that if he loved me, he would know my needs. But he didn't.
He was and is, after all, a human being. He has his own likes and dislikes. He functions from his own experience of the world, not mine. How can he possibly know what I want unless I share it with him?
Here's why my husband sent me those flowers. At the beginning of the year, I had gotten a hold of his day planner. At the front I'd inserted a typed list of several dozen activities and gifts I enjoy and appreciate (many cost nothing). Then, every few weeks, I'd jotted a note on the calendar, "Do something special for Lynn." Each time that year he came across a note, he would check - continued below ...
