(as submitted by Lea for “She Say’s”)

A real man is a woman’s best friend. He will never stand her up and never let her down. He will reassure her when she feels insecure and comfort her after a bad day.

He will inspire her to do things she never thought she could do; to live without fear and forget regret. He will enable her to express her deepest emotions and give in to her most intimate desires. He will make sure she always feels as though she’s the most beautiful woman in the room and will enable her to be the most confident, sexy, seductive, and invincible.

No wait… sorry… I’m thinking of wine.
Never mind.

I raise my glass to those who are lucky enough to have found a real man, as well!

It’s probably a good idea for you to first read the article linked to this post before reading my thoughts on it below.

www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=137298

As much as I hate to think that this person is correct in his opinion, I believe he could have hit the bulls-eye!

Marriage really doesn’t work, at least not like it used to. We have become a society of me rather than we people. Marriage after all, is just too hard for most people to become adept at, mainly because there is very little incentive for them to do so. People used to marry for love but if you ask couples today why they are marrying, most place love at the back of the list, and some never even mention it. It’s usually “we’ve been together for years and it was time”. How can anyone expect a marriage to last if that’s a reason to get married. Time together should never be a reason to marry.

Marriage works if both people want it to. Period, end of story! If you aren’t fully commited to making your marriage the single most important thing in your life, it’s probably doomed. I always beleived that if a person put their spouse’s feelings before their own, it would increase a marriages chance of survival. Too often I am around friends that talk bad about their spouse openly. I also witness couples that curse at each other. I have never in my life,heard my parents curse at each other. You need to respect your spouse and treat her that way. Never talk bad to people about her or curse at her like you curse at friends or others, especially when in a disagreement.

I am one of the unlucky ones who married then divorced. I am also one of the luckier ones who found the right girl the second time around. When I married the second time, my mom told us both, just one thing. “Be kind to each other”. That’s all..just be kind. Sounds corny huh? I sure as hell thought so. But after thinking it over  I conscientiously tried it. It makes sense too. It can only make your wife love and appreciate you more if you treat her kindly. Kind words, hold hands, little notes in everyday places, open doors for her (ALL THE TIME) and treat her like a woman used to be treated when our dads were young.

Yes, maybe the institution of marriage as we know it is doomed. And maybe its because we have forgotten what is truly important in our lives because we have all gotten caught up in computers, long hours at work, reality television  and what makes me happy. We allow our lives to become so complicated that we often don’t think about how to make our marriage better but just let days turn into years without thought of how it is actually falling apart. We allow our childrens’ interests to rule our marriage and forget that at one time, when they weren’t around, we were both what was important. Now, many husbands that started at number one in their wife’s eyes may very well be three or four, depending on how much she loves her parents and pets…

The formula for a good marriage isn’t that complicated. It just takes two people to be committed to making each others happiness the most important thing in their lives…Pretty simple huh?

Some one tell me why in Gods name would ANYONE, man or woman buy a candle for a man? Does a person stand in the middle of a chachki store with scented candle in hand with a smile on their face and say” Wow, Joe is going to love this!”

Men don’t do well with gifts. I can understand now what my dad went through all those years for birthdays and Christmas. How hard it must have been for him to smile when inside he was probably thinking” What the hell am I going to do with this singing fish?”

Men don’t do well with gifts especially when women buy them. Not always but most often true, women don’t get us in life, so picking gifts for us is just nuts. Most of us have everything we want, unless its too expensive to buy, which means we aren’t going to get that as a gift from someone else!

So what do you buy for the Regular guy? Probably nothing. Unless you pay attention to what he does in life and especially in his spare time, then nothing works better that a gift card.

In closing, perhaps an example of such a tragic gift story would be fitting. This is what happens when, not one, but two women engage in what they believe is the perfect gift for yours truly.

At some time in my past I mentioned that I always wanted a small pair of binoculars. One that I could easily carry, you know, like to the beach to check out bikini clad women ( What? Were you thinking I was going to say for a sporting event!). So armed with this information, my wife sets out to buy me the gift I always wanted!  UNFORTUNATELY, she shopped at a store that a woman she knows owns and this woman proceeded to talk her out of the small pair of binoculars. She instead, thought that a singular monocular would be much better for me. So, that Christmas, I got half the gift I always wanted!!

To be honest, in the end I did get my binoculars about two years and three gift occasions later but I figure you get the point. This past year I started a list with details like brand names, model numbers, colors, and even a contact person from which to buy these gifts. Not bad huh? Get to it guys……Merry Christmas!

Just one man’s opinion…

The Regular Guy

Hey, that's just not a safe riding style....

For those of you who never saw the movie “Wild Hogs”, you should if you want a good start to understanding why men ride motorcycles.

I can remember being a child and what my first impressions of motorcycling were. The thing I most remember is my moms cousins and their “motorcycle garage” behind their house. Back in the sixties cut up choppers were the thing to have and at any given time you would see a large variety of them at their garage.

As a child, you can not help to feel awe at the sight of tattooed men with all that iron and noise around them.  Even at this age I still find myself in awe, at times, when I am surrounded by motorcycles. It’s like being in the wild west without the guns.

But even though I have always had a love of motorcycles, it wasn’t until I reached forty or so that I truly appreciated what it does to enhance my life.

Having a motorcycle in itself doesn’t necessarily bring excitement and adventure. It is with whom and what you do with it, that makes motorcycling a great thing. Nothing else exemplifies this more than owning and riding a Harley Davidson. It is like belonging to a club with out walls and rules. It’s a fraternity with out the hazing.

The absolute best reason for riding is the people you meet and become friends with. Someone tagged it “male bonding” but I think that’s a load of commercial crap. Yeah we all get along, but I always think of bonding like a bunch of men sitting around singing Kum Ba Yah. That just isn’t happening. What happens is that the motorcycle becomes the common denominator that brings together men of all backgrounds. Doctors, lawyers, chefs, Realtors, electricians and so on, just wanting to do one thing. Experience life through simple transportation and being able to share that with someone else who can understand it.

A lot of people always ask me why we get together to take a trip and ride for hundreds of miles a day.  They think its boring because you have no one to talk to, like you would in a car. They can’t understand what reason we would have to go to Ohio, for instance. What could possibly be a reason to ride there. This is the one thing people don’t really understand about motorcycling unless they ride one. The trips aren’t about the ride itself but the friendships that come from them. The best part of the ride is always at night when you pull into a new town, and go out for a steak, some drinks, and laugh your ass off about the events that took place that day. There aren’t any phone calls from work, no bills to pay today, no kids to drive to soccer, nothing but you and that bike and your friends.

I just spent the better part of four days on a ride that rolled up 1200 miles. On that trip I got to spend time with my uncle, that I probably would never have done with out our motorcycles. We were all drenched in rain that was so heavy, we had to dry our boots on the heaters in the hotel rooms. I smelled the aroma of at least 12 different things that I would have missed if I were in a car. I got to act like a college kid again, when we all did shots of Vodka in a small cafe in State College Pa. I experienced roller coaster excitement on rte 322, where roads were cut out of the sides of mountains that were so steep that trucks had to ride their brakes just not to crash.

There’s a saying bikers have, “Ride to Live, Live to Ride.” which just about sums it all up. At no point in my life have I ever felt as alive or as free as I do when I ride.

So here’s to my friends “The Mild Hogs” and to another safe and successful trip…

The Regular Guy

One minute things are as they always are. Happy, easy going and with no real thoughts about anything. Then in an instant, it changes.

Now you both aren’t talking. Well you talk but the words aren’t the same. They are short and given without intent to provide honest conversation. Even touching each other is awkward when it used to be natural. Almost as if you both forgot how its done.

Saying I love you now, is like giving in, when at a time like this, it is when it’s needed most. It’s been written that love meant never having to say you were sorry. Well men, that is not true.

Saying your sorry, especially when you feel that your side of the rift is the correct one, is the only way out of this mess. The problem is that it is always you that has to be the one to do it, in order for things to be normal again.

As hard as it is to always have to be the one to say “I’m sorry”, its even harder to live with the fact that you always give up what  you believe in just to keep the peace.

Maybe its just part of being a man. Maybe because our feelings can be hurt or we can be upset and then just move on. Start over when things are said and done like nothing happened. After all most men argue and then have a beer and its all forgotten. I guess it just isn’t that easy for women.

So now it’s just a matter of how long you decide to let this linger before you break the ice and clear the air, because you know she’s not going to do it. It’s really unfortunate that it has to come to this especially when you both know that the what caused this wasn’t even serious.

So with mop in hand, it’s time to clean up the mess you helped create.

Funny thing is that once its all cleaned up, it’s like it never happened. Back to hugs, back to kisses, back to meaningful conversation…..

Just one man’s opinion

The Regular Guy

“Age is only a number”! I used to hear that all the time when I was a kid and visited my relatives. The “older” ones, would always say things like that when they talked about getting old.

Something that has always fascinated me about age is when I look at my parents, no matter how old they were, they always seemed “old” to me. I can remember when my dad turned fifty and we gave him a party. I thought he was so old then. Now I think I must have been nuts to think that because I am that age now and I still feel like I am in my twenties. Probably how he felt then too.

A big part of aging is definitely a mental thing. Unless you are ill or in very bad shape, getting older happens so slowly that its hard to believe that you are old. I know this because when I look in the mirror, I see a very different version of the man I see in my head. If it wasn’t for reflections, I probably wouldn’t believe that I was indeed as old as I am. Getting older always seemed at least ten years away from where I am at.

I do however know what reality is. As a man, I know when I got old. Although I believed I knew when it happened, I wasn’t sure if it was just me who felt this way. That was until this past Saturday night, when a friend of mine mentioned to me the same thing I had believed was the measuring stick for when a man gets old.

He said that he knew he was old now because young girls don’t notice him anymore. When he said that I couldn’t believe it. He just said what I had thought was the reason I was old. I first noticed it when being in a bar. Girls would say “excuse me sir” when they needed to get past me. And worse yet, they didn’t even look at me when they said it. It used to be they would at least make eye contact with you. My friend said he realized it was happening about two years ago. We compared notes and both figured that for a guy, it was a true gauge to when we get old.

I sit in the chair and get my hair cut. The girl is maybe 36 yrs old and shes talking about meeting a guy. Her parameters are that he has hair, teeth and no more than forty because that would be too old. Wow, forty huh?? I laugh about it and say something and naturally she says that I don’t look my age but the point was already made. Forty seems to be the cut off to being young.

So my regular guy friends, get ready. Age will creep up on you and blindside you when you least expect it. One day shes cutting your hair and the next day she’s trimming your ear hair. Life’s funny like that. It takes hair from where you want it and puts it where you don’t.

So in reality, fifty ain’t so nifty but it’s better than the alternative. Anyway, by my calculations, I still have at least ten years until I…. get old.

The Regular Guy…

I just read yesterday in a current edition of Men’s Fitness magazine that men NEED to ejaculate at least 21 times a month in order to lower the risk of prostate cancer. Now unless you are a rock star or Tiger Woods, that just isn’t happening. My advice is to seek a prescription from your doctor, “once a day before or after meals” or just take matters into your own hands…..

So every one’s supposed to be monogamous, right? That’s the general rule when in a relationship, especially a marriage. So why then does monogamy seem so hard to make work?

In an earlier post I wrote about Tiger Woods past indiscretions. The other day I heard that Jesse James has been cheating on Sandra Bullock for some 11 months or so.

It’s funny that most  guys seem to take the “is he crazy, he cheated on Sandra Bullock” approach. Not quite the same response I heard from friends when Brad Pitt cheated on Jennifer Aniston, probably because it was with Angelina Jolie. Most guys gave him a pass for that, their thinking being he traded up! I especially love the celebrity marriages. Yeah, these always stand the test of time!

The point I am trying to make is these guys don’t cheat to be with someone “better” or “prettier”. Just look at the other woman in most public affairs that are uncovered. Most of those other women are downright gnarly looking. These men just get caught up in the celebrity that they are and ride the wave. Last week on WFAN radio in New York, Craig Carton spoke out about why he thinks these guys do what they do so often. He basically said that most men would do the same thing if they had such power of celebrity. That it is just too easy because women fall all over them and the power goes to their head and nothing else matters.

It basically boils down to ego and the rush you get from the attention you are being given. At some point in every guy’s life his relationship will be tested. The men that fail can not control their ego, and the wave they are riding. Nothing else matters to them, not then and especially  not later, no matter what they say when they get caught. That’s why these guys keep doing the same thing over and over. There isn’t a force on earth (other than drugs) that I know of that can make a man cheat. He makes the choice, plain and simple.

Monogamy only exists  for men who make the effort. The men who put other things from their relationship before their own ego. It also helps to have a partner who recognizes that our ego plays a large part in how satisfied we are sexually. Men need constant reminders that their partner is interested in them, excited by them and happy with them sexually. That is why so many men wind up cheating after children are brought into the relationship. They become ghosts to their partners, and at some point they find those things that they lost, in another woman. That’s probably why so many celebrity marriages fail so often. They spend so little time with each other that the men can’t get those constant reminders from their wife so they look elsewhere. Why these women who marry them can’t figure this out by now is a mystery to me. Perhaps she believes she is different and he would never do that to her, after all she is Sandra Bullock!

A friend of mine sent me this one day and I saved it to read over and over again when I get lost in thought of where my life is leading to. It grounds me some and makes me remember what is important in my life and what I should be doing to enjoy it!!

Thanks Vic!

From: Vic
Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:09 AM
To: robert
Subject: Your Greatest Risk

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Your Greatest Risk
by Alexander Green

Dear Reader,

Ask someone what he or she wants out of life and you’re likely to hear a familiar litany: a great job, a loving family, a nice home, a comfortable retirement and so on.

But what are you living for? Of all the things you might pursue in life, which is the most valuable?

“Most people have trouble naming this goal,” writes William B. Irvine, Professor of Philosophy at Wright State University. “They know what they want minute by minute or even decade by decade during their life, but they have never paused to consider their grand goal in living. It is perhaps understandable that they haven’t. Our culture doesn’t encourage people to think about such things; indeed, it provides them with an endless stream of distractions so they won’t ever have to. But a grand goal in living is the first component of a philosophy of life. This means that if you lack a grand goal in living, you lack a coherent philosophy of life.”

There was a time when great thinkers sought to answer these questions. But no longer.

Modern philosophy has evolved into a specialized academic discipline that pursues arcane questions of no real interest to the general public. When was the last time you read or heard anything from a living philosopher?

Yet the ancient Greek and Romans obsessed over these questions. They strove to learn what was most important and how to achieve it. In sum, they wanted to discover how best to live.

Their answers evolved into stoicism, a philosophy that is not widely understood today.

The word stoic is used to describe someone unmoved by joy or grief, someone without passion. Yet that is not the stoic philosophy.

Stoicism is about pursuing a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling. It’s about healing the inevitable suffering in life – and achieving tranquility.

How is this done? Ancient stoic philosophers advised:

* Contemplating the transitory nature of the world around you

* Living in the present without fear of the future

* Banishing negative emotions

* Living according to your own nature

* Pursuing virtue

* Seeking courage and wisdom

* Living simply and frugally

* Mastering desire, to the extent that it is possible to do so

Sounds simple enough. But that’s deceptive, really. These tenets require work.

Living in the present without fear of the future, for instance, may seem impossible when we consider all the sad and tragic news that surrounds us.

Yet the stoic philosopher Epictetus reminds us that most worldly events are beyond our control. What disturbs our minds then is not the events themselves but merely our judgments about them.

And we can change these.

After all, there is little you can do to stop nuclear proliferation, global warming, the specter of terrorism, or The Great Recession. Yes, you can speak your mind, cast your vote, organize.

But worry? That solves nothing.

Likewise, the stoic advice to live simply and frugally could have saved millions of Americans who overreached a ton of heartache in recent years.

Limiting your material desires and craving for luxury enables you to save and invest more of your after-tax income. Paradoxically, the shortest route to financial freedom is to fight the acquisitive instinct and the desire to appear wealthy.

Too many imagine that if they just earn enough they can finally fulfill – and ultimately eliminate – their desires.

Yet nothing ever does. New desires spring up to take the place of old ones.

Recognize this and at least you can make honest choices in your life.

This point was made more than two thousand years ago in a well-known dialogue between Alexander the Great and the Greek philosopher
Diogenes:

Alexander: Diogenes, you are a man of great repute. Yet you spend your days untroubled, unperturbed, indulging in conversation and the pleasures of life.

Diogenes: Tell me what is so much better about the life of Alexander the Great?

Alexander: I am a conqueror of nations!

Diogenes: So, conqueror of nations, what are you going to do next?

Alexander: I will conquer Greece!

Diogenes: Yes… then what?

Alexander: I will conquer Asia Minor!

Diogenes: Alright… then what?

Alexander: I will conquer the rest of the world!

Diogenes: And then?

Alexander: Then… I plan to relax and enjoy life.

Diogenes: So why not relax and enjoy it now?

He must have made an impression. The great conqueror once remarked, “Were I not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.”

Diogenes lived according to his own nature, caring little for reputation, luxury or material possessions. Few would subscribe to his brand of extreme asceticism. But at least he had philosophy of life – and lived it.

Most of us never take the time to consider our grand goal. Instead, we choose society’s default position: the pursuit of affluence, social status and pleasure.

The problem with doing what everyone else is doing, however, is that you may mislive.

Instead of pursuing and enjoying what matters most, you could wake up one day to find that confusion and distraction have caused you to squander your one precious life.

And who really wants to take that risk?

Carpe Diem,

Alex