Stephan Miller
What To Do When You Forget What Romance Is

What To Do When You Forget What Romance Is

My wife has put up with a lot. A lot. I am not a easy person to live with. I didn't start this whole internet marketing thing until we were about to have our son. Yes, I dabbled. Yes, I put some things up on Ebay. But that just wasn't going to cut it with a family of four. I was working a construction job and there was no way that was going to bring home enough for all of us. So she stood by me when I said I could do this. She stood by me when I said I needed more time at home to try to make even more money online. She had faith in me when I moved the whole family cross country to my hometown where the cost of living was supposed to be lower.
That move turned out to be a bad choice. You get what you pay for. You get bad schools. You get bad roads. You get a neighborhood full of people that you would never associate with. Did she blame me for this? No.
Now I tell her when need to make even more to get out of where we are to a better place. Does she understand? Yes. Do I understand what all this has done to her and to us? I tell her I do, but I am slow to learn. She is a much more patient, trusting, understanding person than I am.
We met online. Not through Match.com or anything like that. We met through a social network. We chatted for months and then she came to see me. We have been married now for 3 years. I would have never met the most perfect person any other way. And she it perfect. It's me that needs the work.
I love her and she loves me. We both know that. But the nights of me staying up late to get a handle on work and the weekends of telling the kids,"No, daddy has to get some work done." has done some damage to this love. I have forgotten how to bring it back.
Plus I am paranoid. One bad day of sales and I'm Chicken Little. The next day, I spend even more time here with this stupid machine.
The picture is one of my favorites. Shortly after we met, we took a motorcycle trip to the Salt River Valley. Our relationship just came naturally back then. We had just fallen in love. Every worry and issue could be conquered by that fact. The worries of the world were farther away and when they got close, we could handle them.
But the worries of a new family and bills to pay clouds what feelings and inclinations that would have come naturally in the past. When I was single, I read all the books you could think of on "How to Get the Girl." Because I was, to make a long story short, a nerd. But now, I am confused and lost. I know some things not to do, for example:

  • "Here's some flowers", as I try to take the $5 grocery store price tag off that I missed.
  • Pots and pans for an anniversary present.
  • Complain about working in an office every day, when she deals with a two year old monster all day.
  • Spend most nights working until midnight, when she goes to bed at nine.
  • Hire a babysitter and then spend the time at my parents house.
  • "I don't have time to study a book on romance."

Yeah, I can keep adding. But it's the "what to do" I want to learn. I am trying. I will start reading something other than the latest issue of Wired. Here are some posts I found:

To Be Continued...
Nobody Blogs About This.
Strange.

Stephan Miller

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Kansas City Software Engineer and Author

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