Introduction to the Access to the Boy's Club book

Part of maintaining a happy, healthy marriage is those nights you sneak away without the kids. If you’re lucky, as we are, you have family that pitches in so you and the wife can take a much-needed weekend to rekindle that romance. Sometimes, just a night or two in each other’s arms is all you need to renew those amorous feelings that drew you together in the first place.

It was on one of those weekend nights that my wife and I found ourselves childless, playing hooky in-town at a plush hotel. We met up with a friend of ours at a nearby watering hole and since neither of us drink much, we departed early, looking forward to maximizing our snuggling time together.

But something was bothering both of us. When we left the bar, our friend—who is married with children—was partying like a rock star, and it didn’t look like he’d be heading home to the wife anytime soon.

I kept thinking to myself, “What is a married guy doing at a bar without his wife this late?”

The cocktail lounge was only a couple blocks from the hotel so at last-call, I walked back to the bar and found my friend doing shots at the bar and making out with a woman who clearly wasn’t his wife.

As I walked back to the hotel, I kept thinking about all my friends whose marriages had been breaking up, whose children were suffering the ravages of divorce, and I was trying to wrap my head around my friend’s behavior. I knew he loved his wife and kids, so why was he behaving like an idiot?

I told my wife what I witnessed when I got to our room. She shook her head in dismay and said: “How dumb is she?”

With those fateful words, this book was born. She was referring to my pal’s wife, someone we both knew and loved and someone who’d put up with one too many lies.

Her query would ultimately lead to me undertaking this book project with the hope that people will read this book and know that good marriages do exist. It’s my belief that marriage is a powerful and wonderful thing and if you invest in some advance planning, you have the opportunity to create a union that will last a lifetime.

And you know what? I think that’s pretty damn cool.

The First Steps

Who do you love?

Men and women have their own friends, likes, dislikes, favorite places and activities, hobbies, pursuits and passions. When they marry, the dynamics naturally change, and one or both may expect the other to abandon some, many, or even all of the things that constituted their identity. A friendly reminder: the idea is to get married, not have one person devour the other.

Or recreate them. Or save them. Or fix them. Or, gasp, alter any aspect of them. The idea of “two becoming one” is meant to be a partnership, not consumption via imminent domain. It’s supposed to be marriage, not purgatory.

The greatest gift in a democracy is personal freedom. Stealing your spouse’s identity, confiscating the nature of his being, identity is neither free nor democratic; it’s a recipe for marital failure.

Ch-Ch-Changes

One of the first things that become apparent when people marry is the new elements that slowly reveal themselves now that “the two have become one.” Dynamics change, perceptions change, expectations really change. There are also new responsibilities that each person must undertake. One of them is allowing for the process of change to be a part of your new life together. Neither of you are going to remain the same, yet there are things about each of you that you will want to retain, i.e. your identities.

One of the subtleties that begins to take shape now that you are together much more often—and under new and different condition—is that each of you will start noticing nuances and idiosyncrasies that up till now had gone undetected, or simply didn’t mean much. For instance, during your dating days it was easy to focus on being in love and getting caught up in each other’s physical looks, mutual love, and the newness of the relationship, while ignoring some of the lesser defects each of you possess. An example would be having one of you demonstrate a mild possessiveness toward the other, making you feel “loved and wanted.” Once you’ve been married for a while, however, this same possessiveness can come to feel confining.

Case Study on Bill

Bill’s mid-life crisis hit him hard. He was a loving, faithful husband but the buck stopped there. He’d made no effort to maintain his looks and had gotten in the habit of eating piles of food nightly on the bed he shared with his wife in front of the television. Like Fat Bastard sitting around in his skivvies, Bill—once matinee idol good-looking—thought “till death do you part” meant not having to put any effort in.

Sure enough, his wife started to lose interest in sex and Bill began to suffer from depression.

Many friends of mine have gone through this, and in each instance, they’ve come to feel that the interest of their partner had waned. In time, this led them to the threshold of an insidious kind of trap. This loss of interest led a few of them to feel they had permission to wander. Dangerous territory. Don’t let an overabundance of comfort and trust begin to look like indifference. You should both hold yourself accountable to each other.

The last thing you need is to worry about what the other is doing when you’re not together. Trust is not tantamount to indifference or permissiveness, and infidelity can inflict an indelible scar on your relationship.

If tempted, think things through. Consider the mental and emotional consequences both to you and your partner. Guilt is a heavy, mind-altering burden. Few other forms of anguish are more tormenting than guilt, especially when you’re together and one of you is trying to pretend that everything is business as usual.

A telltale heart is a house of cards blowing in the wind.

The Serial Cheater

Face it, some men and a few women, think it’s their birthright to have multiple relationships.

No problem if everyone is honest and they’re not leaving a trail of broken hearts in their wake. No problem if they’re Austin Powers and shagging the spy du jour.

No problem if they’re starring in a French art house film.

But it is a problem if they’re married with children.

Keeping Up With the Joneses

A friend of mine once said, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, because you stop watering your own!”

It’s not surprising I learned this bit of wisdom from him. He’s been married to his high school sweetheart for 17 years and when I tell him I want to interview him for this book, he says, “I don’t have much to say. It’s a commitment, I made, plain and simple.”

Score one for the winning team.