This may seem a paradox, but it's not. Love is a less changeable thing than liking. Love is the climate of a relationship -- liking is often as fickle as an early frost.
Take last Thursday.
After curbing our car, I shifted into park, shut off the engine and swung my door open. My wife didn't move. She just stared straight ahead.
"WHAT?" I asked.
"So what are you wearing to the wedding?"
There are no innocent questions sitting in a parking lot in a car that is not running.
She knows I own but one suit, so I humor her. "The blue one," I say.
She shakes her head no.
I protest. I argue that the suit has provided four decades of loyal service. I remind her my father paid a lot of money for it back in the 1970's and the investment has yet to be fully recouped.
She sets her jaw.
I guess I just agreed to go shopping. That's when she opens her door and heads for the house.
In the entryway, she reminds me for the twentieth time, "This is YOUR friend who is getting married." then makes a beeline for the bedroom where she attacks the tower of boxes that UPS had been building all week.
"Tell me what you think," she pleads.
We have just established that my taste in clothing is -- well -- utilitarian, but that does not stop her from modeling a parade of clothing.
The first dress she tosses on fits her the way a tarp drapes over a victim on a CSI episode.
"Nice," I lie.
"Isn't it a bit - loose?"
I'm careful to offer no more than a nod of consensus.
The next dress was obviously designed as camouflage, the kind a Naturalist might use to mingle among a herd of zebras.
I struggle...
She helps me out, "Too much -- ?"
"Contrast?"
She agrees with the word choice. We are both very pleased. The dress returns mercifully to its box.
As she digs deeper into the pile each dress becomes looser and more contrasting than the last.
"So what do you think?" she asks as the last one is folded into its box.
"Fine, in fact, all very fine." By now I am not even standing in the shadow of truth.
"Sniffle"
I'm busted. Then I hear those dreaded words.....
"I haven't a thing to wear!"
An hour later -- at the mall.
After the sixth store (none of which carry men's clothing) I find myself on the guy's bench at Macy's peering over the top of a book at a series of dresses.
"Nice," I nod, "good, very good."
Finally she accuses, "how can you say that? You are wearing your reading glasses."
Grudgingly, I put on my distance glasses.
"Wow!"
I tell her that.
"REALLY nice," I say, and this time I mean it.
"It's expensive," she informs me.
"How much?"
She pitches me a figure.
"WOW!"
"Sniffle, but it's YOUR friend getting married."
She got me.
"Will you buy it for me?"
There is no way out of it. I can bob. I can weave. I can duck. But I still will pay for the dress.
I agree...and she is pleased.
As we leave I ask, "So when did you pick it out?"
"Two weeks ago."
"Figured so. By the way what should I wear?"
"Your blue suit of course. Why? What were you thinking?"
Our relationship has a warm Mediterranean climate but I feel a cold snap coming tonight!
© Greg Schiller, 2008
Author: Greg Schiller
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Comments: 62
Sometimes when people say what they really mean, it skips off their spouses ear and splatters against the wall.
We are odd creatures.
Geez, I hope not. :)
I love your designation of the "guys' bench". So many bored men have sat on those benches over the years, praying for deliverance. I believe their sons are now following that tradition, and expect to train their sons, too.
I am like Linda. I don't play games. If I wanted a dress, I would buy it. If I ask you what you think about the dress, I want an honest opinion.
To answer the question in your title, I love several people that I don't like very much. I love them because I have shared a lifetime of experiences with them, and because, on some level, I love . . . darn. Eight years ago, I would have said everyone. That isn't true today. On some level, I love most everyone.
(In dialogue, the comma should go inside the quotation mark. I think you usually put it there, but didn't in this.)
Lord help us all. I fear no man but I fear the opinion on outfits. ~shudder~
Great one Greg a 10,
of the most intimate ruffle without scuffle, so
humourously for the sake of liking friends to enhance
the tease as if releasing of a film entertaining !!!
HE cares about what we wear a lot more than I do ... it's a good thing though, probably... although very annoying when it means we have to go shopping.
The thing that struck me, was that each couple described a period when they "hated each others guts." I think that is an extreme example of loving but not liking. It is also something one rarely sees these days.
Thanks for the catch on punctuation. Being corrected is going to stick in my mind. I really appreciate that and always grateful.
WOW!
I think that is why like people rarely fall for others like themselves.
Looks like a great replacement idea for when my suit wears out sometime around 2050.
Thanks Atlantis!!
Rest easy
I like my wife most alway; but there are times.
I would hope the question asked in the title would be the subject of many a sermon.....learning that what we like and what we love are often two very different things.
Take care.
Greg LMAO. I think it's times like this that the phrase "tap dancing in a mine field" was created not during a war. LOL.
It is not just the men that have to choose their words carefully. I am becoming very good at the verbal bob and weave of conversations with mine.
For example:
What I am thinking....
"Either that shirt has magically shrunk after years of washing or you need to cut back on the ice cream."
What I say.....
"Why don't we get you some new shirts? The one's that you have are looking washed out."
How should the title have been written?
I never go with my husband to buy clothes. He would want us to go to one store, to one particular corner and pick up what we need.... hehehe.... that's not the way our female brains working!
I agree, it is marriage at its best! :-)
I particularly like the line "There are no innocent questions sitting in a parking lot in a car that is not running."
It's ironic that once we reach the Age of Insight, there's not a damn thing we can do about it.
As far as the suit, if he's your best friend, he's not worried about what you're wearing (most guys don't), so wear the blue suit if that makes you happy.