Yes, my wife had her odd little quirks, but I suppose I did too, and we seemed to get along like gangbusters. She was beautiful. I guess she found me handsome, or at least reasonably attractive. She used to joke that I was “better looking than the average toad.” The sex was mind-blowing. Literally. I would often wake up the next morning after a night of furious sex feeling dazed and confused and covered in scratches and love bites. I proudly wore those wounds like badges of honor. (I eventually had to start taking vitamin supplements, but that was no big deal.) She never insisted on a girls night out every week, and neither did I need a boys night out. We had our little spats, but nothing major, and of course, the makeup sex was always good.

She did have a group of gal-pals that would meet at our house about once a month for a cooking & canning fest or book reading. They’d usually gather on the back patio and make some exotic stew of the month in a big pot over a grill on our outdoor fire pit, then put it up in small jars and divvy it up amongst themselves. They never offered to share with me, but that’s okay. I got a whiff of one of their creations once. Let’s just say that those women could have benefited from watching a few episodes of Julia or Martha, or even Lidia! Fortunately, the meals my wife made for me were quite tasty and smelled nothing like what they cooked on the patio. Their book reading was not your typical book club stuff either. They just had this one enormous old book that they would take turns reading from, and occasionally writing notes in the margins. I assume is was some anthology of romance novels, or some such.