Alpha (FE)Male

Who're you betting on?

Whether the old question of who rules the roost, is even an answerable, or useful, question, the near-legendary status of the issue hangs around every long-term relationship.

So, what do we mean by “clear leader?”

My brother-in-law, before I married his wife’s younger sister, gave me some advice about how the authority is managed in a healthy marriage.

“In our marriage,” he counseled me, “I make all the important decisions, like, whether the country should go off the gold standard, or enter into nuclear disarmament.”

“The little decisions are left to Donna… Like, whether to have another child; where we should live and what house to buy; what car to drive.

“This division of responsibility has kept our marriage strong for many decades.”

Is the old truism – that one partner must be dominant – a reality?

As I’ve aged, especially since I retired many years ago, I’ve become aware that Lacey determines far more than I do, how we will spend our time. Though she can get resentful about being almost the sole provider of dinner, she’s knows she couldn’t, wouldn’t survive on what I might produce.

Does my doing the dishes, all the cleanup, keep the balance? No. Because it leaves her with having to be continually creative about what we’re having. Doing dishes requires only mindless, repetitive motion.

Is it a measure of my age that I feel heroic for making the bed?

I try to disguise that feeling from Lacey, but she’s learned to decipher those feelings in me even before I feel them.

I used to worry that our conflict, which often as not, will come around the approach of dinner time, meant that our love for each other had become diluted.

I’ve decided the reverse is true.

In addition to finding her beautiful and sexy, what first attracted me to Lacey, was her take-charge energy.

I’m a preacher/writer. I live in my head, until something finally emerges on the page. Awesome ability for those who are drawn to good writing and preaching. Not so much to someone trying to knit together a family’s energies into something coherent enough to make it through another day.

So, yes, from those standoffs a leader will emerge. But maybe not quite as usually portrayed.

Lacey’s off this weekend visiting one of the children and grandchild. Will I starve? Maybe, but the dishes will be clean, the bed made.

On the way from taking her to the airport, I braved the line at Costco, to gas up the car, a task she usually assumes, largely because she drives much more than I do. Has many more places to go.

I confess to feeling slightly heroic for topping off the tank.

And a little hungry.