Wife Guy...

I was talking to Katie this weekend about her grandparents. She had some questions about them and their relationships to their families. As we were talking about my dad Katie said, "He'd be what we call a 'wife guy' now."

And yes, yes he was. The center of his world was my mother. We all knew it. Everyone he knew knew it. Everything he did had to do with her. That was my role model for relationships.

And I, not surprisingly, married a wife guy. If you know me and you ever hear Brent talk about his wife, how smart she is, how pretty, how kind, how add in your own descriptor here, you'd probably wonder who this woman was. I mean she's outstanding.

Every once in awhile when he's working from home I'll hear him say to someone in a meeting, "Oh my wife does..." and I usually go to a different room so I don't hear what it is I do, or think, or say. Because I'd have the urge to go in and correct him. To clean up whatever nice thing he was about to say. I'm not really all that kind. I'm not really all that smart. I'm not really all that good at whatever it is that he's talking about. Though sometimes I don't get out of earshot quick enough and I hear him say the nice thing.

And it's pretty fucking awesome.

We all know people who rag on their spouses. They make them the butt of the joke, or the reason for whatever went wrong. And a little of that, a little honesty, is fine, but if that's all you do? Not okay.

Like I'll give you the little bit of honesty. I know Brent is never going to tell someone I'm graceful. He might tell them about asking me where I got a bruise the size of Nebraska on my arm and me having no idea. Could have been any number of things I ran into. I'm not graceful. He doesn't pretend that I am. That's honest. He also will mention my questionable taste in music. And that's just like, his opinion, man. (Actually I will own up to that, I know that a lot of the music I enjoy is incredibly cheesy, but I enjoy cheesy music and I can't be the only one or they wouldn't make it, right?) But even if he's being honest about something that could be a fault (it's not, cheesy music makes the world a happier place) he does it in a light manner. In a loving way. Almost like he's amazed by how I move through the world completely unaware that I just bashed into a cupboard while humming Mambo No. 5.

I like wife guys. I like husband gals. I like wife gals and husband guys and non-binary partner people. I like people who like their partners is what I'm trying to say. I like hearing people say nice things about their chosen person. It makes me happy to know that they've found each other.

Which brings us to the parasocial interaction of the day. John Scalzi, an author whose work I enjoy in book form and whose banter I enjoy on social media, posted an article about if it's okay for married people to have crushes on other people. In the comments he announced that he had a crush on all of us reading that post. I replied that that was really sweet and if we were being honest I had a crush on his wife. He told me that there was a line of people who had a crush on her.

Which of course there is.

She is really cool. She has a great look, that full head of gray hair that you all know I envy. She is a doer. Like she drives a tractor and takes care of their land and also takes care of the business aspects of Scalzi Enterprises. Every post he's made about her is about how cool she is and how he knows he is incredibly lucky that she loves him. Everything I know about her I know through the filter of a wife guy.

I wonder if she wonders sometimes who he is married to or if she just accepts that she is all that and a bag of chips.

For me? I am pretty awesome. I couldn't be anything other than that considering how wonderful my husband is.