Redefining Romance
by Bill Hill

Attention husbands: Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. If you’re like me, then you might feel as though your romanticism has been washed down the disposal with last night’s potato peelings. Never fear, however, becoming your wife’s prince is about much more than chocolates and roses.

I watched While You Were Sleeping with my wife (definitely not my typical video pick), and she sighed, “Isn’t that romantic?” And I answered “Wow! Yes!” and wondered how such a moment had passed me. I tried pretending we were on the same “page de l’amour” but the truth flashed across my face like the spotlights at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre—I didn’t have a clue, and the intense tenderness of While You Were Sleeping drove right through while I slept.

I still can’t tell you how I ended up married to my beloved. All I know is that I proposed after a great talk with my BYU bishop. He noticed my worry over finances and he, being an accounting professor, took out a pencil and paper and showed me how two people in love could live on a microscopic budget. I wish I had kept that paper, because I went directly to the object of my affection and announced, “The bishop says I can get married to you!”

I think she said yes.

I know what you’re thinking: How does this slob stay married? The answer: I don’t know. I think after seventeen years of bliss (for me, probably not for her) I have learned to fake her out a little, be cute, step out of my brutish norm every so often, and then hope that maybe, just maybe, she will think her prince can emerge from the frog. I haven’t witnessed the transformation just yet, but we believe in miracles, don’t we?

A Challenged Family Tree   

I have an excuse. Well, several. We have discovered family history heathens from the past and present. I recently found a long lost cousin who rivaled my marriage proposal. He went out with his girlfriend for many months and they seemed to be forming a budding, eternal bond. When he was accepted into medical school, he wanted her to go with him. “Well,” he said, examining his thumbnail, “it would sure be nice if you could come out to school with me.”

“You know, we should get married if we go together,” she said.

The future doctor exclaimed, “You’re right. Terrific! How does August fourth sound?” Nothing interfered with this date, so the deal was done.

Another cousin sealed her marital destiny from inside a snow bank. She and her date went to beautiful Mesa Falls in Idaho to admire the grandeur of nature—and a bounty of soft snow. Dale resisted the temptation for all of three seconds then flung his lady into the depths of a snowdrift, burying her up to her middle, upside down. While she waggled her legs in an attempt to free herself, he asked, “So, Hill, how about getting married?” A muffled answer came from inside the cold, “Yes!”

Brigham Young sent my five “greats” grandpa, Jacob, to southern Utah on a mission to the original natives of that part of the country. He took his two wives with him and found it necessary to take on a third. He had to formally ask the father of number three across the future in-law’s kitchen table. I’m sure facing three hundred painted warriors was not as frightening as looking across the counter to Sister Third’s gruff father, but he did it with the chivalry of my family tree. An observer noted that the negotiation resembled the barter of a needed workhorse rather than a marriage proposal.

So there you have it. My lack of sufficient romantic aptitude is not my fault, it’s part of my radical DNA.

Hope for the Afflicted

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my wife and family, but I just have a funny way of showing it. I seem to lock feelings inside, thinking it somehow interferes with my duties of hunting, gathering, providing, and protecting.If a bunch of ugly thugs were to threaten my loved ones, I assure you, I am not going to say, “Why comest thou hither, betwixt my tender ewes, from yonder posts of contemptuous ire.” No way. I’m going to talk smack, “Getsyourflippinselvesouttahere,” then find a big stick.

I say this not to brag, but my superior intellect dictates that I prepare for moments like this type of confrontation plus added, futuristic dangers. I’m a tough guy and realize that it is the twenty-first century, after all, and romance takes a different spin for a robotic age. Our ladies need protection from automatic forces that invade with barbaric strength.

Just the other day I defused the mesmerizing menace of camcorder/VCR image transfer with the swiftness and skill of a slug caught in the twirling goop of a blender-made mess. In the midst of tangled wires, I assured Denise of my competence and exclaimed my undying love. She told me to shush and read the directions that I in my masculinity ignored, then all was fine. But the fact remained that I saved her from the embarrassment of looking stupid if she would have tried this complicated procedure. You see I am gallant to a point, thank you.

It all boils down to basic perceptions men and women have of one another, based on the Hollywood love-o-meter. Now, I know I can’t measure up to Mel Gibson in pure magnetism or Ben Affleck in swift, lady-killing looks, but I can win over my lady in the way I approach making her life easier, like doing dishes. I become her hero when I gird up, armed with the scrubber and dish soap to attack the stubborn dirtiness of her life. Eat suds you rotten little pot clingers.

Maybe in this way my lack of romance will be overshadowed by my ordinary, daily love for her, and that her frog may, one day, turn into a handsome prince.

LDS Living Magazine