A Married Man's Brain

by Hero Jenkins

I wanted to start this post with a survey. Don't worry, it's a short one (only 3 questions) I will post the results in a couple of days:






***

Is a married man’s brain wired differently than a single man’s? When science evolves further someone should invent a machine that can answer this question. All I have is anecdotal evidence and a theory... nothing concrete, nothing scientific to validate my theory - but I think it is.

Case study #1:

My friend's wife was injured in a car crash that required her to have surgery on her back. As a result of the surgery she had to sleep on a hard surface or else the benefits of the surgery would be minimized if not undone altogether.

Their mattress as it turned out was way too soft. They tried putting a sheet of plywood between the box springs and the mattress but that didn’t work. They tried sleeping on just the box spring alone - that didn’t work either. They went to the local mattress store and even the firmest mattresses available were not firm enough.

Eventually they realized that the only thing firm enough was the floor.  She insisted that her husband sleep in the bed and that she would be fine. “Go ahead honey,” she said as she got her sleeping spot ready on the bedroom floor, "it’s OK… I’ll be fine.”

There was no way he was going to just walk past her laying there on the floor night after night and then crawl into their incredibly comfortable bed. So he made himself a sleeping area right on the floor next to her. Now, when most women hear about this they erupt in a chorus of “Oh, how sweet.”

Well, there may have been some underlying sweetness in his actions but that’s not what was going through his mind. The way he explained it to me was that this move was purely self-preservational. Although she said it was OK, he'd been married long enough to know that in reality it was not. Being a married man myself, I agreed with his logic one hundred percent. But it got me thinking... would all men do the same thing? He had done a survey amongst his friends and family and had a result. When I heard the story I started an informal (and completely unscientific) survey amongst my friends and family.

Women were a hundred percent - they felt that if the wife said it was OK to sleep in the bed that the husband should have slept in the bed. But in almost the same breath, and with a twinkle in their eyes, they announced how sweet his gesture was.

My single male friends were also one hundred percent. They were in total agreement with the women but there was no twinkle in their eye when they reacted to what my friend did… it was something else and it was not polite.

However, when I talked to the MARRIED men things really got interesting. They were all in agreement that they would have slept on the floor, but the reasons varied almost as much as the individuals themselves. Some actually were being sweet but some were worried about resentment or what they called passive retaliation (like hot dog and Top Ramen dinners for life or horrible unthinkable things like: no sex ever again.)

So this is just a theory, but someday science may prove me right. Something happens to a man’s brain when he gets married. It seems to be wired differently than it was before. Perhaps if there was a way to take a picture 'before' and then several years thereafter. They could compare it to the 'never been married brain' and analyze the difference. And in case my wife is reading, “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing honey... I'm just saying it's different.”