A Sharing of Marital Secrets- Excerpt #73

#4 (Part 1 of 2)
And another thing, do you continue to go out of your way to look attractive… like you did before you were married?

I am ashamed to say it, but this is an area where I knew better, but I neglected it after we married.

As a teenager, I studied photos of pretty women in the magazines. I observed their makeup from eye shadow to eyeliner. Then, I would go to the drugstore to buy what makeup I thought I needed and return home to practice. I would practice for hours. When I reached driving age, my mother sometimes asked me to go to the store for her. It would take me two hours to dress and put on my makeup. Many days, my mother called out, “Abby, hurry up! I just need a loaf of bread.”

In junior high and high school, my makeup, hair and clothes had to be perfect, and that was the way it was throughout my dating life. After the wedding day, I don’t know if I figured that I could relax because I had caught my man or what. It wasn’t something that happened overnight, but gradually, I stopped wearing my makeup everyday, and I didn’t pay close attention to how I dressed. Poor Craig!

Craig never complained about my appearance without makeup and in baggy sweaters. It’s not like Oprah Winfrey was around to lead the way back then. I remember watching her show a couple of years ago when she had a panel of husbands and wives on. The husbands were trying to tell their wives that the fire was going out of their marriage. Why? Because the wives were not concerned with their appearance like they had been before marriage. An expert talked to the women about their appearance and attitude towards their marriage. She told the wives to make the extra effort to look good and keep the sizzle in their relationship with their husbands.

As each woman appeared after her makeover, the husbands’ expressions seemed overjoyed by the transformation. At that moment, I thought, “I sure wish I had seen this show back then. If I had, it would have made me hold a mirror up to myself and realize I needed to change.”

I know those women honestly had not realized just how bad things had become in their marriage. I know how they felt. It’s like having blinders on. With everything else going on in a young marriage, it is easy to forget about us. We don’t realize how important it is to continue to be the beauty that our men fell in love with – the beauty he wanted to hold for the rest of his life.

My heart went out to those women as they each started speaking with understanding. One of the women told the expert that she would start putting forth more effort in her appearance now that she had seen her husband’s reaction. The other wives agreed.

To Be Continued... Copyright 2000 by Abby Gail Smith (pen name of Robbie S. Redmon) All rights reserved.
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