16 Comments

Love these personal journey stories, especially those about your relationship with your wife. I’ve been happily married for 36 years. Four kids. I can relate to finding someone who is an asset, not a millstone. It’s important that we are both assets for each other. Tell these stories to young men…well, not just young men, young people…at every opportunity. They need to hear this message.

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I agree. There is enough bad content out there. Happily married people are underrepresented in the online space.

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Happy Anniversary and God bless you two for many more years!

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Thank you for sharing another beautiful, thoughtful (and thought-full) story about you and your wife and marriage.

Happy Anniversary, Mr and Mrs Coleman!!

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Thank you!

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Happy Anniversary and enjoy!

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Thank you

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Happy anniversary. You guys look very happy together.

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Thank you 😊

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You're most welcome.

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Such a lovely piece. Such good advice. If you can’t travel with them, work on a project together.

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Thank you.

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Because that worked out so well for Gabby Pettito…

Okay seriously though, I do want to gently take issue with your first anecdote. You had the advantage of familiarity and domain knowledge. Of course you would have a better perspective of what would be worthy of concern and what would be a “just-roll-with-it” situation. It just makes me wonder how much of “getting along” had to do with her being in a situation where her obvious best option was to submit to you, thus instantly establishing the power structure of the relationship.

Are you actually equal partners? Or did you just start out with her as your faithful sidekick and she chose not to push against that?

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My familiarity doesn't change my nature. The point isn't that I only have these qualities while traveling, it's that I always have these qualities. We've traveled to many places together that neither of us have been to before since Paris...my behavior remained the same. I'm always telling her "stop planning things" outside of traveling.

As I stated, I'm not a dictator. We discuss things all the time and neither of us make a move if we're both not comfortable with it.

"Establishing a power structure" sounds cynical. My wife wants a man who more often than not takes the lead in certain situations. But I'm not her boss and I don't force compliancy. Her comfort is extremely important to me. Implying that she "chose not to push against" me makes her sound weak and she isn't. I assure you, if she had a problem, she wouldn't have married me months later.

FYI, my wife read this post and loved what I wrote. She had no disagreements.

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Beautiful post. Thanks, Mr. Coleman. It didn’t work for me, though. But hey, that’s life, I guess…

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You're most welcome

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