I am a firm believer in learning the love language of your spouse, and for him to learn yours. My husband and I have similar — and different — love languages. Knowing our differences has helped us communicate better and show each other love in the way we’re wired to receive it. That said, there are things that I do to show my husband love which has nothing to do with his love language.

1. Cook him a good dinner. I am a good cook, and am a food blogger. I love to cook and to bake and my husband loves to try new recipes and eat anything in the sweets department (chocolate is his favorite).

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A few years ago, my husband decided to start hunting. He and a bunch of his friends — and his brother — took a gun safety course that incorporated the basics of hunting skills. Hunting is now a part of our lives, because he harvests game and I cook said game for dinner.

When I post about his hunting (or the chickens we raise) on my personal site, the comments are usually positive. There are a few people who say that they could never eat game or butcher chickens … but they’re happy to buy meat from the store.

We’re doing our best to be sustainable, as are many others. Hunting seems to have a stigma, which seems odd as a wife of someone who hunts. He’s just doing the dirty deed, instead of sending me to a farm or organic market to buy it.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about hunting and eating game. Concerns? Questions? Fears?

*I spared you from sharing the photo of the bear — yes, a bear — that my husband harvested the other day. Bear makes for great sausage.

I will often peruse other sites with relationship columns to see what people are talking about and it’s usually disheartening. If I were a single women reading all of those posts, I would deduce that all men are uncaring, incapable of cleaning anything, and can’t assist in helping to raise their own flesh and blood. I would then give up any dreams of meeting a good man and adopt five cats from the nearest animal shelter.

I get that headlines are what make people click through to read an article, but when I read titles about how a Dad cleaning the minivan is so HOT because it never happens, and how a Dad does the laundry it is a MIRACLE, and how when a Dad cooks a meal is is praise-worthy, I wonder what year we’re living in. It’s 2013, but you’d think it was 1953 based on the stuff being written.

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I left for college at the age of eighteen, and spent two years at college with stints at home during the summer. I decided to finish my education in the big city of Vancouver and moved there at the age of twenty to do so. I worked, I went to school, and I had to balance my budget in order to eat and to pay my rent and to occasionally buy new clothes.

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This is based on what woos me, of course, but I’m sure that some of you ladies will agree on at least a few of them.

1. Tell her she’s beautiful. See also: smart, sexy, hot, attractive, etc. You probably think it multiple times a day. Use your words and tell her.

2. Encourage her in every way. If she wants to pick up a new hobby or start a new venture, she needs you as her biggest cheerleader.
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Last September, my husband and I enrolled our three kids in piano lessons. Neither of us could play the piano — though my husband is gifted in that he can sit down and tinker and it sounds pretty — but he’d taken one year of lessons back when he was five and that was it.

Once the kids were signed up, he said that he’s like to take lessons as well. They aren’t cheap, but he wanted to learn how to read and play music in addition to his random playing, and so he started taking weekly lessons as well. I told myself that I would learn from helping the kids practice, but without the weekly commitment to be at a lesson, I let my husband manage practice time.

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My husband and I celebrated thirteen years of marriage yesterday. We’re no experts, but here are a few things that have helped us get to here.

1. Always kiss goodbye.

2. Say I love you when you kiss goodbye, and also say it randomly.

3. Laugh together, often and much.

4. Talk about what is bugging you, before it festers and boils into something more than it needs to be.

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This coming Monday, my husband and I will celebrate thirteen years of marriage. Thirteen! Our wedding day seems like it was yesterday and a very long time ago, all at the same time. Our family has morphed from just the two of us to having three kids, two dogs, two cats, and one hundred chickens. Crazy.

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I’ve always gotten along well with people of the male variety. Men are less complicated than women (usually). You throw in a hockey obsession and it’s always been easy to be friends with the male variety.

After we got married, my husband and I moved to a small town that is a four-hour drive from the guy friends I (we) had. Friends that I had known in college and in my big city life faded into the background, except for the occasional FB status update. If we lived in the same town, I’m sure there would be get-togethers or the occasional coffee to catch up with each other. Male friends (who are not ex-boyfriends) that got grandfathered into our relationship are a non-issue, as my husband considers them friends as well.

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I’m sitting here trying to think of what to talk about, relationship-wise. My kids all swarmed me for a snack and a light bulb went off. I told them that I’d like them to answer the question “What does it mean to be married?”

My ten-year-old son replied, “Well, I can’t answer that. I’m not married.”

I clarified that I wanted to know what they thought being married meant, based on what they see between their Dad and I.

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