What Women Want

The day after giving him a laptop for his 53rd birthday.    Dell 5100 Inspiron weighs 7.22 pounds, has a 30 gig hard drive, 2.4 GHz, 14.1" XGA TFT Screen, 384 MB, 56K modem, 24X CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive, True Mobile wireless Broadband Router, Office XP, Extended 3 year warranty with free 24/7 tech support, USB200 Advanced port, Mini PCI, MS Money 2002, Jukebox, Office XP and a wireless mouse (because I just hate putting a mouse on a leash).

 

Dear Howie,  I am the one with the ego problem.  I have never been able to let others do things for me.  I have to disassociate myself from the cats to ask for help there and have to keep telling myself that people are doing it for the animals and to fulfill their own need to do something noble.  I know that what you do for the cats, you are doing for me and that your sense of leaving a mark is tied to what you do for people and not so much for the animals.

 

Knowing that has made me feel uncomfortable because as much as I need and want your help, I cannot let you do that for me, because of my own overdeveloped sense of pride.  You have indicated that I can pay you at some time in the future, but meanwhile you have invested an inordinate amount of time and thought into helping me that I have felt powerless to repay.  Perhaps I am not as observant as you, but I cannot think of anything that I can do for you to show how much I appreciate what you have already done for me.

 

I am not going to take ALL of the responsibility for this inequity ;-)   You seem to have a very hard time assessing value to your ability.  This has been my meager attempt to repay a debt that I consider to be far greater than the price of a computer.  This thing wouldn't even cover 10 hours of your time and you have spent that much on helping me in less than 2 days.   I don't even know what your shed cleaning rate is, but it's got to be more than sitting at a desk ;-)

 

I don't mean to diminish any of the feelings you have and I am especially sensitive to you feeling kept.  This is probably what it at the core of freaking my family out whenever I am in a relationship.  I change to accommodate the person because my sense of self has always been in reflecting those around me.  Whatever is your desire in life becomes mine and gives me a sense of joy to be helping you have whatever it is that you want from life.  You have told me that your desire is to make me happy and that caught me off balance, because I am still not certain how to help you help me, without me feeling that this is all about me, when it's my nature to want to make it all about you.  The more I learn about the reasons I behave the way I do, the more capable I am of being myself, but that person is still a bit of a mystery to me.

 

I feel bad for you that I am so attached to this place, because I realize how strange that must feel to you to come here.  It is made worse by the stigma caused by what others may say or think.  The only saving grace is that when your friends see the place they can understand that it is about the uniqueness of the property and not the opulence of the home that makes the island the undeniable best choice of locations.  It just can’t be duplicated.  Frankly, your address is far more prestigious than Town N Country, which has reputation of being blue collar.   Nonetheless, I do realize that you have had to make a considerable concession with your own pride, for a man who is so capable of taking care of himself, to agree to come here just to make me happy.  I think that alone speaks volumes about your own inner strength.

 

I also appreciate the way you just come right out and say what is on your mind.  You do it in such a polite way, that I often wonder if I caught all of what you were trying to say.  Some of the things you have had to say were probably very hard, or uncomfortable for you, but you have had the wisdom to know when it needed saying and the courage to say it.  I admire that.  I apologize for te