Do you manipulate your man to get what you want?

We all want a strong, fierce, independent man. The kind of man that can build me a deck, get in a bar fight because some guy slapped my ass, and win, then pick me up like a rag doll and carry me off to the bedroom. A guy with muscles, a sexy smile. A guy that won’t take no for an answer.

This kind of man is my dream man. Was my dream.

Until I decided to marry him.

As usual, here at Glitter, Bliss, and Perfect Chaos, there is A LOT going on. I’m working on a new six book series. It’s a big project, with lots of characters to profile, lots of plots to build. As you all heard last week, I’m redoing my daughter’s room. And college football season has started, so that means making the ten hour drive to Lincoln for the Husker football games. It’s also nearly homecoming, so we’ve been dress shopping, and I’m getting ready to create the traditional Texas homecoming mums. As in the bigger, the better. My son travels out of town to race his karts or practice most every weekend. I’ve written and am now editing the sequel to That Boy, called That Wedding, and am hoping to have it ready for a late fall, early winter release. Which means in my spare time, I’ve also been planning a WEDDING! The full thing. I’ve picked out her dress, the bridesmaids dresses, the table linens, the princess crown napkin rings, the cocktails. You name it, I’ve planned it! Oh, and I’m doing a blog tour in October, as well as writing this blog, taking care of the house, oh the piles of laundry…sorry, I’ll stop now. We were talking about weddings.

So, it’s been awhile since I planned my own wedding, but I’m trying to conjure up every feeling. From the pass my candle, giddy, happy, flash my sparkly diamond in love feeling, to wishing the diamond weighed more so that when I chucked it at his head in a fit a rage, it would do some damage. From taking my millions of Barbie dream weddings and making them a reality, to telling my dad not to make any deposits he couldn’t get back.

Hubby and I had a lengthy two-year engagement. There’s lots of feelings to remember. One strong memory was how, seemingly over night, he went from not being able to stand it when I stuck out my lip in a pout and was unhappy, to telling me NO and having an opinion on EVERYTHING!

Come on! It’s MY wedding. What happened to saying, Whatever you think is best, dear? Wasn’t he supposed to listen to all my amazing plans, get fitted for his tuxedo and just show up at the church on time? Apparently not. All of a sudden the independence, strength, and opinions that made me fall in love with him, were driving me crazy.

He had an opinion on everything and wanted to be a team while planning the wedding. When I suggested my dream of pink for our wedding color, he said, I’m sorry, I can’t do a pink wedding. He didn’t want chick food served at the reception. The beer needed to be free. When we registered, the tines of our forks had to be a certain length. I couldn’t get the dish pattern I loved because the bowl was too shallow for eating cereal properly. Um, excuse me, who cares? I just want them to be pretty!?

The boy Jadyn is planning to marry in That Wedding is also pretty strong-willed. He lets her have her way most of the time, but he also stands up to her and there’s an issue between them that he won’t seem to budge on. Her little pout and puppy dog eyes don’t work. Her getting mad doesn’t work. All her usual tricks can’t change his mind. I thought about what she should do, how can she realistically get her way, but grow up some in the process? I think that’s what relationships are all about. Learning to compromise. How much are we willing to give for the other person? We give too much, we lose ourselves. We don’t give enough, and they lose the qualities that probably attracted us in the first place.

After one particularly frustrating day, I found myself sitting in my grandma’s teeny yellow kitchen talking to her while she made dinner. This is the woman that could make delicious gravy for thirty people with a quarter-sized dollop of bacon grease. She also managed to get my stubborn grandpa to do what she wanted him to do most of the time, without fighting with him.

She gave me some advice that day. She told me that if I marry a strong, opinionated man that my patience would be tested every day. That I needed to learn to stop fighting him and start planting seeds instead. Of course, I had no freaking idea what she was talking about and dismissed her advice. I mean she was the woman who told me that if I didn’t learn to drink coffee, I’d become a social outcast, and that happily hadn’t happened so far, so I decided I’d just try using sex. Again.

A few days later, hubby-to-be and I were discussing cakes. Back then, there were two kinds of cakes at a traditional wedding. The wedding cake was white, the groom’s cake was chocolate. There were no fancy fillings, no different flavors. This is what was expected, it was tradition. I had seen a little article in a magazine where the groom’s cake was a different flavor. I said, You love carrot cake, wouldn’t it be cool if we had that for your groom’s cake instead? To which he replied in his that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard tone, Why would we want to do that?

I flipped him off in my mind, vowed to have pink frosting on my cake, even though our colors were now black and gold, and forgot about it. A few weeks later, we were having dinner with his parents, and his mother asked him about the groom’s cake. This is what he said. I was thinking it would be cool to have carrot cake, you know it’s my favorite. 

I seriously about fell on the floor. My eyes got big, and I looked at him and was like WHAT!? I mentioned that to you a few weeks ago, and you thought it was dumb. He said, We never talked about that. I just thought of it. And something in the back of my brain clicked. Grandma’s words. Plant a seed and let it grow. Is that what just happened here? Did I plant a seed, and now all of a sudden he thought it was his own brilliant idea. And I JUST GOT WHAT I WANTED??

I quickly shut up. Something I don’t do very often. I conceded, said, Yeah, maybe I mentioned it to someone else. That’s a great idea, honey. And learned a very valuable lesson. How to get what I want. In That Wedding, Jadyn is also going to have to plant a seed to get Phillip to do what she wants, but she’ll learn a valuable lesson in the process. If you’ve ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you learned the same lesson. The mother says something like the man is the head of the house, but the woman is the neck. She controls which way the man looks.

So what do you think? How do you feel about planting seeds? About slightly manipulating your man to get your way? Is it underhanded or a necessity?

Oh, and for those of you following the room decor journey, this week I made the beer cap tray that will become a coffee table in her room. The tray is 29 x 29 inches square and took about 600 beer caps to create. Here’s a picture 🙂

And be sure to check back tomorrow on Philanthropy Thursday, where we will be featuring the announcement of my ROAD TRIP to the opening of Rachel Ashwell’s new Shabby Chic Couture shop and bed and breakfast in Round Top, Texas!!