It is a sad state of affairs when you cannot find a decent greeting card for your wife. I don’t know about other men out there, but I prefer to not lie to my wife about how I think and feel about her. I would prefer to be honest and truthful about our relationship and what I think about it.
Instead, when I peruse the greeting card section for an anniversary card or a birthday card, I am given either two options: stupid funny or just plain stupid.
The stupid funny cards are often under sections like “Birthday - Wife – Humorous” and are really not that funny. These are cards you get your wife if you want to tell her that you don’t consider your relationship with her to be that serious. Now, I know that there are women out there who like these kinds of cards, but you have to understand that women put a lot more stock in relationships than men do.
For a man, if you are living in the same living space and are working together to get things done, then the relationship is fine. For women it is the more complex. Now, there are times when a husband has to draw the line and tell his wife that she is placing way too much validation in her relationships, but a greeting card is not the way to do it.
So the humorous ones are usually ignored. But the serious ones are worse. They are usually worse because they exaggerate the true feelings that a man has for his wife.
What I mean is that we see very long prose designed to basically tell your wife that you are lost without her and that she means everything to you. In another age, this would be considered idolatry.
Basically, the other cards will place your wife up on a pedestal at the expense of your own authority and manliness. And let’s be honest, if any man thinks that way, they have more serious psychological issues than merely worshipping at the feet of his spouse.
Ultimately, I hate these kind of cards because they are lies about how I truly feel. They are exaggerations of my true feelings and thus, I cannot in good conscience give my wife any of those greeting cards.
And so I stand there in a Hallmark store for 5-10 minutes flipping through various cards trying to find the one that states exactly how I feel without any exaggerations or self-flagellating humor.
I usually do find something. And then I have to find a meaningful gift. But that is another story.