It means you are loved

Last updated on September 21, 2025

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My husband, the crazy, wonderful man I have been married to for decades, worked 14 hours straight, two days in a row. Which—how do I put it mildly—is completely insane.

Let’s ignore the fact that he was killing my chance to get a good night’s sleep as well, and let’s ignore the fact that somewhere in the house we had two deadly tired dogs lying around, but instead, point out that HIS CRAZINESS just turned 67.

He was chirpy the next morning—on day #3— which only got him a frown from me. At 6:30 am, he grabbed his lunchbox, “Have a wonderful day, honey,” and off to work he went. I had a long day ahead of me. Two nights with only five hours of sleep, I could feel it in my bones.

That night, we had friends over for dinner, and of course, my knight-in-shining armor gloated about his long work hours. I suppose that’s something we all do when we get older, we try to push our boundaries a bit, we try to figure out if we still have IT, whatever IT might be, and we share our success with everybody who will listen. I know the aging-thing puzzles him the same way it puzzles me. I think it’s even worse for men.

There is no way I’ll let him work like this again. Enough showing off!

“Yes, honey, you still got it all, but it’s not good for you.” This would be the right approach, which he would most likely ignore. I didn’t want to play the nagging-wife card, but somehow I needed to let him know what I thought of it.

Most couples would discuss it, perhaps even argue a bit. I assume there are men out there (somewhere) who would even listen to a soft nudge, but I am not the soft-nudge type anymore—was I ever?

This insanity had to stop, because let’s not forget my husband had quadruple bypass surgery, colon surgery, and a shoulder replacement surgery, to name a few. He takes daily prescription medications—as do I. Together we could open a small pharmacy.

And so I made a suggestion: “I think it would be easier if you would just stop taking all your medications, and I’ll do the same.” Silence on my husband’s end, a frown from my soft-spoken, wonderful friend, who knows me pretty well.

“Why would you suggest that?”

“Well, this way we could kick the bucket a bit faster,” I said with a smile, “and you could stop trying to kill yourself with all these work hours.”

It’s called the sledgehammer approach, which I like to use when logical reasoning won’t do the trick.

And that’s the language he understands. It means ‘game over’, your wife is watching, and she is not happy. Translated, it means she will kick your ass into the middle of next week if you don’t slow down. It means your wife is worried, and you’d better listen because she is too tired to argue and will bite your head off without any warning, at any given moment, for absolutely no reason.

It means you are loved.

I love to watch and listen when happily married couples talk to each other. The amused tone, the softness, sometimes even the harshness. The dialogues are so different, the goal is always the same. They get each other in their own way.

I remember our phone conversation, when and how we decided to get a new puppy.

Me: “Honey, Christopher just called, they found an abandoned puppy in a sink in a maintenance room of an apartment building, someone left it there in the middle of the night.”
Him: “So we are getting another dog?
Me: “Yes.”

Selma Hayek, staged or not, understands how to talk to her husband as well. We have different approaches to get our message across, may it be another puppy, or the simple wish that a wonderful older gentleman acknowledges the fact that he is not a spring chicken anymore.

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