Kevin Hellriegel's Blog of Worthless Advice

I recently finished watching a comedy show on Netflix and came to the conclusion that I’m pretty much a failure.  Yup, hop on the loser train, because the next stop is disappointment and resentment.  

Now, most husbands would surmise that their life isn’t that bad.  You might have a spouse that also works so you have a duel income.  I’m sure you have decent cars, a fairly nice house, and the school down the street your kids attend isn’t that bad.  Maybe your kids give you a hug once in a while. As a husband, overall, it looks like a fairly normal life.  You listen to your wife and kids about 36-45% of the time, you don’t have any feelings so they can’t hurt you, and you remember most of the important dates you should know (birthdays, anniversaries, etc.).  Yet, if we talked to the wives and kids of these husbands (yes, I’m talking about your wife and kids), we would hear a much different tale.  We would hear a story of broken dreams, shattered promises, and unfulfilled desires.

Now let’s take those results back to the clueless husband and fathers (again this means you), you would learn that you (as the supposed breadwinner) are an utter failure.  If reality TV has taught us anything (and it has taught us a lot), you should be a much better person than you are.  How can Dr. Phil and Oprah be wrong?

But are men the ones to blame?  Certainyl as a woman, you should have been smarter and married the guy with higher earning potential, a happier attitude, and a better understanding of how you work.  You should have seen that your life wasn’t going to turn out the way you thought it would.  Would you have switched out the train engine at the roundhouse if you knew what your life was going to be like?

Whoa, hold on a second, Mr. Worthless Advice, my life isn’t full of doom and gloom, right? Or is it? Aren’t you regretting your choices? Doesn’t your husband work too much? Doesn’t spend any time with you?  He neglects the kids?  He plays too much golf, stays up too late, works out in the yard on the weekend.  This isn’t what you expected when you signed up.

If you had picked a better mate in the beginning, then you could have switched careers yourself.  You were probably a successful up and coming female executive.  You could have made the move to a being a housewife. Or a stay at home mom.  Now, that stay at home housewife idea might make you sick because (at one time) you enjoyed working a career and having a dual income household.

Sure, I understand your husband should have been making more money, you should have had a spa day every Tuesday, yoga on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10:30 am, a haircut every three weeks on Thursday.  You definitely deserved to be driving a new Lexus to the gym everyday day.  That yoga mat isn’t going to roll itself.

As you read this from your lounge chair, I hope you are enjoying your vacation.  You do like vacation trips to Hawaii and Europe? Yeah, I bet you do. I bet if you had married someone better you could have stayed at the nice five star resort.  But you didn’t.  Life is rough, suck it up.