Why I’ve Changed How I Celebrate My Wife Over The Last Decade

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When my wife and I first started dating almost a decade ago, I bombed miserably the first few times I tried to celebrate her.

We started dating in June and her birthday is in the middle of July. That didn’t give me a ton of time to scheme and come up with a foolproof plan of how to best celebrate her. So here’s what I did.

I drove to her parent's house where she was staying over the summer between her freshman and sophomore year of college. With my heart pounding through my chest, I followed the lead of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s version of Alexander Hamilton and “summoned all the courage I required.”

I asked her to sit on her front porch, and as I walked up, I whipped out my guitar (thought I’d write something else there?) and proceeded to serenade her with a song I had written a few nights previously.

For the record, I am an average song-writer and an even worse musician. But I gave it my best shot.

As I was singing my heart out, feeling the music, and praying I wouldn’t mess up and miss a chord, I slightly opened my eye to sneak a peek of her reaction. She looked stunned. I could only pray that was a good stunned and a “what the heck are you doing” type of stunned. It was the latter.

As I wrapped up, drifting into my soft conclusion, she looked at me and said, “thanks.” That’s all. I nodded, panic rising in my chest. After we sat there for the longest, most awkward minute, we got up and went inside. As I’m writing this, I’m actually shocked that we’re married today and have been for the past five years.

It wasn’t just the song that was a failed form of celebration. I also got her some guitar strings that were fashioned into a bracelet (I was clearly really into guitar back then). I didn’t take into account that she never wore jewelry, especially things on her wrists. Needless to say, the guitar strings never got touched again.

I topped off the celebration with some fake flowers that I had crafted and hot glued different colored ribbons to with bible verses that I thought applied to the two of us. I can’t make this stuff up. I’m wincing right now writing this as the memories are still painful.

She wasn’t being cruel, even though in that moment I might have thought differently. I’m old enough now to realize that she was simply showing me that the gifts were more for me than they were for her. I had missed the mark.

Somehow, miraculously, she didn’t break up with me on the spot. I will always give her major props for that. Over the years, I got better at celebrating her but I still had my mishaps. I still had moments where I got her a piece of clothing that I really liked but that wasn’t her style at all. Even after the song debacle, I convinced myself that writing her poems may be a good idea. It didn’t really light up her torch.

I’ve learned through trial and a lot of errors. I still don’t get it right, but I do think I’m closer to actually celebrating my wife well. Maybe you find yourself in the same boat with your significant other. If so, here’s what I learned along the way.

The best gifts are personal

Every person is different, even though mass-marketing and media tend to lump entire genres of people into singular categories. We’re taught that women prefer chocolate, rose petals, and expensive jewelry. If you’re a man, you’re likely lazy, into fast cars, and sports.

Of course, there are sub-genres. The academic, emotional man. The athletic and outdoorsy woman. But overall, when it comes to our celebration efforts, many of us tend to stick to the main genres of culture.

The tension comes because everyone has a different set of love languages. We almost all heard of the five love languages: physical touch, gifts, acts of service, quality time, and words of affirmation. These are good starting points that give some direction to the thousands of ways that people like to be loved and celebrated.

My wife wants to know that I respect her. She doesn’t love expensive jewelry and she’s more of a salty girl than a sweet one when it comes to snacks and treats. She’s not really into increasing her materialistic possessions and since she’s a nurse, she doesn’t need an overflowing wardrobe of the most in-season clothes. She’s practical, down-to-earth.

She enjoys a great home-cooked meal. She loves to bake, loves to sing, loves theater, and is starting to really enjoy gardening. She loves to be outside and she loves words that are authentic, even if they don’t sound the most polished and perfected. Acts of loyalty are deeply important to her and she values feeling supported and like her voice is significant.

Me, on the other hand? I love words of affirmation, especially on a small sticky note left in my lunchbox or on my car steering wheel. I love being inside with a great book and a nice glass of bourbon. I could own a hundred watches or pairs of shoes and still be just as happy to receive either in a nicely decorated box.

I could eat the same seven meals every week and would be generally okay eliminating the cooking skill from my lexicon of abilities.

The point is, we’re different people. The biggest thing I learned in the near-decade of celebrating my wife is that my best efforts come when I celebrate her — who she actually is.

Not when I celebrate her how I think she wants to be celebrated.

Not when I celebrate her with how I would want to be celebrated (although this is a sneaky and dangerous form of celebration).

Not even when I celebrate her with how other people who are close to her in life tend to celebrate her (you can’t replicate the celebration efforts of close friends or family).

My best moments of celebrating my wife come when I am celebrating who she is and what makes her come alive.

It’s when I celebrate the hobbies she loves and the skills she’s pursuing. It’s when I realize that she places a lot of value on the words of her friends, so instead of writing her a poem I think is romantic, I instead secretly work to collect letters and cards from her 25 closest friends to gift to her on her birthday.

Celebrating someone as they are is hard work. It requires being in the moment. It requires listening and thinking and cherishing what that person shares with you because you know it’s important to them. It means that you value the person for all of their positives and that you truly see them.

When I go to celebrate my wife now, which by the way, is definitely more than a once-a-year thing, I am more concerned with how the gift or effort will speak to her heart, and far less concerned with how it will make me look or how it will make me feel.

That’s part of learning what it means to fall in love — valuing the thoughts and emotions of someone else over your own.

It’s hard work but it’s so incredibly worth it. Maybe in another decade I’ll go back and read this article and realize how much of a rookie I still was, but I think I’m starting to catch on, and you can be sure that it will be some time (if ever) before I pull out the old trusty guitar for another serenade.

If you want to read more about my failed serenade, I wrote a bit more about it for P.S. I Love You here.