Dear Mike:
Enclosed is the item I mentioned (with which goes a torn up IOU). I could
stop here but I won’t.
You’ve heard all the jokes that have been rousted around by all the “unhappy
marrieds” and cynics. Now, in case no one has suggested it, there is another
viewpoint. You have entered into the most meaningful relationship there is in
all human life. It can be whatever you decide to make it. Some men feel their
masculinity can only be proven if they play out in their own life all the
locker-room stories, smugly confident that what a wife doesn’t know won’t hurt
her. The truth is, somehow, way down inside, without her ever finding lipstick
on the collar or catching a man in the flimsy excuse of where he was till three
A.M., a wife does know, and with that knowing, some of the magic of this
relationship disappears. There are more men griping about marriage who kicked
the whole thing away themselves than there can ever be wives deserving of blame.
There is an old law of physics that you can only get out of a thing as much as
you put in it. The man who puts into the marriage only half of what he owns will
get that out.
Sure, there will be moments when you will see someone or think back to an
earlier time and you will be challenged to see if you can still make the grade,
but let me tell you how really great is the challenge of proving your
masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find
a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all
that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved
by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was
sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm
glow and you will know some very beautiful music. If you truly love a girl, you
shouldn’t ever want her to feel, when she sees you greet a secretary or a girl
you both know, that humiliation of wondering if she was someone who caused you
to be late coming home, nor should you want any other woman to be able to meet
your wife and know she was smiling behind her eyes as she looked at her, the
woman you love, remembering this was the woman you rejected even momentarily for
her favors.
Mike, you know better than many what an unhappy home is and what it can do to
others. Now you have a chance to make it come out the way it should. There is no
greater happiness for a man than approaching a door at the end of a day knowing
someone on the other side of that door is waiting for the sound of his
footsteps.
Love,
Dad
P.S. You’ll never get in trouble if you say “I love you” at least once a
day.
Ronald Reagan wrote the following letter to his son Michael in 1971, just before
his marriage. It is a characteristic expression of Reagan’s sincerity, charm,
and humanity.