Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for January 20, 2024

Arlo’s thinking of a line by Danny Glover when he played Detective Roger Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon (1987). ;-)

Been married too long?

Arlo is no Rock Hudson, and I bet Janis is glad about that.

Arlo, put on a shirt.

That’s actually a different meaning of ‘pillow talk’.

Never happened. I go to bed at 9 pm, she 11 pm-12:30. I wake up around 4 am, wife 6:30 am on work days, whenever on weekends.

“If women knew what men were really thinking, they’d never stop slapping us.” — Larry Miller

Arlo is such a sly fox.

JJ has touched upon a topic that Chuck Rosenthal explored a little in his Jarvis Loop trilogy. (No, I am not Rosenthal.)

His idea is that all men have a core – their real selves – that they keep entirely hidden and private, no matter how deeply they love their wives. Please note that it doesn’t necessarily mean that men are hiding past sins.

The other part of this, of course, is that all wives know that this core exists, and it becomes their obsession to know it, fully and completely.

I assume Janis has her phone in her hand since all the other lights are off…..it’s hard to read a book in the dark, no? Perhaps if you put your phone down, Janis, pillow talk might make its nostalgic way back to bed.

You have a very good husband. You don’t want to know what he really thinks.

Don’t really get this one. My husband and I have never had any conversation like this.

When my wife gets drowsy just before sleep, that is when I ask to buy stuff. She mumbles her normal ‘uhuh’ and the next day I go buy it. She starts to yell at me and I remind her she said it was okay.

Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies……

So, Janis is just evil? Okay.

Arlo has caught on, therefore making him unbreakable.

Being a man married to a man, we learned about each of his and my cores a while ago. No, I shared with him my experiences at war and the horrors and boredom. He just listened as he always does, asked me clarification questions, and held me. He also trusts me with his core, but then he lived a normal civilian life.

Husband and I started out as friends in same group in college – he was dating someone else. We shared a love of movies – especially old movies – and of 1940s music – both getting appreciation of same from our dads. On paper we do not belong together – different ethnic backgrounds, different religions, families with different thoughts on the roles of men and women etc. But we DO belong together. We remain best friends as well as lovers after all these decades (first date was 50 years last November and we knew each other as friends for 2 years before that).

I know about his old girlfriends and he knows about my boyfriend in high school. I have met several of his old girlfriends and know that he is contact with them on Facebook. He did have something going on after we married a few years with someone at work – we see her about once a year and we are friends with her – no big deal. If we are at party or such and he is talking to women or I am talking to men – which happens a lot as we each work in a field more common to the other sex of each of us – there is no jealousy or curiosity of what is going on.

There is nothing we cannot discuss with each other. As different as our backgrounds are it is as if we were made for each other and were put where we would find each other. If one of us is interested in something – chances are the other will become so also. If one of us achieves some acclaim the other is delighted.

Based on this – we really never understand the cliches of men and women not trusting each other as we don’t understand why these tropes exist as they seem silly and fake to us.