Noelle C. Nelson - Your Man is Wonderful: How to Appreciate Your Partner, Romance Your Differences, and Love the One Youve Got

The examples, anecdotes, and characters in this book are drawn from my clinical work, research, and life experience with real people and events. Names and some identifying features and details have been changed.

I DIDNT GROW UP WITH BROTHERS . I had a dad, a wonderful dad, but my world was filled with women for the first sixteen years of my life. I went to an all-girls elementary school and high school, where the teachers were women, with two exceptions: the chemistry teacher and the tennis pro. It was only in college that I experienced men, but I knew them only as professors, classmates, or dates. Once again, my encounters with men were limited.

When I entered the work world, however, first as an acting coach, then as a psychologist, and then as a trial consultant, my life was flooded with men. I feel tremendously privileged that I came to know men in the workplace, discovering their vulnerabilities, fears, and insecurities, as well as their triumphs and camaraderie. Perhaps it is because I never developed any particular overriding prejudice about men as a group during my early years that I am well suited to listen to themand they do talk to me, at length and in detail. And somewhere along the way, I discovered that men are wonderful.

This is not to say that women arent wonderful. We are! The wonderful men youll wonderful women in their lives. This book is my response to what I see as the undeserved male bashing that exists in our culture and to the many women who have walked into my office over the years and asked, Where are all the wonderful men? Over my years of listening and watching, Ive learn to recognize them.

Of course, there are rotten apples among men, just as there are among women. I discuss how to recognize and avoid the bad apples in the book appendix, Men to Avoid. I also discuss this in greater detail in my previous book, Dangerous Relationships: How to Identify and Respond to the Seven Warning Signs of a Troubled Relationship, which is devoted to a certain type of rotten apple. This book, however, is about the discovery that inspires me: that men are wonderful, and yours can be too.

O NCE UPON A TIME , you knew a wonderful man. Maybe it was during those first few weeks of courtship; maybe it was while you were dating; maybe it was even for that first magical year or so of living together, of marriage. Then one day you turned around, and your prince had become a toad. Instead of wonderfulness, there was too much silence, too many fights, too many lonely evenings staring at the tube.

When you talked about it with your girlfriends, they all said, Thats just the way men are: great until theyve caught you, and then its Get me another beer or Quit nagging! Theyre just not ready for lifelong romance. Heck, even our Hollywood royalty cant sustain romance. They have humongous weddings and declare their undying love, but their marriages fail within months on beds of infidelity or with lukewarm declarations of were too different.

So you give up. There are no wonderful men, you think, just some men you can tolerate better than others. That wonderfulness you thought you saw was just an illusion, some fancy flash dance to get you into bed or to keep you wanting him regardless of his bad behavior.

How disappointing! How hurtful! How utterly unnecessary. You see, wonderful men are everywhere, and thats what this book is about: what a wonderful man is, how to recognize one, and how your prince can remain a prince throughout your relationship, not just during the honeymoon phase.

The little-known secret is that a wonderful man is probably sitting next to you right now. Somewhere inside that boyfriend or husband or that man you just met on a blind date is a wonderful man, just waiting to reveal himself. Finding a wonderful man isnt so much about looking for him out there somewhere, a needle in an impossible haystack, as about discovering how wonderful your man is.

First things first:

What is a wonderful man?

A wonderful man is a good person. When you look around you, youll find that most people are basically good. People are, for the most part, honest, caring, and helpful, at least when asked. There are far more good people in the world than bad. Its just that more often than not, the bad demand more attention. When we women think about men, we forget about all those good ones, focusing instead on the attention-grabbing bad apples, and declare, All the good men are taken.

They are not. Only a few men are spectacularly rich, good-looking, and successful, as well as caring and kind, but there is no shortage of men who are good people. One of them probably is your boyfriend, your husband, or that blind date.

This is not to say that there arent bad apples. If you meet such a man, dont get involved with him, and if you are in a relationship with one, get out. These men are easily recognizable (see the appendix for warning signs of men to avoid).

The characteristics of a wonderful man are also easily recognizable. He is:

• Basically honest
• Reliable (he does what he says hes going to do most of the time)
• Trustworthy (if he says something is so, then most likely it is so)
• Responsive (he responds to the world about him appropriately, he participates in life and doesnt just sit on the sidelines)
• Responsible (he takes responsibility for his thoughts and actions and is willingly accountable for both his successes and mistakes)
• Appreciative of other people and caring about their welfare

Thats it. He doesnt need to be tall, dark, and handsome, or wealthy, stylish, and ultracool. All the other qualities you may seeka good sense of humor, intelligence, a nice physiqueare certainly important and valid, but they do not necessarily make a man wonderful.

We have trouble recognizing wonderful guys because:

1. We dont realize how important and valuable these basic qualities, the building blocks of a wonderful relationship, are.
2. We pick (to death) at a mans superficial flaws.
3. We dont provide an emotional climate in which good qualities can flourish.
4. We demand things other than what they have to offer.

This book will help you discover how good your man is and show you how to nurture his wonderfulness so that it flourishes, bringing you the heaven on earth that a relationship with a wonderful man can be.

The foundation of this knowledge is the real-world wisdom imparted by a group of women whom I call the Ladies. They come from different walks of life but share an exceptional understanding of how to nurture wonderful qualities in their men. The Ladies came together to give us their thoughts on what makes a man wonderful over the course of a series of roundtable discussions. They came from different life experiences, age groups, and ethnic backgrounds. Some have been married for decades; others are newlyweds. Their only commonality is that they all felt they were either married to or in committed relationships with wonderful men. What they had to say about their relationships, their stories, are both the inspiration and the basis for this book.