I am learning a lot listening to my husband talk to my daughter about how to treat the man in her life. A month or so ago the three of us were talking about people and relationships, the specifics of which I don’t even recall, nor is it important to the point of my story. He shared something with her about what to say/do (or what NOT to say/do) in front of your man, if you care about him, the gist of which was that it would result in making him feel like less of a man. I recall thinking at the time that I’ve known him for 30 years and he’s never shared that important piece of information with me. I can think back to times it would have made a world of difference; and I never knew. I didn’t speak about my newfound enlightenment with Dwayne.

Shortly thereafter I was alone with Chelsea and I shared with her what a wonderful gift he gave to her in that peek into a man’s ego. I shared, without specifics, what a difference it would have made in our marriage, and how grateful I was that he was giving her this opportunity to not make our mistakes. Because I won’t always be there when those moments between father and daughter come up, I asked her to pay attention to what he says, even if it seems not to pertain to anything at the time. Someday it will. Life went on.

Then the other day it happened again. He noticed something between Chelsea and her boyfriend that he saw as a potential red flag and he wanted to warn her about it. Now Chelsea and Jonathan have this way of teasing one another and correcting each other on minor points. To them, there seems no offense, neither meant nor taken. But to my man, who thought about this for some time before bringing it up, it fell into the “praise in public, correct in private” category. This time Dwayne mentioned it first to me but he wanted to caution her about how far to take what routinely appears to be an innocent enough, and reciprocal, game. To me, this was the second time in a relatively short period of time that my husband has, through giving advice to his daughter about how to treat her man, provided me with advice on how to treat him. I shared with him the first incident from the month before and my feelings about it. He tried to tell me that he wasn’t (in that case) bringing up a personal example from our relationship, rather that his observation was more related to his training and experience as a supervisor all these years. I will take the wrap for the times I didn’t follow the wise tenet he pointed out.

I am blessed on a daily basis by his kindness, generosity, friendship and love. Witnessing these truly special times between a wonderful father and his daughter, moments I guess I never had with mine, fills my heart with a joy that I can not express in words. The opportunity he is providing both his girls to learn how to show nothing but love and support for their men is more valuable than diamonds (and we all know how much I love THOSE) and I’d trade them all for a few more of those pearls of wisdom from my man!