Roughhousing. Horseplay. Wrastling. Whatever you call it, it’s one of the best things about being a dad. I love chasing my one-year-old son, Gus, around the house or pretending that the living room is a lucha libre ring and wrestling with him. No matter how stressed out I’m feeling, hearing one of his big, belly laughs erupt as I swing him around like a monkey makes all my cares go away.

Gus-Dad Throwdown

Unfortunately, in recent years, horseplay has gotten a bad rap. Parents, concerned about safety and preventing ADHD, limit the amount of rambunctious play their kids take part in. At least 40% of US school districts have eliminated or are considering eliminating recess, because  teachers need more time to cram kids’ heads full of information for standardized tests, because they’re afraid of children getting hurt and the school being held liable, and even because play can apparently encourage violent behavior; according to a principal that banned recess at her elementary school in Cheyenne, a game of tag “progresses easily into slapping and hitting and pushing instead of just touching.”

But recent research has shown that roughhousing serves an evolutionary purpose and actually provides a myriad of benefits for our progeny.  In their book The Art of Roughhousing, Anthony DeBenedet and Larry Cohen highlight a few of these benefits and the research behind them. Instead of teaching kids to be violent and impulsive, DeBenedet and Cohen boldly claim that roughhousing “makes kids smart, emotionally intelligent, lovable and likable, ethical, physically fit, and joyful.” In short, roughhousing makes your kid awesome.

Below, we highlight six benefits of roughhousing with your children. The next time your wife gets on to you for riling up the kids, you can tell her: “I’m helping our children develop into healthy, functioning adults, dear!”…right before performing a baby suplex on your daughter.

The Benefits of Roughhousing

Roughhousing Boosts Your Kid’s Resilience

Helping your child develop a resilient spirit is one of the best things you can do as a parent. The ability to bounce back from failures and adapt to unpredictable situations will help your kids reach their full potential and live happier lives as adults. And an easy way to help boost your kids’ resilience is to put them in a gentle headlock and give them a noogie.

Roughhousing requires your child to adapt quickly to unpredictable situations. One minute they might be riding you like a horse and the next they could be swinging upside-down. According to evolutionary biologist Marc Bekoff in his book Wild Justice, the unpredictable nature of roughhousing actually rewires a child’s brain by increasing the connections between neurons in the cerebral cortex, which in turn contributes to behavioral flexibility. Learning how to cope with sudden changes while roughhousing trains your kiddos to cope with unexpected bumps in the road when they’re out in the real world.

Additionally, roughhousing helps develop your children’s grit and stick-to-itiveness. You shouldn’t just let your kids “win” every time when you roughhouse with them. Whether they’re trying to escape from your hold or run past you in the hallway, make them work for it. Playtime is a fun and safe place to teach your kids that failure is often just a temporary state and that victory goes to the person who keeps at it and learns from his mistakes.

Roughhousing also helps children learn how to manage and deal with pain and discomfort. You shouldn’t intentionally hurt your kids while roughhousing (obviously), but little bumps and scrapes are bound to happen. Instead of cuddling and kissing a child’s “boo boo,” dads have a tendency to distract their kids from the pain with humor or some other task. Learning to deal with and manage minor discomforts while roughhousing can help your child handle the stresses they’ll encounter at school and work.

Roughhousing Makes Your Kid Smarter

Image by ctsnow

Go ahead. Toss your kid like a sack of potatoes onto your bed. It will help turn him into a Toddler Einstein.

Psychologist Anthony Pellegrini has found that the amount of roughhousing children engage in predicts their achievement in first grade better than their kindergarten test scores do. What is it about rough and tumble play that makes kids smarter? Well, a couple things.

First, as we discussed above, roughhousing makes your kid more resilient and resilience is a key in developing children’s intelligence. Resilient kids tend to see failure more as a challenge to overcome rather than an event that defines them.  This sort of intellectual resilience helps ensure your children bounce back from bad grades and gives them the grit to keep trying until they’ve mastered a topic.

In addition to making students more resilient, roughhousing actually rewires the brain for learning. Neuroscientists studying animal and human brains have found that bouts of rough-and-tumble play increase the brain’s level of a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF helps increase neuron growth in the parts of the brain responsible for memory, logic, and higher learning–skills necessary for academic success.

Roughhousing Builds Social Intelligence

I’ve talked to several parents, especially moms, who are afraid to encourage roughhousing because they think it will turn their kids into little bouncing-off-the-walls hellians who will someday wind up in a juvie center. I guess I can see the reasoning behind their concerns–five-year-old play fights with dad; five-year-old thinks violence is fun; five year old turns into violent sadist bent on human destruction.

The problem is that research actually shows the opposite outcome: children who engage in frequent roughhousing are almost always more socially and emotionally adept than kids who don’t. Dr. Stuart Brown, an expert on play (Yeah, you can be an expert on play. Who knew?) says that the “lack of experience with rough-and-tumble play hampers the normal give-and-take necessary for social mastery and has been linked with poor control of violent impulses later in life.” That’s right. Wrestling your kid around in a play fight ensures that he doesn’t turn into the next Ted Bundy. Keeping him away from the neighborhood cats helps too.

Roughhousing builds social intelligence in several ways. First, when kids roughhouse they learn to tell the difference between play and actual aggression. Dr. Pellegrini found in a survey among school-aged children that the ones who could tell the difference between play and real aggression were more well-liked compared to kids who had a hard time separating the two. The kids who mistook play for aggression often ended up returning their classmates good-natured overtures with a real punch in the kisser. The ability to differentiate between play and aggression translates into other social skills that require people to read and interpret social cues.

Roughhousing also teaches children about taking turns and cooperation. You might not recognize it, but when you horse around with your kids, you’re often taking part in a give-and-take negotiation where the goal is to make sure everyone has fun.  Sometimes you’re the chaser and sometimes you’re the chasee; sometimes you’re pinning down your kids and other times they’re pinning you down. Your kids wouldn’t want to keep playing if they were constantly on the losing side.  Everyone has to take turns in order for the fun to continue.

What’s interesting is that animals even take part in this back-and-forth role reversal. Adult wolves will expose their bellies and necks to their cubs and let them “win” the play fight. Stronger rats will handicap themselves during bouts of play and let the weaker rat win so play can continue. Marc Bekoff posits that roughhousing may be nature’s way of teaching cooperation to animals, a necessary skill for the survival of a species.

Roughhousing Teaches Your Kid Morality

We all want kids who end up like Atticus Finch–moral, upright, compassionate. That’s exactly why you need to body slam your kid every now and then.

When we roughhouse with our sons and daughters, they learn boundaries and the difference between right and wrong. If they start hitting hard, aiming below the belt, or becoming malicious, you can reprimand them and then show by example what’s appropriate roughhousing behavior.

Also, roughhousing teaches our children about the appropriate use of strength and power. As I mentioned earlier, when we roughhouse with our kids, we often take turns with the dominant role. Because we’re so much bigger and stronger, we have to handicap ourselves. The implicit message to your child when you hold back is: “Winning isn’t everything. You don’t need to dominate all the time. There’s strength in showing compassion on those weaker than you.”

Roughhousing Gets Your Kid Physically Active

Dads have a profound impact on their children’s physical fitness. Studies have shown that the father’s, (not the mother’s), activity level and weight strongly predict what their children’s activity level and weight will be as adults. If you want your kids to be healthy, active, and fit, then you better be healthy, active, and fit yourself.

What better way to teach your kids to live an active lifestyle than by getting down on the carpet with them for some vigorous roughhousing instead of everyone vegging out in front of the TV? All that running, tumbling, and tackling helps develop strength, flexibility, and coordination in your child.

Roughhousing Builds the Father-Child Bond

Some of my best memories of my childhood were when my dad roughhoused with my brother and I. When we were smaller he’d do the obligatory “ride the horsey.” When we got a little bigger we moved to slap fighting, which consisted of my dad dramatically swirling his hands in front of him like you see fighters do in the old kung fu movies and then very lightly smacking our heads with quick open-handed jabs. Slap fights were the best.

You probably have similar memories of roughhousing with your dad. Roughhousing offers dads a chance to physically show their affection to their kids in a fun and playful environment. When Gus and I wrestle, there are lots of hugs and kisses scattered in-between pretend sleeper holds.

When you throw your kids up in the air and catch them or swing them upside-down, you’re building your child’s trust in you. As they take part in somewhat risky activities with you, your kids learn that they can trust you to keep them safe. Just don’t be like this guy when you tell your kids to jump into your arms:

How to Roughhouse With Your Kids

The beauty of roughhousing is that there’s no right or wrong way to do it. Roughhousing is just spontaneous, improvised play that’s both rowdy and interactive. Don’t think too much about whether you’re doing it wrong or right. Just have fun.

With that said, the The Art of Roughhousing provides a few guidelines to keep in mind while you’re tossing your kids in the air:

Safety first. While you want to get rough and rowdy with your kids, you don’t want to get too crazy with them. Just be aware of your surroundings and keep your kids away from areas where they can get hurt. Also, keep in mind that a child’s joints are prone to injury when roughhousing. Save the joint locks for when your kids are older and fully developed.

Don’t roughhouse right before bed. For me, I have a tendency to want to horse around with Gus right before bed. I’m going to miss the little guy while he’s asleep, so I want to get in as much daddy time as I can before he hits the hay. But just like adults, kids need some time right before bed to relax and ramp things down so they can get into sleep mode. Unless you want a little night owl joining you on the couch to watch late-night TV, roughhouse earlier in the day.

Roughhousing is for girls, too.  While boys are naturally prone to engage in roughhousing, make sure you don’t leave your daughters out of the fun. Studies show that girls who roughhouse with their fathers are more confident than girls who don’t. And some studies even indicate that roughhousing can prevent your little angel from growing up into one of those Queen Bee, Mean Girls that psychologically terrorize other girls.

If you’re looking for specific things to do with your kids while roughhousing, I definitely recommend picking up a copy of The Art of Roughhousing. The book features some great suggestions for roughhousing fun, along with helpful illustrations showing you how to do them. Also, you can visit their website for roughhousing ideas, too.

Sources:

The Art of Roughhousing by Anthony DeBenedet and Lawrence J. Cohen
Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce
The Science of Parenting by Margot Sunderland

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How often have you talked with another guy who never looked you in the eye during the entire length of the conversation? Or perhaps he did meet your gaze a few times, but then his eyes shifted back to his shoes or to some point off in the distance.

I’d like to say that the ability to make good eye contact is one of the social skills a lot of young men seem to be struggling with these days, which would be true, but I’ve encountered enough gaze-averting middle-aged men to know that it’s a multi-generational problem. And actually, it’s probably something men have always struggled with—females are on average better at making and holding eye contact than males, and in fact, it’s been found that the higher the levels of testosterone a fetus is exposed to in utero, the less eye contact they make as infants—across genders. Interestingly, the exception to this rule are male babies who have the very highest levels of T; they end up being as adept at eye contact as their female counterparts—alpha babies aren’t afraid to look you in the eye!

But just because making eye contact doesn’t come naturally to us men, doesn’t mean you should just shrug your shoulders and accept this predisposition. The ability to make high-level eye contact is a skill every man should work on, as it has been shown to create some incredible benefits for the gazer. Numerous studies have shown that people who make higher-levels of eye contact with others are perceived as being:

• More dominant and powerful
• More warm and personable
• More attractive and likeable
• More qualified, skilled, competent, and valuable
• More trustworthy, honest, and sincere
• More confident and emotionally stable

And not only does increased eye contact make you seem more appealing in pretty much every way to those you interact with, it also improves the quality of that interaction. Eye contact imparts a sense of intimacy to your exchanges, and leaves the receiver of your gaze feeling more positive about your interaction and connected to you.

In short, making greater eye contact with others can increase the quality of all of your face-to-face interactions; there’s no area of your life where being seen as more attractive, confident, and trustworthy wouldn’t be a boon. Being able to look people in the eye and hold their gaze can help you better network with others, land a job, pitch an idea, make a moving speech, woo the ladies, and intimidate your enemies. It can help a lawyer win over a jury, a boxer psych out his opponent, and a minister connect with his congregants. It can even aid a musician in winning over new fans; studies have shown that the more eye contact a musician makes with his audience, the more they enjoy his music—take note ye members of struggling bands!

And the best part of all this is that improving your eye contact is something you can do relatively quickly and easily. Next week in the second article of this two-part series, we’ll cover all the practical nuts and bolts on how to do that, and offer some really helpful eye contact tips for both general conversational situations as well as specific scenarios.

But today we’d like to begin with an exploration of why making eye contact is so important in forming relationships with other people, and why it can be so hard to do.

Why Eye Contact Is Vitally Important for Creating Positive Connections with Others

Why does making eye contact with people have such a dramatic effect in improving their perception of you? There are four main reasons:

1. Our eyes were made to connect. It’s easy to see why the eyes of others capture our gaze: they’re free-moving orbs lodged in an otherwise stationary face; eyeballs are really kind of weird when you think about them, aren’t they? But they also grab our attention for a reason that is distinctly human. While our irises and pupils float on a bright white canvas, none of the other 220 species of primates have white in their eyes at all, or at least whites that can readily be seen.

Image source

The whites of our eyes make it very easy for others to see exactly what we’re looking at and notice when our focus changes direction. While primates will typically turn their gaze in the direction a person points his whole head towards, a human infant is more likely to follow the person’s eyes, regardless of which way the person’s head is tilted. Anthropologists think our uniquely human eyes evolved to help us achieve a greater level of cooperation with others, which is helpful in survival and building a civilization. All of which is to say: your eyes were made to communicate with the eyes of other people.

2. Our eyes reveal our thoughts and feelings. You’ve probably heard the old expression: “The eyes are the window to the soul.” While that may not be literally true, they do reveal a great deal about what we’re really thinking and feeling from moment to moment.

Think of all the eye-related expressions we have in our language. We’re seduced by “bedroom eyes,” wary of “shifty eyes,” and afraid of getting the “evil eye.” We’re attracted to people who have “kind eyes” and eyes that “sparkle,” “glow,” or “twinkle,” while we’re repelled by those who are “dead behind the eyes.”  When someone is eager and peppy we say they’re “bright-eyed;” when they’re bored we describe their eyes as “glazed over.” Love stories in both fiction and real life very often begin with two pairs of eyes meeting across a room. And Bryan Adams says you can gauge your love for a woman from your ability to see your unborn children in her eyes! Kind of romantic, kind of creepy.

That we give so much credence to the idea that we can read someone from what’s in their eyes is due to the fact that even when we hide what we’re really thinking and feeling in our body language and facial expressions, it’s often still revealed in our eyes. “The eyes don’t lie” as people say (although good liars can, in reality, get their eyes to fib for them). This is why poker players often wear sunglasses in order to disguise their reactions to the hands they’re dealt.

The human propensity to look to someone’s eyes in order to decipher what they’re thinking starts very early in life. Around 9-18 months, infants will begin to look to their parents’ eyes to figure out what they’re trying to convey when their face is otherwise ambiguous. And we continue to do this for the rest of our lives.

Finally, we lend a lot of weight to eye contact in our interactions because it’s a form of simultaneous communication. You don’t have to take turns expressing yourselves as you do with talking. If you’ve ever had a whole mini conversation across the room with your spouse, using only your eyes, you know how this works.

3. Eye contact shows attention. Sociologists tell us that people are starved for attention these days. Despite the fact that we’re more “connected” than ever, folks are hungry for face-to-face interactions and someone to really, sincerely listen to them. This hunger for attention can manifest itself in things like “conversational narcissism.” And if you read our discussion about that social malady from awhile back, you’ll remember that we talked about how you show your attention to someone with whom you are talking by using “support-responses,” such as nodding your head and offering “background acknowledgments” like “mmm’s” and “yeah’s.” Well, eye contact is another form of background acknowledgement—and a very important one at that. It shows the speaker that you’re tuned in to what he’s saying. Think of how crappy you feel when you’re talking with someone and he’s looking all around the room for someone else to ditch you for.

The ability to give eye contact to someone as they speak is an especially powerful tool these days; it has become so common for people to break their gaze to check their phone during a conversation, that giving someone your complete and undivided attention can truly win them over.

4. Eye contact creates an intimate bond. When I am performing a task or feeling an emotion, and you are observing me do so, the same neurons that are being lit up in my brain by actually having the experience, are the ones that light up in your brain just from watching me. This is made possible by the presence of “mirror neurons” in our craniums. And the activation of these mirror neurons is especially sensitive to facial expressions, and, you guessed it, eye contact. Have you ever been hit hard with an emotion after looking into the eyes of someone who was experiencing it? Eye contact creates moments where you are able to really feel what someone else is feeling. It links together your emotional states and creates empathy and an intimate bond.

This is why when we’re interacting as disembodied selves on the internet, it can be very easy to be angry and hateful to people, but when you see someone face-to-face, and look into their eyes, you often can get a sense of their humanity and your anger greatly dissipates.

Getting in-sync with others, sharing our feelings, showing attention, creating a bond: eye contact is truly a powerful tool for connecting with others.

Why Is It So Hard to Make Eye Contact?

But on the other hand…getting in-sync with others, sharing our feelings, showing attention, creating a bond…these things aren’t easy—especially for men!

While people like to see our eyes so they can get a handle on what we’re really thinking and feeling, from our side of things, revealing what’s going on inside our heads can make us feel very vulnerable. We avoid eye contact when we don’t want people to take a closer look at us and see more of who we are. This reticence can be rooted in several causes:

Hiding deceit. If you’re purposefully hiding the truth from someone, you may hesitate to look them in the eye because you’re worried that your eyes will give away the truth, and because creating the kind of intimate bond described above when you’re knowingly duping someone makes you feel especially ashamed. This is why people will sometimes, although not always, avoid your gaze when they’re lying to you, why people say things like: “Look me in the eye when you tell me that!” and why people who do make solid eye contact are considered more trustworthy.

Masking emotions. There are times when you’re not trying to disguise a lie outright, but simply wish to conceal your true feelings from others, such as when you do not think your reaction to something will be received favorably by them. Anger, fear, and surprise are the emotions that register most through our eyes, and are hardest to hide. And they’re also the emotions we most often want to keep from others.

Insecurity. Finally, one of the most common reasons that people avoid eye contact is from simple insecurity. Eye contact invites more interaction, and you might not want people to take a closer look at you because of how you feel about yourself.

People with higher-status make more eye contact when they’re speaking to others, while those who feel they are of lower-status will make less eye contact and be the first to avert their gaze. When a guy can’t look anyone in the eye when he’s speaking to them, it’s often because he doesn’t feel like he comes up to anyone’s level; he doesn’t believe he can hold his own with other people.

This lack of confidence can be rooted in insecurity over one’s physical appearance, or the state of one’s mind. A study was done where college students were shown faces which looked at the participants with different kinds of gazes—averted or direct. The students then ranked the faces on whether they seemed approachable or avoidable. Then a survey was given to the participants that evaluated their mental health. The students who ranked the faces that had a direct gaze as approachable were found to be more emotionally stable than those who found the direct gaze faces avoidable. Another study specifically showed that people who suffer from depression—which can do a number on a person’s self-confidence–are less likely to make eye contact with people.

People will also avoid eye contact when saying a sarcastic, as opposed to a sincere, comment, as sarcasm is often used by those who are too insecure to show aggression or state their opinion directly.

The Best Way to Improve the Quality of Your Eye Contact

The common denominator in all three of the above reasons for avoiding eye contact is the fear of rejection. If eyes are the portals to our feelings and thoughts, eye contact acts as an intimacy regulator. The more eye contact you make, the more you put yourself out there. Thus the more confidence you have in what people will find once they get a closer look at you and peer into the chamber of your heart, the more comfortable you feel with looking them in the eye. And conversely, the more shame you feel about what others will discover when you open up to them, the more likely you are to avert your gaze.

As I mentioned, next week we’ll get into the practical nuts and bolts of how to make eye contact in the right way. But it should be obvious from this introduction that no amount of external fine tuning of your gaze can compensate for unresolved internal issues that need fixing. You can force yourself to make eye contact with people even when you don’t feel like it, but good eye contact is not just about quantity, it’s about quality. While it may not be true that the eyes are the window of the soul, in my opinion there really is something almost metaphysical about the way in which our character becomes etched upon them. People with kind eyes are almost invariably kind people. People with a twinkle in their eyes are almost always possessed with an enviable vitality. And those with dead eyes on the outside, tend to be dead on the inside, too.

Thus the foundation of good eye contact truly comes from within (changing your outer appearance by doing things like losing weight and dressing your best helps too, but even these things typically require a change of inner attitude). The more you live a life of integrity, the easier it will be to look everyone you meet in the eye, and do it with confidence and a real smile.

Note: The principles in this series are written for men who live in Western countries. The importance of eye contact and how to make it can vary from culture to culture.

Sources:

The Power of Eye Contact: Your Secret for Success in Business, Love, and Life by Michael Ellsberg
The Persuasion Handbook: Developments in Theory and Practice by James Price Dillard, Michael Pfau
Applied Organizational Communication: Theory and Practice by Thomas E. Harris, Thomas E. Harris, and Mark D. Nelson
Nonverbal Communication by Albert Mehrabian
Status and Groups by Melissa Thomas-Hunt

Related Photos

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Joshua Gordon.

One of the marks of being a great man is the ability to love the same woman for over 50 years. That’s manly–hands down. It’s something that the airbrushed elite of our day can’t seem to figure out. It’s something that many in my generation have completely given up on. It’s something I’ve committed to, and in the spirit of Art of Manliness tradition, I look to great men of the past for inspiration.

As I flip through the dusty pages of history, I see some common themes. Men with long-lasting marriages (Winston Churchill, George Washington, George H. Bush, Ronald Reagan, etc…) tended to write love letters to their wives–with consistency. They cultivated an ability to express their feelings in writing.

And some of those men were quite accomplished letter writers; try this on for size:

My Darling Wife

This note is to warn you of a diabolical plot entered into by some of our so called friends — (ha!) calendar makers and even our own children. These and others would have you believe we’ve been married 20 years.

20 minutes maybe — but never 20 years. In the first place it is a known fact that a human cannot sustain the high level of happiness I feel for more than a few minutes — and my happiness keeps increasing.

I will confess to one puzzlement but I’m sure it is just some trick perpetrated by our friends — (Ha again!) I can’t remember ever being without you and I know I was born more than 20 mins ago.

Oh well — that isn’t important. The important thing is I don’t want to be without you for the next 20 years, or 40, or however many there are. I’ve gotten very used to being happy and I love you very much indeed.

Your Husband of 20 something or other.

The author? Ronald Reagan–a man who, over more than 50 years of marriage, penned hundreds of love notes to his wife.

Now if writing love letters could keep the marriages of the great men of history going–they who experienced the acute stresses and temptations that come along with positions of power–imagine what consistent love note writing might do for us regular joes! And last year, that’s what I set out to discover.

The Challenge

The instant communication tools of today have nearly obliterated the love letter, which is a crying shame. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the tech wonders of our day.  Email? I love it–so useful. Texting? Same deal. Twitter? Addictive as all get out. These are all fantastic tools for communicating with co-workers, making plans with friends–even asking for the grocery list.

At the end of the day, though, a well-written love letter communicates deep affection in a way that a bazillion texts, emails, and tweets never can.

In my own life, it was easy to see how my obsession with “instant” had steadily eroded the inclination to put extra thought and time into carefully written love letters to my wife. So last year I decided to change that. In January of 2011, I pledged to write one love note to my wife for every week of the year. That’s 52 of ‘em.

I knew going into it that it would be a real challenge for me. Mainly, I didn’t trust my ability to write one love note per week. I was sure I’d forget and miss weeks, and thus blow the challenge.

My solution was to write the notes in bursts. Sitting down for an evening, I would compose between 5 and 10 notes, and then distribute them over the course of the following weeks. This kept me on track, and as 2011 came to a close, I could look back over the year and enjoy the satisfaction of knowing I had delivered all 52 loves notes to my wife.

The challenge turned out to be something both my wife and I truly enjoyed. I had a blast hiding them in places I knew Sarah would find them. (Hint: The fridge is an awesome place. As is the bathroom counter. As is her pillow.) I loved watching Sarah find and read the notes. And she told me how special, cherished, and treasured she felt when she read the letters. I sometimes catch her re-reading old love notes and smiling to herself–and man! That makes me feel SO good.

Over the course of the year our relationship took on a new energy, a lightness. All in all, the 52 Love Notes Challenge was an unequivocal success.

Love Note Writing Tips and Examples

Love note from Johnny Cash to his wife June. From House of Cash.

Over the course of 2011, I began picking up on some things that helped me in the love note writing process. AoM has some really great posts about how to write swoon-worthy love letters (see here and here), so I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but here are some guidelines I used for myself:

1. Be thoughtful when you write.
2. Be inventive in how you say “I love you.”
3. Point out the little things you like about your wife.
4. Use poetry for inspiration.

The hardest part is really getting started; I found that writing the notes became easier and easier as the year wore on and I got more practiced. If you need some help in getting your romantic thoughts going, Sarah handpicked her 10 favorite notes for you to check out. Feel free to modify them for your own use (someone else’s words can be a great starting point when you feel stuck):

Dearest Lover and Friend,
As I look back and reflect on this year, I can’t help but be overwhelmed by the impact you’ve had on me. You challenge me to be my best. Christmas is about recognizing the gifts in our lives, and when I contemplate the gift of you, I am awed.
With all my love
– Josh
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Dearest Sarah,
Weʼve been through a lot — and weʼll encounter tougher times, too, of that Iʼm sure. When I try to imagine the difficult moments that lie ahead of us, Iʼm not afraid. My head tells me I should worry, but I donʼt. Itʼs because of you. You see, I know you, and I know that if we are walking through together weʼll be alright.
You are my safe place.
– Josh
====
To my wife and partner in crime.
The other day, I wanted to do something I thought would be adventurous. It was probably something sort of silly and insanely impractical — like selling our car and driving bikes everywhere, or relocating to Taiwan, or getting a massive tattoo. Any other person wouldnʼt have even let me finish my sentence. But you, you listened to me. You let me share my silly and insanely impractical dream. You let me be me — and that is one of the reasons I love you so much.
I canʼt believe how awesome you are.
– Josh
====
Sarah,
One of the things I like about you so much is that you really care about stuff. You engage with your world. You really want to make things better. So many people arenʼt like you.
You drive me to be a better man.
– Josh
====
Dear Sarah,
You do strange things to me. Sometimes, in the quiet, I feel strangely overwhelmed with how little of you I know. Yes, weʼve been married for years, and Iʼve delighted in learning you, but itʼs amazing how deep you are. Thereʼs always something incredible inside of you.
– Josh
====
Sarah,
I think back to our wedding day; most of it is blurry and surreal, but I do remember one thing with utter clarity. I remember hearing you say “I do.” I can see your lips pronounce the words, I can hear your voice settling in my ear, and I can definitely remember the surge of emotion that flooded me (which I handled in an extremely manly fashion).
No two words have ever meant so much to me.
Yours,
– Josh
====
Dear Sarah.
I love every bit of you. I love your mismatched socks. I love your mischievous grin. I love your quirky affection for goats. I love your fondness for coffee. I love your taste in fashion. I love your ability to really listen. I love your hospitality. I love your quietness. I love your laugh. I love your everything.
– Josh
====
Dear Sarah,
No matter how many times I tell you “I love you,” it never feels to be enough. I feel as though the deep affection and absolute commitment I have for you is far too great to be expressed through anything but a lifetime of saying “I love you.”
Thatʼs good, because a lifetime is what I have for you!
– Josh
====
Dear Sarah,
You have challenged so many of my preconceptions about life. Youʼve changed the way I understand compassion. Youʼve helped me to stop listening to myself talk and start really hearing what other people are saying. Youʼve realigned my priorities and reshaped my outlook on life.
Hands down, youʼve made me much awesomer.
Thanks!
– Josh
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Dear Sarah,
As I experience you, I want more of you. The more of you I get, the harder it is to imagine life without you. Without realizing it, Iʼve built my world around your beauty and intelligence and spirit, and it looks amazing.
You are the cornerstone of my life, Sarah, and I am deeply in love with you.
– Josh

To read through all of the 52 love notes I wrote this year, check out: http://www.thenonconformistfamily.com/aom

Take the 52 Love Note Challenge in 2012!

So, gentlemen, there you have it. This year, I challenge you to make written love notes part of your romancing arsenal. Be the most romantic guy in your partner’s life. Express your love to her in a way that is deeply, meaningfully real. And enjoy a happier and stronger relationship with your main squeeze and partner in crime in 2012.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Jon Finkel.

Presidents are notorious for giving their dogs politically correct names (See: Bill Clinton re: Buddy or Gerald Ford re: Liberty). Lyndon Johnson even had a pair of beagles he simply named Him and Her. But our manliest president, Teddy Roosevelt, would have none of that. Not only does he have a dog breed named after him (the Teddy Roosevelt Terrier) he is also responsible for perhaps the two coolest Oval Office dog names around: Sailor Boy and Blackjack. Since you don’t have your own dog breed named after you and you’re not likely to become the leader of the free world, we thought we’d provide you with a little assistance when it comes to the art of picking a manly name for your dog.

1) When it comes to female dog names, if you’re a single guy, steer clear of naming her after your favorite actress or supermodel (unless you want to end up like Michael Rapaport’s character in Beautiful Girls). Your buddies might think it’s funny, but grown women will think you’re fifteen.

2) Ironic names are like somewhat clever/funny voice mail recordings; they’re usually not as funny as you think they are, but even if they work, they’re only funny once, so don’t use them. Introducing your 10-pound Maltese named Bear might get a smile from some people, but then again, it might not. Also, if you’re a man, why do you have a Maltese? The only thing with the word “Maltese” in it that should be in your house is a copy of the Dashiell Hammett novel.

3) No car names for dogs. If you can’t afford a Lexus, don’t name your dog Lexus. If you can’t afford a BMW, don’t name your dog Beamer. It makes you look ridiculous. If you can afford these cars and you name a dog after your car, that’s probably the reason people don’t return your phone calls.

4) Dogs named after brands of alcohol are hard to pull off. As a rule, the more masculine the drink, the greater chance the name might be a success. Also, liquor names tend to work better than beer names: A Doberman named Johnny Walker? Possibly. A black lab named Guinness? Maybe. An Irish Setter named Jameson? You might be on to something. A Weimaraner named Corona or Michelob? Doubtful. Even Budweiser’s own canine mascot was named Spuds, not Bud.

4a) Age is a big factor with this rule. You have to go with your gut and trust your friends. In college, I thought my friend’s dog Jäger, as in Jägermeister, was the coolest thing ever. At the time, it probably was. Now that my buddy is 32 and has two daughters, the name feels a bit dated.

5) Piggybacking on the last corollary to the last rule: Never forget that many dogs live well beyond ten years–which is well beyond the few years of fame most pop stars enjoy. Letting your 14-year-old daughter name your new dog Bieber might make her happy now, but when your child is 24 and Justin Bieber is in rehab, nobody will be happy–least of all, the dog.

6) You really can’t go wrong with dogs named after great literary characters or old-school Presidents. Some examples: Lincoln and Jackson are great dog names. Huckleberry, Gatsby, and Buck (even though the character in this last case is an actual  dog) are solid as well.

7) Be careful about naming your dog after famous authors. You might be tempted to name your dog Hemingway or Twain or Cormac, but half the people won’t get the name and the other half will probably accuse you of being pretentious. That doesn’t leave many people besides you to appreciate it.

8) Never, ever name your dog after a current player on your favorite sports team. It may seem like a good idea, even if he just signed a 10-year, $127 million contract, but it’s not. Even if you never in your wildest dreams pictured Player X playing for another team, don’t do it. It’s not worth the agony when all of a sudden your favorite player somehow becomes a team cancer and decides he wants a contract extension, or more catches, or more playing time. Once that happens, you’re in trouble. Then, of course, there’s free agency. Sweating out a free agency period with your favorite athlete on the line is tough enough already, no need to make it worse.

8a) If your wife surprises you with a dog as a gift without reading this article, and she names the dog after Player X without your knowledge, or your kids absolutely love the name and you can’t turn them down, and Player X gets traded or signs elsewhere, you have every right to change your dog’s name. Think about how many dogs named “LeBron” are walking around Cleveland right now. Not a pretty sight.

9) Naming a dog after your favorite retired athlete isn’t the most unique idea, but if you do it, you absolutely have to take into account whether that athlete might do something insane in retirement that will make you want to change the dog’s name. There must have been several dozen people in the Buffalo area with dogs named OJ or Juice who were scrambling for new names for their pets in the mid ’90s. Retired players are good. Dead players are better. Same goes for actors, actresses, politicians, celebrities, artists, etc…

10) Dogs named after college coaches are a bad idea — too much insecurity and uncertainty about the character of the coach and how long he’ll be there. Would you want to have a dog named Paterno right now? Didn’t think so.

11) As for naming a dog after a stadium or arena, proximity to that stadium or arena is a major factor in whether you should do this. A dog named Fenway in Boston will be a dime a dozen and most likely looked upon as an uninspired nod to your Red Sox fandom. Same for a dog named Wrigley in Chicago or Lambeau in Green Bay. The farther you live from where your team plays, the more chance you have of the dog’s name coming off as original. A dog named Lambeau in Baton Rouge, Louisiana will probably be just fine. For large fan bases, it’s safer to stay away from these names, because chances are if you live near a major metropolitan area, there will be lots of transplants.

12) Dogs named after colleges or mascots in general are okay, but like stadiums, proximity is a factor. How many dogs named Gator are there in Florida? How many dogs named Bama are in Alabama? Hundreds. Avoid them. Better pick something original about your college experience and go with that. The street name your fraternity or sorority house was on, your favorite sandwich at your favorite sub shop–something like that is always good and gives you a great story.

13) Fido, Spot, Toto, Lassie, Snoopy, Buddy, etc…are all unacceptable.

14) Names based on a dog’s physical traits are also unacceptable: Fluffy, Snowy, Midnight, Brownie, Whitey… In fact, if your dog’s name could in some way be misinterpreted as an outdated racial insult, avoid it.

15) When in doubt, remember two things: simplicity and originality.

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Jon Finkel has written for GQ, Details, ComedyCentral.com and the New York Times, among others. For tons of manly advice about how to name a child, interview for a job or even decide which actor played the most believable real-life boxer, check out Jon Finkel’s The Three Dollar Scholar: Awesome Advice for Acing Life’s Major Decisions and Mindless Debates today! Follow Jon on Twitter: @3dollarscholar

What did you name your dog? What names have you admired or disliked in the dogs of others? Sound off in the comments.

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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Marcus Brotherton. 

How unexpected—and yet not—this late night phone call from Shannon, the wife of my close friend Paul. “Come to the hospital,” Shannon said. “Come say goodbye to your friend.”

Paul had already beaten cancer. He had gone through five rounds of chemo. After his hair fell out, after he had thrown up for months, after his fingers tingled with the aftershocks of radiation, doctors announced remission. Paul had won. But as soon as victory was claimed, an infection wormed its way into his body. It wouldn’t go away. It spread from his lungs through his kidneys and lodged in his brain.

I didn’t sleep after Shannon phoned. I felt scared, like a big exam was before me and I hadn’t studied. Early next morning I cancelled appointments, got on the freeway, and drove five hours to the hospital in their city.

The last time Paul and I had talked was three weeks earlier. On the phone he had taken shallow breaths between sentences, gasping like a fish on a riverbank, but his lung infection was only a setback, we all thought. When you’re sick for a long time you have your ups and downs. In the days that followed, Paul drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to communicate except to point at an alphabet. One of the last phrases he spelled was: “What’s happening to me?”

I walked into the intensive care unit where Paul lay. Shannon hugged me and helped me put on a gown. Paul’s body looked yellow and twisted with tubes running in and out. A ventilator was taped to his mouth. Other friends were there, Shannon’s sister, and her dad. “Take some time to say whatever you need,” Shannon said, and everybody filed out of the room except me.

Nothing prepares you for this. Nothing is rehearsed or written down. I sat on the edge of Paul’s bed and touched his arm. He didn’t move. Doctors didn’t know for sure what Paul was able to grasp by then. Maybe nothing. But they said hearing is often the last function to fail. So I spoke.

I asked Paul if he remembered being in college together, about the trip we took to the Grand Canyon just after graduation. I talked about motorbikes and music, things he loved. I told him all would be looked after; he had nothing to worry about. I said I loved him, and that I was proud of him.

The mechanical ventilator rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell.

We were alone for about 10 minutes before Shannon’s sister came in and asked me to come out into the hall. She needed to walk me through a decision the family had made. A few minutes later we went back inside and all gathered at Paul’s bedside. Shannon played a tape his young daughters had made for him. Little ones to him belong, sang his girls, and a nurse lowered Paul’s blood pressure medication. I stood near his shoulder, my hand stretched on his. It was over in minutes. Perhaps they fell, I don’t know, but Paul’s eyes drifted from his wife to me, then looked ahead. They never closed.

We stayed in the room for some time speaking in low voices, giving hugs, passing around tissues. There would be piles of get-well cards to box up, a wall of colored pictures to take down. But that would come later. Shannon cradled Paul’s head one last time, kissed him, and lifted a sheet over his face. He was 36.

What do you do?

How does a man handle the death of a close friend, particularly when the friend dies when he’s young? The processes I followed were neither straightforward nor tightly defined. Here are three things I did. Your experience will undoubtedly look different.

1. Walk

The evening after Paul died, I went to a marina and walked as long and vigorously as I could. His death was uncharted territory for me, his life so unfinished. For hours, it was just me walking in the dusky moonlight with wind and waves and a pile of emotions for which I had no words. I learned that physical exercise is imperative in grieving—and it wasn’t just for that one night. In the months that followed, I walked nearly every night. I ran. I jogged. I did push-ups. I went to the gym far more than usual. Instead of turning to a substance or harmful habit for relief, it’s necessary to go somewhere you can move. Let the emotion work itself out of your body.

2. Remember

At Paul’s funeral was a table with mementos from his life: his Martin guitar, a pair of Sperry Topsiders, Mt. Dew and Doritos, his favorites. Friends assembled a slide show—Paul at the beach, Paul on his wedding day, Paul with his children. As the slides ran, I had to consciously breathe to keep myself from falling apart. Ready, inhale, concentrate, exhale. Remembering was agonizing, and I didn’t want to go there, but I needed to. The memories were coming whether I wanted them to or not. In the weeks that followed, memories snuck up on me at the strangest times, at unexpected places. Months later in the middle of a workday I was driving down a road when memories hit me anew. I needed to pull to the shoulder and sob.

3. Hurt

What I didn’t need to do was cheer up. What I didn’t need to do was look on the bright side of things. Rather, I needed to fully grasp that someone who meant much to me was no longer alive. I felt leveled, floored, struck by a bare fist. For months, I simply gave myself permission to ache.

Certainly there was more.

Many seasons passed before I arrived at any conclusions about Paul’s death. My questions were huge, and what finally made sense to me was this: I would stop trying to make sense of things. I would never know why Paul died as young as he did. Instead of asking questions, I would choose to believe reasons existed that I am not meant to know.

To this day, I hold Paul’s memory close. I honor the memory of a deep friendship now passed. I believe I will see him one day again in worlds beyond ours. And I choose to have faith.

Have you ever lost a friend? How did you handle it?

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Marcus Brotherton is the acclaimed author of Shifty’s War and other books. Read more from Marcus at his blog: Men Who Lead Well.

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