Something to Offer

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Passion to the Third Degree .

I don’t remember ever hearing a man say aloud what he felt in terms of what he had to offer a relationship with me…until these past few years.

It seems that it was always about what I had to offer—a wife who worked and brought home a good paycheck, a mom who took care of almost everything for the girls, someone who could run the household and present a certain image and not be the high maintenance woman of male lore. In my memories of relationships, this is how I see it, perhaps because I was raised with the generation of superwomen who were told we still needed to have something to offer so we could “catch a good man.”

I don’t think I ever thought, until my divorce, in terms of what a man might have to offer me in a relationship.

Since my divorce, I have known a couple of amazing men who, on the surface, certainly seemed to have a lot to offer any woman—intelligence, sex appeal, integrity, prosperity, songs and poems…. I’ve had them tell me they felt they have nothing to offer me and I have everything to offer them.

I don’t know whether to feel sad about that or to smile, but for now, here’s to men who appreciate a woman and know how to show it.