My Wife Lies to Me

I’ve always thought she was lying to me. Those polite lies that the people who love you tell you, like “No, honey, you’re not getting fat” or “I don’t mind that you’re losing your hair” or “Sure, I’d love to watch Tombstone again for the fourth time.”

She certainly was not an outdoor girl when we fell in love. An Ashkenazi Jew who grew up with tap and singing and making her own perfumes out of wild flowers. No sports—just dance, Gucci, Prada, and designer shoes, manicured nails, and perfect hair adorned in the styles of the day. While me—a man of Sephardic descent—mowed the yard and dug dirt and wore the same tattered shirts and raggedy shorts as if they were part of my skin . . . but she married me anyway.

We had little in common outside of our faith and goals for the future. I think people put way too much thought into those little things like “I’m looking for someone who likes long walks, and music, and blah blah blah.” We just liked each other. That’s enough . . . .we built on it from there.

I loved fishing, and she loved eating fish—preferably in a booth away from the kitchen or on a bagel with a shmeer. But me, I loved everything about it—the water, the anticipation, the solitude. Even from a young age I just wanted to hang out on a bank, bask in the sun just fishing for bluegills in the neighborhood pond or local gravel pit.

Sadly, I could never get my dad to go. He hated it and I guess It just wasn’t that important to him. Even when I bought him poles for his birthday or Father’s Day, they’d eventually just become mine. So after a time . . . I just stopped asking. As a kid my family would leave me on the dock while I’d fish for hours on end while they boated and waterskied far-off in the distance, periodically swinging by a few hundred yards away to see if I was still there. But I didn’t mind that much. I loved every minute of it and nobody was chiding me for getting worm dirt on the boat carpet.

So when my three sons grew a bit and seemed to like it just enough to go with me, I was kind of in heaven. I finally had some fishing partners. We’d go to the Keys once a year or so or the Florida Panhandle or a local pond. It didn’t matter if it was tarpon or grouper or jack or bluegill or bass, I was fishing and we were together. My office walls are adorned with their catches and smiles—for me, these photos are some of my prized possessions.

But my wife . . . as I said before, I always thought she was lying to me.

She’d go and seemingly pretend to have a good time. She’d get sunburned or motion sick and eventually fade into the seat of the boat and sip a Diet Coke and look off into the distance while I casted and reeled and high-fived the guide and she held the camera yelling a less-than-enthusiastic ”great catch.” She always seemed more content to sit at the dock and let me have my time with my sons on the water with a compromised promise of a “good dinner” later.

But as my sons grew and moved on a bit, busy with their lives, I found myself back looking for friends who had the same enthusiasm to fish again. I’d take a day off with my wife’s blessing and float the river with my friend Scott, or the occasional trip up north with my sons or other enthusiasts to catch walleyes, northerns, and smallies on Green Bay.

And all the while my wife patiently waited, allowing me to take time . . . for me.

This year, my trip to Alaska with a couple buddies fell through—we just could not sync our busy schedules, and my wife and I had been there the year before and she really did not seem that eager to do it all over again. But I needed to get away. The Russians or whoever had hacked our hospital-wide computer system and the stress from working these last few months rivaled what we went through in the early days of COVID and I needed clean air. I needed a reset. I needed nature and quiet and solitude, a bit of pampering, and no internet.

But most of all, I needed to fish.

So I finally booked a four-night stay at Guardian Eagle Resort—a remote upscale fishing lodge owned by a lovely couple, Clarence and Twyla, in Northern Ontario that promised to cook our meals, provide us a guide, clean our fish, let us use their fishing gear, and all we had to do was show up and they would take care of everything else. Outside of outer wear, some flasks full of bourbon, and good cigars, that’s all we would need to pack. Yeah that pretty much sold my wife on it and she agreed to go . . . and even pretended to look forward to it.

So to prepare, we stood in the backyard with a spin-casting rod and reel in hand and she practiced tossing a lead weight tied to a braided line, aiming for targets working on distance. I tried to coach her a bit and spent a good amount of the time climbing into tree branches and untangling the lines that she fouled up. She seemed frustrated at times—more with me than with her performance. (Perhaps I was less than patient with her.) I just kept envisioning that the lion's share of my trip would look eerily similar to the backyard—tangled lines, lures in trees, barbs in my skin or in hers compounded by mosquitos and the frustration of not catching anything and she’d soon be resigned to sitting in the seat, staring into the distance, sipping a Diet Coke and pretending that she was having a good time.

The first five fish were caught by her.

Yeah . . . you read that right. Same jigs, same rods, same reels, same hooks, same guide, same side of the boat. One after another: “got one . . . got one . . . got one.”

“Got one.”

I found myself trying to copy her presentation pattern. How often was she lifting the jig? What speed? Random or erratic pattern? But it didn’t matter—she was out-fishing me and this went on for the next four days. I noticed. Clarence (our guide and owner of the resort) noticed. And most of all . . . my wife noticed.

“Got one.”

And I sat in wonder as she seamlessly flung the line forty yards with barely a ripple, gently retrieved the golden barbed spoon, and time after time she’d softly speak up, “Got one.” Each pike was seemingly bigger than the next. It was as if the fish knew the spoon belonged to her and they simply just liked her better than me.

“Got one.”

“Got one”

“Got one.”

“Got a big one.”

I posted the pics on social media and jokingly lamented (but secretly bragging) that my wife was killing it on the water and putting me to shame. I began to notice that the other women on the thread, her friends, and my colleagues cheered her on with the fervor of a game seven—and all the while you could sense a bit of envy in their responses: a mixture of “I could never do that” blended with “I kind of want to do that’ at the same time, and I was left thinking.

I bet a bunch of the guys are showing these pics to their wives and saying: ”Look, she can do it . . . maybe you might want to try too. Instead of me going with a bunch of buddies this year, maybe we could think about going together?”

In fact I’m certain of this.

Listen, not all that we do together outdoors is in her wheelhouse. I know that. I may have the only wife who has ever ordered a pair of Golden Goose designer shoes from a deer stand while at the same time convincing me not to shoot because it was “just too cute.”

Yeah that happened too.

And if I take her turkey hunting with me . . . well, there's a 95 percent chance she’s going to fall asleep in the blind.

But still she pretends to like it and she goes.

Now before you jump to your patriarchal criticisms and assume the pendulum only swings one way, trust me . . . I've  sat through many, many a musical, movies, and gatherings I would never in a million years have watched or attended if she did not ask me to—afternoon teas with uncrusted sandwiches, excursions to watch her try on clothes, Mama Mia, Cats, and an entire season of Downton Abbey. (And any rumor that I smiled all the way through each of these events is highly exaggerated.)

I don’t have all the answers, but thirty-four years ago I did marry the right woman for no other reason than she liked me.

I tell my single friends—the ones looking for love—the same thing over and over: Don’t look for someone like you . . . look for someone who likes you. Someone who grows with you, loves you, does things they typically wouldn’t do simply for no other reason than they want to be with you.

Listen, I used to think my wife was pretending.` I don’t anymore . . . I am important to her, and she just wants to be with me.

And if she can outfish me in the process . . . well, it just makes it all the more sweet.

Dr. Louis M. Profeta is an emergency physician practicing in Indianapolis and a member of the Indianapolis Forensic Services Board. He is a national award-winning writer, public speaker and one of LinkedIn's Top Voices and the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Patient in Room Nine Says He's God. For other publications and for speaking dates, go to louisprofeta.com. For college speaking inquiries, contact bookings@greekuniversity.org.