HOH & WLM

The Sacramento Bee recently ran an opinion piece by a part-time documentary filmmaker, William Preston Robertson,* titled “Head of Household? Let’s Talk to my Wife”.

The crux of the piece:

“I'm proud of my wife. She is the breadwinner in the family. She's a brilliant, dynamic, powerful woman. She works incredibly long hours and is compensated for that in a way that your average ukulele documentarian could never hope to be.

“But when my wife and I file our taxes or apply for loans, the computers, by default, make me the head of the household and my wife the ‘spouse.’ And they do this despite all of the usable data being located in her section of the form and all of the goose eggs being located in mine.

“I find this annoying… because it bestows upon me an unearned status and it robs my wife of a status she has not only earned, but worked hard to attain. And as I've previously mentioned, bizarre as it may be, I'm proud of my wife.

“We live in a society that presumes in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that men are and should be the breadwinners in a household and that any other arrangement is wrong and shameful.”

I had the same feeling of annoyance, plus awkwardness and inauthenticity, when my wife and I went to our tax guy last month and I was given a tax return to sign as “Taxpayer” while my wife signed as “Spouse.”

This after my wife, the obvious CFO (and CEO) of our family, did all the talking, responded to all the questions, produced all the documents with explanation, from mortgage interest to charitable deductions, conducted a sidebar conversation with the tax guy’s loan expert on doing a refi of our house. I said almost nothing, a couple of jokes, really, and was acknowledged only occasionally out of politeness by our tax guy.

Like the filmmaker, I’m proud of my wife and her leadership. What’s wrong with wives being the head of their household and family? Aren’t they almost always, in fact if not in name? Isn’t it about time that they be allowed to take that pride of place?

Now I’ll climb down from my mini-soapbox (my version of an op-ed) and, as is my wont, let some other loving female authoritarians and happily led husbands do the rest of the talking:

“We both would like to try out the ‘female head of household’ concept,” a Norwegian husband writes to Emily Addison, the better half of the Around Her Finger
team. “Two HOH’s in a home is one too many, and I think my wife is the better manager. Serving her and taking on much more of the domestic chores are only fair, and if I can be wrapped around her finger - that is all the better.”

Sounds pretty mainstream to me. As does this sensible husband: “My wife has been essentially Head of Household since we were married twenty years ago. She was a Navy officer and I an enlisted man, and to say she is smarter than I am is an understatement. Valedictorian of her high school class, and so on. Since the beginning, she has controlled the finances and many more aspects of the marriage. I'm not submissive, in fact by many measures I am a man's man. But I have come to nearly worship my wife.”

“My wife is unquestionably the leader of our marriage,” agrees another wife-worshipper, “but she tries her best to show me how much she appreciates my role as her husband. It's like she controls me without having to be bossy or bitchy, and I know deep in my heart that I would die for her if I had to.” By the way, this guy’s cybernym is “Mr. Jenny.”

Most female-led hubbies don’t object to a bit of bossiness, even a superabundance thereof. On their above-mentioned blog, Emily Addison, speaking for husband Ken, recommends a candidate wife-leader assume a clear authoritarian tone: “We believe that an open and ongoing acknowledgment of the wife’s authority combined with orgasm management are the fundamentals of a successful female-led relationship… You are entitled to consider his requests and then accept or dismiss them as you see fit. You are the head of household, you make the rules, and you set the guidelines… period, end of story.”

Usually it is the husband who proposes the wife be HOH, less often the wife. Even less frequent are those idyllic matches when the marriage role reversal is by mutual consent from the get-go:

One guy, signed “Obedient Husband,” told LFA psychologist Elise Sutton that both he and his bride agreed during their engagement that she should be undisputed head of household and take the lead “sexually, socially, emotionally, and fiscally. I regard her authority completely without question… I have been very happy in our three years together and would not seek to change a thing.”

Another wife informs Ms. Sutton that her husband “recognized from the beginning that both my native intelligence and career ambitions were superior to his own and he willingly conceded to my preeminence as Head of Household. It was thus with relative ease that our marriage soon settled into its essentially Matriarchal pattern that enabled me to launch my own legal career—and also helped establish the First Rule of Our Relationship: We discuss; I decide; he obeys. In cases where my mind is already made up, or I feel strongly about a particular issue, the need for discussion is obviated and [he] is simply informed. This eliminates the need for discussion in about seventy percent of all cases, allows [him] to concentrate on his career and leaves other issues in my far more capable hands.”


The marriage of “Mr. Louise” to “Mrs. Louise,” described on the old Spouseclub message board, epitomizes living this lifestyle to the hilt: “We were fully aware of our roles before we walked down the aisle. I took her name. No, not secretly and not just on paper. We walked into our reception as Ms. and Mr. D. (her name) and I've never looked back. Our union is wife-centered and wife led. She is the authority I recognize and submit to and in turn she loves, cherishes and supports me. Our friends know just what I mean when I jokingly say I am under her skirt and that our marriage is ‘a petticoat government.’ They can see her obvious maternal/matriarchal control over our house and accept us.”


Another female-empowerment psychologist, Paige Harrison, also advocates the matriarchal aspect of the wife-leader: “The Woman as the Matriarch in a love relationship can redefine family and romantic attachments. Many males tell me their strong desire to live with their Wife as the Head of Household and Domestic Disciplinarian. The Mommy-child relationship works especially well If your Wife is an extremely Maternal Woman.”

And this final amen on the subject from an old standby, Au876: “More and more women are becoming the head of their households. I am proud to follow my wife’s lead with my service, my actions and my heart. I may often disagree with her when we reach a fork in the road, but when she makes her decision it becomes mine and I devote myself to making it work.”

* Mr. Robertson is identified below his op-ed as “a writer, filmmaker and well-kept man who lives in Sacramento.”

Big ‘O’ Overrated?

The “Big O” for a lot of guys of a certain age instantly conjures up basketball legend Oscar Robertson, once widely considered the game’s greatest all-around player. That was, of course, way before the advent of Dr. J, Bird, Magic, MJ, Kobie, Le Bron, et al.

Was Oscar overrated? No way. He really was that great.

But that’s not the “Big O” under re-evaluation here. I’m talking about the male orgasm. Not knocking it, heaven forfend, but matched up against the female orgasm, the “Bigger O,” does ours really deserve top spot on the awards podium?

Let’s not delve too deeply into point-by-point matchups—frequency, degree of intensity, duration, etc. You can look all that up. The consensus seems pretty clear: Guys come in a distant second on the Bliss-O-Meter in all these comparisons, big-time.

Unless—and here’s my point—we opt to go with the female flow… hang on for dear life… and surf along on the breaking crest of our partner’s orgasmic tsunami (sorry, I’m getting really carried away)… till it finally subsides… way the hell up the beach.

In other words, make her ecstasy your ecstasy. To the extent that we even forget (at least temporarily) about our own. To the extent that we are truly fulfilled by being a part of her powerful, all-encompassing completion.

I don’t want to give myself too much credit here, but I’ve always pretty much felt this way, from the moment I vicariously experienced my first female orgasm. It was a revelation, a redefinition of “peak experience.” The notion that I had been involved in, or a facilitator of, anything so rapturousy cataclysmic made me feel like a superhero.

Still does. That’s what I daydream about when I think of sex—hers, not mine.

And those early formative experiences came during an era when the ideal of ultimate hetero-sex was the simultaneous climax—after, of course, a long interlocking gallup. It acquired near-mythic status in popular culture, starting with Papa Hemingway (For Whom the Bell Tolls: "Come now, now, for there is no now but now. Yes, now. Now, please now....") and his legion of schlocky imitators to all those erotic cinematic climax-montages dissolving into the shared, post-coital cigarette.

Not knocking it again, but, like the de rigueur vaginal climax, this kind of seismic togetherness doesn’t happen as often in real life as in books and movies.

These days sexual synchronicity is being replaced by another paradigm, which is neatly encapsulated in the title of one popular book,
She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman by Ian Kerner.

Wife-worshippers along with advocates of Wife-Led Marriages and Female-Led Relationships take this prescription a bit farther. Like, for instance, She comes first… and second… maybe even third.

And what about her partner in passion? He is admonished to be patient, be a good boy, and wait for her to give him the green light.

Is this a good thing? A lot of men say that it is. I joined that chorus myself in my book, especially Chapter 4, “A Playful Step Beyond”: “…[it] extends and intensifies the husband’s pleasure, saving him from a quick release followed by an even quicker loss of desire—climax and anti-climax.”

“Save yourself for her direction,” I quote a happy husband as advising another chap. “Your satisfaction will be intensified.”

And here is complementary advice from a woman whose husband has now learned to worship her as his queen: “[The woman] should never feel that denying her male orgasm for long periods of time is overly cruel. In fact, rather than cruelty, long-term orgasm denial is a gift she provides her male. When the male achieves orgasm it is accompanied by a release of all sexual tension. As being in a state of sexual tension is so blissful, the male orgasm is always to one extent or another a disappointment.”

This hubby definitely concurs: “People ask me how I can go so long without sex. They don't get that my wife and I are having sex pretty much 24/7, we just go a long time between orgasms. Making my Goddess have orgasms is one of the greatest feelings in the world for me. God, I love my life!”

And one final hurrah for the Female O: “I pleasured my queen this a.m. and without a word she just fell asleep when she was done. It makes me feel great to experience her orgasm, and then to see her relax that much and to know that I've contributed to it by not making demands on her for my pleasure.”

Harnessing the Stallion

Top priority for today is housework. My wife will be directing me–and helping me, since there’s more to do than I could possibly get done on my own, and tomorrow we both go back to work.

I was a typical bachelor slob. Super-typical. I don’t remember cleaning or dusting any of my apartments, ever. I guess I always figured if things got too bad, I’d just move.


Now, as a married man, I’m in charge of housework, in the sense of I get to do it. Just about all of it. A couple of days ago, my wife came back from Costco with a supersize bottle of Pinesol and a 2-pack of O-Cedar indoor brooms. “For you,” she said.

And I love it. Well, not all the time. And not quite enough to stop writing this blogpost to get started. But I love doing the housework for her. So she doesn’t have to do it.

How did this radical (and odd-seeming) conversion ever come about?

I think it must be a happy accident of evolution or creation (take your pick). Like that pronounced gap horses have between the canine teeth and the premolars; which allows for insertion of the metal bit used for controlling said horse when the animal is ridden or driven.

What is the equivalent in males of that convenient little dental slot? In a Wife-Led Marriage, it is I doubt not the established covenant giving the wife total control of when the husband will be allowed to orgasm. Though there is typically no exact correlation between how much housework is done and how often the husband is permitted climax, there is certainly a perception that the more she is pleased and pampered in every way, the more likely she will be to dispense intimate favors.

Something like that. I’ll try to be more objectively precise someday, but subjectively it does feel like being in harness, with a bit in one’s teeth and the reins in her hand.* That I do know and can attest to.

And I’m sure not alone. "Husbands Who Love Housework," it sounds almost Ripleyesque, as in “Believe It or Not.” Like the Portrait of Winston Churchill in a Potato Chip or a Two-Headed Llama (the pushme-pullyou of Dolittle fame).

But there are lots and lots of us who do it and love it, and love it especially when our wives don’t lift a finger, except to point, or perhaps run a white-gloved digit along a shelf of knickknacks to check for dust.

Think I’m kidding? I offer in evidence a sprinkling of testimonials, culled from hundreds of the kind you can find online posted every day on Female-Led Relationship (FLR) or Wife-Led Marriage (WLM) message boards and forums.

I’ll start with my old friend, Au876, who gives proper credit to Fumika Misato for the domestication of contemporary husbands by creating her pioneering website, Real Women Don't Do Housework:

“I am proud to be married to a Real Woman and, frankly, I don't care who knows it. I think men are much better-suited to doing the housework than women anyway.
I never felt unmanly because I worship and obey my wife… To me there is nothing more pleasurable than serving my wife. I often find I have become sexually excited at the darndest times. I may be ironing her clothes, cleaning the bathrooms, preparing dinner, washing dishes–you name it. And I realize I have an erection. She may not even be at home and yet I have become excited just knowing I am serving her in some fashion.”

This confession, of becoming erotically aroused by repetitive domestic drudgery, is quite common, as we’ll see a little farther on.


“Far from being ashamed of all the things I do for her around the house, and in the bedroom and boudoir, my greatest joy and fulfillment are to serve her with all the adoration and respect that she deserves.”

“I enjoy waiting on her hand and foot.”

“I am most comfortable when my fiancee chooses to relax. In our relationship, I am doing the man's work. She is not expected to lift a finger. I bring in a plate of cookies, some coffee, tea, or Perrier and we spend some time in conversation. Sometimes, she was work to continue. I find something else to do. However, I am always on call… She goes to bed first, and I straighten up the living area. I go up to the bedroom… While the house is always neat, I only take one or two days a week to do a complete cleaning.”

“I would rather she never lift a finger for domestic chores, but I have to accept her choice to pitch in. In a few years, i will retire, and i am hoping she will no longer feel the desire to pitch in and help.”

“It really makes me feel good to be like say fixing her dinner while she is watching TV or napping or reading the paper. The doing of it makes me feel good and the fact that I am doing it for her makes me feel good.”

As promised, here are some husbands who not only “enjoy” or “feel good” about doing housework for their wives, but get a wee bit graphic about those feelings:

“The more chores I can do for her, the more she allows me to serve her, and it makes me really horny.”

“To me, erections are a sign that our wife-led marriage is working. I can get excited on my hands and knees, scrubbing a toilet when I think of why I'm doing it.”

“The fact that I, too, may have an erection simply adds to the pleasure of washing that dish. In this way, housework can be a celebration of caring for the fine things in our home, not as a bargaining chip.”

“I do get turned on sometimes doing housework but I think it is because I know I am in service to her.”

“Does anybody else become aroused by doing housework? I now think about her constantly and all my housework and other chores keep me aroused as i know that I am doing them to please her. The chore has become its own reward!” (From fdhousehusband's blog.)

Well, the husbands have had their say, Now, as is only fitting in a wife-worship posting, I’ll cede the final word on the subject to a well-worshipped and satisfied wife:

“My husband does a lot of things for me that formerly were my chores. It was his choice to take on these responsibilities, and who am I to argue? His choice relieves me of the repetitive and tedious chores, and gives him an opportunity to demonstrate his devotion to me.”

*There are, of course, wife-led marriages in which the wife exercises control of her husband's sexual release by means of a male chastity device, to which she alone holds (and may even wear, locket-fashion) the only key. It is not much of a stretch to view this device, and its use by the controlling female, as akin to the equine harness-and-bit.

Caught in Her Perfumed Web

In chapter 5 of my book, “Pampering and Pitching In,” I describe husbands relishing giving their wives nightly footrubs and weekly (or biweekly) pedicures, then quote one such doting hubby: “My wife accused me of having a foot fetish, but I told her no, I have a wife fetish.”

That certainly applies to me. My point here is that I don’t think it’s weird, or kinky, or even odd. I think it’s actually…

Natural! We are, after all, animals (at least partly). This husband obviously agrees: “The more I served my wife orally, the more I grew to crave her scent and taste. I think now that this is natural and inevitable.”

Doting husbands not only love to ogle their wives and touch them (when given the green light), and listen to them (and, yes, pay close attention), they also crave their wives’ heavenly scent.

Like this devoted guy, picking up his wife’s nightgown as she drops it before stepping into the adjoining bathroom: “I buried my face in her nightgown, mesmerized and intoxicated by her powerful, feminine scent. After several moments, dizzied, I finally got up and went and hung up her nightgown.”

Dizzied? A married man, hyperventilating into his wife’s nightgown? Yes, exactly! Listen to this guy: “I felt my sense of smell invaded by her musky aroma. I was so light headed with desire that I was prepared to do anything for her."

Or this guy, doing his wife’s laundry while she’s out of town on business: “I came across the outfit she wore at the office picnic, and held it to my nose and gingerly sniffed the underarms. Her fragrance and body aroma filled me and I soon had a very strong erection. Next I picked up her panties and held them to my nose and inhaled her scent from every inch of her underwear. Oh, how I missed her!”

This practice seems to be quite common among red-blooded husbands, worshipful and otherwise. Not secretly dressing up in female undergarments, but slipping them on as a “breathing” mask:

“For me, one of the paybacks of doing the laundry is that I get to smell her panties.”

Another confession: “I find myself thinking of [my wife’s] scent and taste whenever I become aroused.”

A Marseillais couple I met many years ago while backpacking around Europe once told me that smell had always had been a major part of their mutual erotic attraction. They went into more detail on this than I was prepared for. (Of course, they were French, after all.)

My wife, I have to confess, looks askance at this particular urge on the part of her loving husband. And I respect that. Other wives learn to be more laissez-faire: “Early on I admitted to my wife I sniffed Her panties on occasion. She was surprised, but pleasantly so. Which made me very happy.”

And some wives can get very playful, indeed, as this husband confided to female supremacist psychologist Elise Sutton:

“After [my wife’s] orgasms she removes her panties and places them inside-out on my head with the crotch right over my nose and mouth. Then I am commanded to crawl to the corner of the room for ‘corner time’ for 30 minutes. The whole time I am enveloped in her intoxicating scent as I have no choice but to inhale nothing but her [moist and redolent] panties plastered to my face. Her scent is so powerful and fragrant. During this time she usually watches TV or talks on the phone to girlfriends or her mother. I am in plain view of her the whole time. This whole procedure happens night after night.”

Not an image of stalwart manhood, I grant you, a grown man standing in a corner, adorned in flimsy headgear. At least his penance is fragrant. There are many variations on this theme:

“Sometimes my wife rubs her panties over my face. Once she threatened that from then on I would wear her used undies the second day.”

“Threatened”? How about “promised”? Many women consider the proffering of their scented panties a very special and intimate favor: “As a reward for his dutiful lovemaking, I took off my panties and gave them to him and told him to place them over his head so that the crotch was on his nose and he was looking out through the leg holes. As he followed my instructions, I explained that in time he would learn to crave my scent and taste.”

Another guy, who signed himself “william the submissive poet” on an female-led bulletin board, waxed lyrical on the topic:

"She is wise in the ways of entrancement.
She knows the value of the gift you offer.
She has trained you to recognize Her scent
and to submit to Her spells and laughter."

One online enchantress, by-lining herself Becky, actively tutors her husband in this erotic susceptibility:

“Nose training is the process of adapting a man’s nose to all [a woman’s] scents and smells … everything about a woman, including her scents, should be appealing to him. This does not come naturally to most men and therefore training is necessary. It can start with something simple, like sniffing your armpits after you finish your exercise… Once this becomes a second nature to your man, you can proceed to the next step, which could be your feet, stockings and shoes... Next will be your…”

I’ll fade out there, leaving Becky’s further prescriptions to the imagination, and fade in on another lady also busily enmeshing her man in her erotic web: “It amused my wife to lock me in her wardrobe among all her gorgeous clothes, leaving me surrounded in the darkness by her scented dresses.”

Finally, rounding out this survey, we come to the use of milady’s unmentionables as a husbandly security blanket: “My worshipful husband loves to lower himself beneath the covers to take in and savor my scent. He says it helps him to quiet his thoughts.”

“On several occasions I have summoned up the courage to ask my wife if I may bring her panties to bed with me,” a slightly embarrassed husband testifies. “She has, somewhat surprisingly to me, said yes. I have on those nights fallen asleep with the crotch of her panties to my nose. She knows this, and I think feels empowered by it.”

It’s time for final fade-out, with hubby curled up with his nightly wifely pacifier as his enchantress looks on, amused, tolerant and all-powerful:

“For some time now, I have been giving my sweet husband the panties I wore each day, and letting him sleep with them on his pillow. He seems to really love that, and it turns me on knowing that he adores me so much. [Once, when he broke one of my rules] I told him he would not be allowed to sleep with my panties. But he had made me feel so wonderful that I just couldn't bring myself to deny him for the night. I am really trying to develop a cruel streak.”

Walking the Walk

When I began writing and publishing online the first chapters of Worshipping Your Wife more than eight years ago, I was mainly writing for the benefit to husbands, along with guys in committed relationships.

The idea was to offer these guys both a persuasive rationale and a step-by-step program for “Turning Marriage Back Into Passionate Courtship.” I came up with six steps:


The husband needs to:
1. Realize that "the thrill is gone" and that he wants to get it back.
2. Save his sex energies for his wife.
3. Make HER his fantasy.
4. Court her every day, attempt to win her anew.
5. Pamper her and pitch in around the house.
6. Dare to be known by her.

This was the progression that I myself had followed—or was in the process of following. In support of my six steps, I cited ‘Net and newsgroup testimony posted pseudonymously over the years by worshipful husbands and worshipped wives, all of whom were busily practicing what I was still mainly theorizing about.

Happily, my own experience in the years since has confirmed what I wrote in 2000, namely that “The transformations described in Worshipping Your Wife are real, the ideas workable…”

Does the program always work? Of course not. Sometimes it never even gets off the ground. Husbands who suddenly and enthusiastically spring this revolutionary notion all at once on an unsuspecting wife, whether in their own words or by handing her a book (like mine!), are likely to be met with healthy skepticism, maybe outright rejection. Where did all this weirdness come from?


Husbands who opt, on the other hand, for the cautious and incremental path to wife worship, a process often called “stealth submission,” may encounter other obstacles. A few weeks of overzealous dishwashing and gift-giving may leave the wife in utter puzzlement. What’s gotten into my Oswald?

Emily and Ken Addison describe this impasse clearly in their Around Her Finger books and on their blog :

“Women are very often confused by this approach. They ask their husbands what is behind the change in behavior, but their husbands have not yet mustered the courage to articulate their honest feelings… It is not enough for most [husbands] to simply undertake to serve and pamper their wives. There must be some explicit acknowledgement on the part of the woman [of her leadership in the marriage] or else the man is left unfulfilled.”

For many guys, alas, it doesn’t take much discouragement to get them to abandon the whole wife-worship campaign, stealthy or otherwise. The novelty and initial euphoria of doing housework wear off fast, and the wife’s skepticism is thereby validated. Ditto for the husband whose wife hands back the FLR printout or book or impassioned confession with a firm, No-Sale expression. He is likely to give up and go back to not worshipping her, unhappily ever after.

These husbands may ask themselves, Was it all imaginary? Was I just pretending to be this ultra-romantic guy who wanted to suddenly treat my wife like a queen?

Like this guy, who writes: “What if I convince my wife to go for this new arrangement where she’s the queen of everything, and then I change my mind? What if serving her all the time was just a big, stupid fantasy after all?”


The answer, I guess, is that if you give up, it was never meant to be. You weren’t sincere, it was just a fantasy, and you never really wanted it that bad. Whatever. And don’t blame your wife for seeing through it, for not embracing a wild idea that you yourself were not committed to.

A husband in this quandary wrote for advice to Katherine West, who blogs occasionally at Loving Female Authority. Her answer was forcefully to the point: “In a recent comment to one of my posts 'Quiet Guy' complains that his wife refuse to believe that he'll start doing more housework. Well, Quiet Guy, prove it to her. Get up at 4:00 a.m. and have it done before she's out of bed, if that's what it takes. [This] is very serious business. It is not a game. Until she's received her 52nd foot rub from you, until you've made some token confession of your [total devotion], until you have made every effort to prove to her that you are there to serve her, then don't give up.”

Another wife gives a similar response in a letter to the Addisons' Around Her Finger blog: “About four years ago [my husband] tried to communicate his feelings to me [about wanting a wife-led marriage]. He did a good job. But, what he said and how day to day life was lived were two different things… It wasn't until my husband actually started walking the walk and not just talking the talk did I take [him] seriously. He started doing the housework, running the errands, all the things I had done for the past 24 years.”

You can’t just close the deal, in other words, on the basis of a feverish sales pitch accompanied by sales pamphlets full of glowing testimonials from happy wife-worship customers. Talk is cheap, as Liza Dolittle sings to Freddy Eysford Hill in My Fair Lady: “Show me now!”

Which is exactly what this devoted husband did in a successful “stealth” campaign that last many years:

“To convince my wife that I truly wanted to worship and serve her as my queen took years of dedication to housework, child-rearing and pampering without any thought of reward. I did the chores cheerfully and enthusiastically. Yet, each time I failed and became lazy, I felt that I took several steps backward for both of us. I was moving from one equilibrium to another in terms of our relationship, and I needed to be perfect, not anything in between, not just sometimes. Ultimately I convinced her that this was my life, that I was fulfilled in that role and didn't want anything other than to worship and serve her.”


“I decided I could not create a female-led relationship,” writes another husband. “I wonder if any man can. What I did decide is that I could be in a male-following relationship… So I settled in to serving my wife and doing my best to obey her will whether she asserted it dominantly or not. I truly had no expectation that she would change her behavior. The funny thing was that, almost immediately after I made this change, my wife changed as well [becoming comfortable in a leading role].”

A last word on the topic from another husband: “It took many years for us to learn how to get along and build a new relationship… Like the Nike add says, ‘Just Do It.’”