Putting It All Together: The Men In Our Lives

If I tried to list all the things I liked about Sean, you'd be throwing up before you even finished this blog post. It would be gross. Sickening. Way too saccharine sweet. I'd tell you about how he brings me coffee every morning and how he once read Leah and Simon's baby a bedtime story in an Irish accent because we were babysitting and that's how Simon said it had to be done. I'd tell you how he gets up at 6:30am most mornings to move our car for the street cleaner, how his hair curls perfectly at the nape of his neck, how the other evening I was out way later than I'd told him I'd be and he stayed up waiting on a school night and fixed me a piece of hangover-banishing pizza before we went to bed (it worked!)

Totally smizing. From H to T.

So I won't tell you that. Apart from anything else, it would be boring. Your boyfriend or husband or significant other probably does a hundred things like that too, and he probably looks just as nice in a tuxedo as well (show me a man who doesn't and I'll show you a....huh, I don't know, I've never met a man who doesn't look nice in a tuxedo.) What I will tell you is that there's no doubt in my mind that I picked the right one. The summer I met him, I just knew I was going to meet him. And even through all the breakups and the long-distance and the crazy on-again-off-again, I really never once thought that I wouldn't end up him with him in the end.

And hey would you look at that, I did.

For my episode of BlogHer's Putting It All Together, we're going to be talking about men. I thought this was rather fitting since I'm a fan of men in general (I mean, imagine if my episode had been about, like, oysters or water polo. Wouldn't have had anything to say!) And so I want to hear about the men in your life---any of them: your husband, your dad, your brother---and what it is about them that you like. My dad, for instance, is wonderfully calm. My brother Tom is incredibly generous. My brother Luke is very, very kind. And all I can say about my cat Charlie, who's the only other male in my life, is that he mostly gives you a few seconds advance warning when he's about to throw up on the rug.

Look, they are all in tuxedos and they all look nice! I told you, no-one DOESN'T look nice in a tuxedo.

As for Sean, one of his very best qualities is how ridiculously supportive he is of me. One Christmas, years and years and years ago, he spent weeks making a portfolio of all my work. I was 23 and we'd just moved to Charleston and he carefully cut and clipped every newspaper and magazine article I'd ever written and mounted each one in a beautiful leather portfolio that I could bring with me to job interviews. A few years after that, he urged me to start a blog ("if you build it," I said, "I'll do it." So he did and I did.) Point is, he's my biggest cheerleader, and I can't help thinking that a man who supports the women in his life---as mothers, as creatives, as professionals---is worth a hundred smoldering Don Drapers.

So what about you? Who's the best man you know? What do you like about him? Is he supportive of you? How does he make your life better?