I love my wife (and you should, too)

Driving across Highway 20 with a big Texas sky stretched overhead, I once passed a pickup with a bumper sticker that caught my eye. “I love my wife,” it said, with a bright red heart standing in for “love.” I looked at the friend in the seat next to me and rolled my eyes, mock gagging at the hokey display on the Chevy in the next lane. When we pulled alongside the driver, I expected to see a pasty suburbanite, the kind of man who can be browbeaten into putting that sort of bumper sticker on his truck. To my surprise, the driver was rough and rugged, a true Texan by the looks of him, as mean and muscly as a man can get. So, where’d the bumper sticker come from?

A group called the Promise Keepers, it turns out. A faith-based organization founded in Colorado, the Promise Keepers today number more than five million men in their discipleship. The core of the PK (hip shorthand pulled from their Web site) mission is to bring men together for a yearly revival. Now, let’s get this part straight: This isn’t one of those hand-holding, Kumbaya-singing hippie affairs. The Promise Keepers are Biblically-based (real men love Jesus, after all), and their guiding principles are pulled from scripture. These include “practicing spiritual, moral, ethical, and sexual purity” and “building strong marriages and families through love, protection and biblical values.” The “I love my wife” bumper sticker is a declaration of that philosophy. Promise Keepers are proud of their faith and proud of the promises they keep. So proud, in fact, that they share it with the world.

Which can be an invitation for derision. “For some reason when I see these, I feel the need to make fun of them,” says one poster on The Nest, a women’s Web site focused on marriage, home, and family. “It makes me wonder what this guy did that he feels the need to display his love for his wife on the bumper sticker. And why it wouldn’t just be a given that you love your wife.”

“Maybe they give them out to repentant adulterers?” asks a commenter on the Democratic Underground Web site.

“I have an ‘I love your wife’ sticker,” writes another.

The most revealing message comes from another poster on The Nest. “I think they are dorky, but quite brave as I would not put one on my car.”

Which is perhaps the heart of the matter. Promise Keepers are braver than most. They are fearless in their philosophies, their faith, and their love, and they’re willing to say so in a wimpy-look ing bumper sticker. Now that’s a real man.

I’ll admit that when I first saw that “I heart my wife” sticker in central Texas, I felt a pang of jealousy. True, I said the same things as those online posters — comments about weenie men being whipped into submission — but a part of me thought how lucky that man’s wife must feel. Every relationship could use more declarations of love. And bumper stickers. 

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