A little romance is in order!

Relationship woes were at the forefront again this week when I found myself caught slap-bang in the middle of a battle of the sexes, the married life edition.

Some married friends of mine have come to that inevitable stage in any marriage when they find themselves taken for granted, both feeling that the other person doesn't appreciate what the other contributes to the relationship.

Now I know it's easy enough for me, from the outside, to be a little glib about it and act like it's just another phase people all go through - and it is - but when you're actually going through it yourself, it doesn't feel very run-of-the-mill and it's understandable that they're afraid it's going to have a serious affect on their married life.

To them, and I'm sure to countless others out there going through the same sort of thing (and I'm sure there's more than one of you reading this), it feels like the beginning of the end and in some cases it might well be but as important and difficult an issue to get over as it might appear, it's actually a pretty easy fix and doesn't have to be anything more than a relationship glitch.

Let's take the man's part in this first. The husband's view was that he works hard to provide for his family and that he does everything he can to make sure that his wife never has to worry about anything.

He keeps on top of the details like when it's time get his wife's car serviced and there's never anything around the house that isn't fixed when it breaks down/falls apart/needs replacing.

Doing all of this, he can't understand why his wife complains that there isn't enough romance in the relationship and that she can't see how much he cares about her. He also doesn't understand why his wife isn't more appreciative of the fact that he's the provider in the family.

The woman's part is pretty much the same except the details are a little different.

She works hard keeping the home running like a well-oiled machine, she cooks and takes care of the children, makes sure her husband has clean socks and underwear to go to work in and that he comes home to a hot meal and a cold drink, a clean house and a full fridge.

The children get driven around to all their extra curricular events and she still finds time to for part-time work a couple of times a week, half of the proceeds of which she puts into their joint bank account the other half of which she uses for the things she doesn't think her husband should have to spend money on like getting her hair done or buying a new pair of shoes.

Her problem is that her husband is never romantic and never takes the time to show her he loves her.

To be honest I did feel a little like knocking their heads together and yelling, "Don't you know how lucky you both are?"

Let's face it, it's not often you get both partners in a marriage doing their part as fully as these two do. There's usually one person that's found lacking in the duty department and often it's both so the very fact that both of these people take such good care of their respective duties is already more than most married couples can claim.

And as out of place as the word 'duty' sounds there I actually used it for a reason - an old fashioned reason, but a reason all the same.

The fact of the matter is that men and women measure their own self worth on the very things that both of these people are doing and while most of the time we (men and women) think that by doing these things we're showing the other person how much we are about them, the more fundamental (and often overlooked) truth of it is that we do these things for ourselves, with the added benefit that the other person reaps the rewards of it. It's what they do, it's their 'duty'.

A man measures himself of how well he's doing and how well he can provide for the people he loves. A woman's self worth is based on how well she looks after and nurtures the people she loves.

These are primaeval instincts that date back to the primitive times when men went out and bashed animals on the head and women skinned and cooked the animals and made clothing out of their pelts.

Yes, there's been the onset of feminism and the metro/ubersexual male but these very basic truths are just part of our genetic make-up and they have NOTHING to do with romance and shouldn't be confused as such.

But to feel appreciated takes very little. A heart-felt 'thank you for taking such good care of me and the children' from the part of the wife to the husband and a loving look into the eyes from husband to wife with a simple 'I love you', both on a regular basis will go a long way to solving the problem of feeling like you're taken for granted.

A candlelit dinner with the children already in bed when the husband comes home and a single flower left on the wife's pillow every now and then will take care of the romance.

So much anger and stress over things so simply solved that it barely takes a moments thought and yet makes a massive difference in the way a person feels.