When I was a junior and senior high school student, there were lots of pretty young girls around, but there seemed to be few beautiful grown-up women around, and that puzzled me. I mean, at the time, I simply believed that “pretty” girls would grow up to be “beautiful”women, just as some kinds of fish, e.g. yellowtail, are called by different names, in Japanese, as they grow larger.
Now that I am an adult, I understand that the pretty young girls didn’t disappear from around me, but they unfortunately metamorphosed due to the stresses of daily life, for example, the frustration of working, parenting or menopausal disorders. There is a film, “It’s Tough Being a Man”, in Japan, although I am sure that it’s tough being a woman, too.
There is a colorful saying in Japanese that goes ‘before marriage, a man thinks that his sweetheart is so pretty that he could eat her, although, after the marriage, he thinks that he should have eaten her.’ However, we should understand that wives are also tired and should sometimes shower them with affection.
Furthermore, why don’t men keep in good shape for wives? By doing so, they are sending a message that they still love their wives very much.
