Dear Luv Doc,
On Saturday mornings I have a standing golf game with my friends. We have been playing golf together on and off for the last few years unless one of us is out of town or something. My girlfriend knows this and usually on Saturday mornings she goes and has coffee with her friends or walks the dog or does laundry. About a month ago she decided that she wanted to put a garden in the backyard. We live in a rent house, but she got the OK from the landlord and for the last few weeks kept saying she was going to be “doing the garden on the 14th” and I would say great and maybe ask her what she was going to grow in the garden. On Saturday morning, I got up early to go play golf and she said, “What are you doing? We are putting in the garden today!”
I was like, “Great!” and she said, “The soil guys are coming at 9am!” I was like, “The soil guys?” and she said that she was getting 3 yards of soil for the garden from a landscaping company and that she was planning on me being there to help spread it and basically deal with the soil guys. I said, “When were you going to tell me this?” and she said, “I have been telling you this for weeks!” By then I was already running late for my tee time so I told her I would help her as soon as I got back from golf. When I got back she was in the backyard with a tiny shovel trying to move a huge pile of soil. Before I was fully out of the car she screamed, “Where the fuck have you been?” It was a little bit after 1pm, which wasn’t unusual for me to get home. Anyways, to cut to the chase, she was mad at me for the rest of the day and hasn’t talked to me much all week other than to tell me that clearly golf is more important to me than helping her. To be fair, I had no idea how much soil she was getting because I didn’t know how much 3 yards of soil is, but it’s a shit ton. I was even wondering why she was getting it delivered because it seemed like a small amount. I just figured she didn’t want to get her car dirty. I told her that, but she’s still mad. I think that if she wanted my help she should have asked for it in the first place. She says I should have offered. What is the Luv Doc’s take?
– Still Shoveling
If you do it right, shoveling dirt can really help with your golf swing. It’s all about rotating your hips. OK, busted. I don’t really know shit about golf, but I follow this Cuban(?) golf pro on TikTok named Manolo, and he says the key to smacking that shit is to rotate your hips to generate power in your swing. So, when you’re out there shoveling that 81-cubic-foot pile of gardening soil, make sure you really throw your hips into it. Who knows? You might shave a few strokes off your sex game as well … I mean … once you’re back to having sex.
I am not exactly sure what good hip rotation will do for your short game though, and as every good golfer knows, “Drive for show, putt for dough.” As true as that may be, there is a downside to a good short game: When you’re overly concerned with your short game, you tend to spend a lot of time studying the break of the green and the amount of sauce you need to put on the putt and before you know it, it’s after 1pm and your girlfriend wants to smash in your skull with her tiny shovel. Sure, your short game may be spot on, but your long game needs some work. You could probably do a much better job anticipating consequences.
For instance: There’s a chance you could stick a 2-iron on the green over a water hazard in the middle of a cluster of sand traps out of the rough from 250 yards, but unless you’re Jesus or maybe John Daly on Jesus juice, your prefrontal cortex is going tell you to reel in that nutsack and lay up. Similarly, when your girlfriend tells you she wants to put in a garden, your first question should probably be, “How can I help?” and not, “What are you going to grow?” because this is Texas, and it’s clearly tomatoes, then peppers, then that brown, dead thing.
Overall, I would say there is a fairly significant communication problem in your relationship, and while you may be feeling self-righteous, that doesn’t absolve you of the responsibility to fix it. Is there a possibility you weren’t fully listening when your girlfriend was telling you about putting in a garden? Probably yes. Is there a possibility that your girlfriend was so caught up in her plans she forgot to mention some important details? Maybe. Going forward, you’re going to need to ask better questions and be a better listener or something like this will surely happen again. Give that some thought while you’re working on your hip rotation.
This article appears in Best of Austin 2022 and Best of Austin 2022 (Insert).
