I’ve been hard at work building the content for what I hope will be a soon-arriving career move, full-time work on the HBCU Digest. If you are an alumnus of an historically black college or university, or just enjoy following news on higher education, consider checking it out. And if you like it, consider making a donation.

So that’s where I’ve been over the last month. I never meant to be neglectful to the faithful few that read, or to the aspects of my life which I’ve enjoyed sharing over the last two years. I just shifted priorities a little bit. I thought about this blog everyday, about how many things I’ve wanted to write. And somehow, I convinced myself that other work was more important.

And if that sounds familiar to you, you really might want to consider checking up on your relationship. Not that you mean to neglect your wife, your children or your household, but its easy to neglect the things that are most precious to you in an effort to improve your hold on those things.

A lot of guys get tied up in work and fail to see that talking and laughing with your son or daughter will make all of the difference in the crime your kids won’t commit, or the bad relationship choice they won’t make. It seems simple enough, but even in the eyes of my five-month-old son, I see the difference in his smile and reaction when I’m paying attention to him, against when I’m not focused on him.

This is particularly important for the relationship to your wife. Your kids need to see that you can balance your professional power with your parenting power. And they need to see that you can balance both with your partnering power. You can ill afford to lose the love that sustains you when you are empty, holds you when you are hurt, and makes you feel complete. As a man, a husband moreover, the tenderness you can show identifies a semblance of priority; a care that travels beyond the food you can put on the table, the lights you can keep on, and the heat you can keep flowing through your home.

It’s easy to want to expand the certainty for those things, because they are needed for survival. Men and women are wired for survival, but we guys are consumed with its tangible guarantee. We show love though showing and knowing that our families and able to live. That they are physically empowered to make it through the day.

We rarely consider the emotional empowerment that is just as meaningful to our family. The comforting word that shows our children how proud we are of them. The whisper that shows our wives just how much they attract us physically and emotionally.

We have power. We have power to create money out of thin air. Believers out of non-believers, and meaning out of chaos. But it takes balance to support the kind of families we want to grow into healthy, legacy building units of faith and love.

The same kind of balance it takes to make regular updates on a blog.

Sure, there are people who look better than you, cook better than you, are funnier than you, smarter than you, and more engaging than you. But no one combines it like you do. Your spouse, partner or significant other will tell you; you are the one and only.

And its not just in an emotional sense. Perhaps if people realized how much they are the only person responsible for so much in the lives of their spouse or children, many marriages would be spared the injustice of premature ending. In my house, I’m the one who shovels snow, takes out trash, and reaches for things in high places. I get up when the baby wakes up at night, because he sleeps closer to me.

I check up on lightbulbs, do the vacuuming, make sure our heating filter is regularly changed, and bring up the heavy laundry. My wife can do all of these things, but I’m the only one who does them in our house. I’m the only one who bears the responsibility.

You can’t imagine how many responsibilities in life bear your name, and how much other people depend on you to maintain them. No matter how angry, how tired, how frustrated you become, you are the one and only for so many things that make your life and the life of your loved ones run efficiently.

So the next time you question how important you are to someone, or if what you do matters, think about the role you fill that only you can maintain. You may be surprised, and pleased, with how irreplaceable you are.

And chief among these emotions is hope. You can love someone and leave them. You can trust someone and not make yourself vulnerable to hurt. But when you hope for someone to reach potential and maturity, there is very little that can be done to shake that optimism. You can’t hope and act otherwise.

So when you get to a point where you are considering leaving a marriage, but there’s something holding you back, it’s the hope that you don’t have to leave. It’s a hope that the comfort you’ve known for so long, whether positive or negative in its affect, doesn’t have to be abandoned for the unknown.

Is that a signal that you shouldn’t leave? Probably not. But it surely is a signal that you aren’t ready to leave. You haven’t come to grips with removing yourself from the drama, the incompatibility, or trauma that has been the hallmark of your relationship.

And one evil person can effect a family for generations.

It seems far gone, but if families knew how their bad habits, their proclivities and their poor judgment cascade down through to their children, grandchildren and beyond, would they make the same kind of faulty decisions? Would they be willing to be so selfish?

And this is particularly for men – the husbands and fathers who miss the enormity of our impact on our families. When we cheat, do we realize that our sexual gratification or emotional quick fixes of today create the disloyal sons and promiscuous daughters of tomorrow?

When we abuse our women, do we understand that the voice we think we’ve found embroils our sons in silent rage and drowns our daughters in submission to every other insecure man?

And when we are emotionally isolated, do we consider that the problems we think we’ll never overcome are the psychological burdens that will eat away at our family roots for generations?

As quiet as it is kept, there is no easy way to live the life of a family man. The expectations of fidelity, stability and accessibility can be consuming. Many of us have no manual, no proper example of how to do it. And for those of us fortunate enough to have a father available, it can take years to separate the hero worship from the villainous flaws; even among the most honorable of father figures.

Cheating, physical abuse and emotional distance is not just hurtful, it is attempted murder. Heart attack, stroke, mental disorder, drug abuse, sexual addiction and violence are all real byproducts that can revolve around the darkness of one man’s heart. The short sightedness of one person can create the failure of an entire family – and without insight and knowledge, they are completely disarmed of any tools to prevent its side effects.

It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem like something a real man would do.

If he only knew.

But as this column indicates, rather startlingly, most athletes believe its business as usual.

A heartfelt letter from Ron Artest.

But its easy to look at things you don’t have and question if you are in an unfulfilled relationship. For as much as I champion patience and understanding, I’ve done it myself. I’ve questioned my wife’s devotion to me on the subject of moving to a new state; she wants to stay, I eventually want to leave. That’s just one example, but there are a couple of things about our relationship in which I’ve silently stewed; questioning our soul-gathering bond over more than a meal or a weekend.

But there’s one thing you have to know about what you want, especially in a relationship. It usually has come or will come at the expense of what your spouse wants. And if you really want to be personally happy, an appropriate focus is on what you can do to make your spouse happy. People get tripped up because it almost sounds subservient to commit yourself to someone else’s happiness, but that’s exactly what marriage is; an agreement to try and do less of what you want and more of what your spouse wants over the duration of your lifetime.

Yes, there is a compromise in marriage, and if you pick the right person to marry, you’ll find it in more instances than not. But there is an acceptance that comes along with your pledge, and if you find yourself fighting or miserable in your marriage, you have to rediscover why you made the pledge, and revamp ways to enjoy it. Maybe I won’t get to move halfway across the country, but maybe an area of the region will be more welcoming to my wife.

Maybe you won’t get to buy that car or open that business you want, but there may be a time for that in the future, or another product or endeavor you can undertake that is more conducive to your family lifestyle. I don’t think anybody sets out to stop someone they love from doing something they want to do, but as partners, we all want to feel like we’re an intimate part of our spouse’s ambitions.  If their plans scare the heck out of us, we do what we feel necessary to preserve the integrity of our family.

Going with and without is a careful negotiation, one of internal reflection more so than outward balance. There are things your spouse wants that you are unwilling to provide or unable to facilitate, and yet the love and compassion for you is still there. Appreciate what you have, work for what you need from each other, and grow towards the individual wants from there.

Your parents, your siblings, and everyone else that comprises your family outside of your home have a vested interest in your happiness and well-being, and thereby, their own. They want ownership in your decision making and actions because it is fulfilling to know that what they say, matters.

If your spouse doesn’t like it? Oh well.

Conversely, your spouse is your other half. It’s not a vested interest, it’s a requirement that their opinion be heard and utilized in most cases. This is the person with whom you sleep, share intimacy, expenses and dreams with.

If your family doesn’t like it…Wait, your family is in the picture?

So how do you manage when the two entities clash over what’s best for you? The natural instinct is to avoid it, because the options of final resolution for both sides render irreversible results. You can’t stop being a blood relative, but you can miss out on holidays, birthdays and other celebrations.

And you can’t easily stop being a spouse, because divorce leaves an indelible mark on your spirit.

So the management comes in knowing when to bring the two sides together and on what terms. The structure can’t be “ya’ll shouldn’t be fighting,” or, “you know better than this.” Emotions don’t know better, and when people try to attach logic to emotion, emotions will K.O. common sense 9 out of 10 fights.

Knowing this, you have to appeal to broader themes of family unity. Visiting, child rearing, big events, you have to present both sides with the importance of certain situations in your life, and hope that they can exchange cordial interaction for pride, jealousy, or insecurity.

Example: if family and spouse can’t sit together in church for any reason, it’s a lost cause to bring the two together. If your child has big events that family and spouse can’t attend collectively, it’s hopeless.

If spirituality and achievement aren’t enough to unite family, it’s just a harsh reality you have to accept. And if that’s the case, it simply becomes a matter of resolving your dissatisfaction and scheduling healthy quality time.

But keep in mind, if the rift between family and spouse is so deep that long-range disputes stay as fresh as they were when they began, you have every right to question if their love for you is as great as their disdain for the other person or persons.

Love always forgives and forgets. Sadly, it’s your job to maintain until that balance can come into focus for both sides.

But the first thing to consider is if Woods and Nordegren still love each other. If that is true, there may be room for trust to amount to good communication? Why did he cheat? What did he get out of doing so? And what things can he do to repair the emotional damage of infidelity?

Unfortunately, those questions can’t be answered in a 24-hour news cycle. The public can’t be privy to that information, because we will have judgments about Nordegren and Woods in either situation. If they stay together, Nordegren is a fool. If they separate, Woods’ place as a fool is definitively confirmed.

If there is to be repair in this situation, Woods has to immediately come out and announce a suspension of his playing and endorsement career. He has to say, verbatim, “My family is the most important thing in my life, and I will do nothing else until I’ve restored their trust and faith in me.”

Second, Nordegren has to have an opportunity to air her frustrations, anger, hurt and humiliation to the world. She has to stand alone and speak of the vulnerability of such a public inquisition, and describe in her own way how she will emerge from this a better person, mother, and possibly, wife.

Finally, when the media grinder has run its course on these stories, both Woods and Nordegren have to appear together as a couple to describe the painful road back to trust. They have to do this without image coaches, PR pros, or TMZ cameras following them around.

My opinion is that the marriage can not be saved. Woods’ profile is too expansive and the coverage too intense for he and Nordegren to be private citizens to endure such a public pain. But if there is room for reconciliation, it starts at home when no one is looking.

Which, ironically, is part of the reason why this entire thing began. Outside of their walls, someone is always looking.

And it’s true, some things your wife wants to do often get pushed to the rear. But if you are in the right relationship, and are mastering communication, quality time can be whatever you two negotiate it to be.

Take the emphasis off of the time and think more in terms of the quality. Consider emailing your wife a brief quiz, like, “What are my top five favorites outfits you wear?” Or, “What is my second favorite dessert?”

I just emailed my wife and challenged her to guess my favorite catchphrases of hers. If she gets it in time, and isn’t too groggy to respond, she may answer and nail three out of five. And we’ll laugh about it later.

Quality time.

That’s just one example, but there are a lot of ideas you can come up with to learn new things about your wife, and to engage her in ways you never have. That leads to interest and dedication, two things you never want to lose from your best girl.