A U student’s marital mistakes are gaining recognition on a national scale.
Chris Clark, a master’s of business administration student, was recently chosen as a finalist in a national blog competition. His blog, wifeadvice.com, details mistakes he has made in his marriage, including rating his wife’s looks six out of 10 during their honeymoon and coming home several times saying, “I thought about buying you flowers today, but decided not to. Does that count for anything?”
Surprisingly, his wife doesn’t mind.
“I love seeing people’s responses to what we write. Especially if they take my side. I sigh, and think, ‘finally, a little validation,'” said Nancy Clark, Chris’ wife.
In his original blog, there was a section called “Wife Advice.” Nancy Clark also had a blog called “He Said, She Said.” Friends responded favorably to the blogs and demanded more. The feedback helped the couple recognize how popular their blogs were.
“Once we started getting a lot of people asking about the wife advice stuff, we realized we had something cool,” Chris Clark said. “We stripped the ‘Wife Advice’ section off my blog and the ‘He Said, She Said’ from hers. We also developed a few other features and realized we could maintain an entire blog on crazy marriage stories and crazy advice.”
For the current blog, the couple writes under the names “The Donkey” and “The Wife.”
“My job is to tell people about the stupid things I have done and give ridiculous advice, while hers is to temper the stuff I reveal,” Chris Clark said. “She also likes to provide some real advice for people who actually want to get something meaningful out of the visit.”
The feedback blog has received 4,000 visits, which is significant in the blogging world considering it was created less than a month ago, Chris Clark said.
“The one thing I get worried about is that people think I have real advice for them and some people write in questions with serious concerns. I hope no one actually thinks I am a doctor,” Chris Clark said.
The blog was created Oct. 3 and was nominated for the award shortly after.
“This contest gave us a lot of publicity and forced us to quickly get the site up to speed, so we are very grateful,” Chris Clark said. “We want to grow the site more and more. I would love it to get big enough to attract advertisers to provide prizes for readers.”
Despite not winning the blog competition and the chaos that has surrounded being a finalist, Clark seems to have enjoyed the experience.
“I think the whole thing is out of control, but I enjoy it,” Chris Clark said.
Jarad ReddekoppChris Clark displays his blog that he started a month ago to share the humorous stories that happen with in his marriage.