applepie

I was asked the other day what it is that makes my marriage work so well. One of the younger girls at work is due to get married in a couple of months, and she is trying to figure out what it is that has made my marriage prosper. She is only 18, and I can't help but think it terribly young. I guess it is how many people must have felt about my plan for marriage when I was 18, but I just don't remember being quite as dingy as this girl.

All I could tell her is that if you want things to work, you have to be willing to not have everything your own way. My husband and I have very little in common. We've different interests, different tastes in food, clothes, and darn near everything else. We do have similar financial goals, and plans for the future, but that is about it. We've a different religious backgroud, and we come from different demographics. I'm your basic middle-class girl with parents who are still married and what was once a tight knit family all in one are. My husband is from a broken marriage, his parents divorced when he was a kid, and then his mom remarried and divorced again. They were from a lower income family than me, and there was a degree of harshness to his childhood that was never present in mine.

I guess in short, we are statistically destined for divorce, and yet here we are almost six years later still happily married and very in love. So how did it work is the real question? Compromise. We discuss everything, and we meet in the middle most times. Sometimes he gets his way, others I get mine, but mostly we find a medium that we can agree upon. We have very few rules in our marriage, but a firm one is that we NEVER fight over money. We just flat refuse to do it. Money can't buy the love we have, so it isn't worth ruining the one fighting over the other. Each year we see a little more eye to eye on things, but our first years were rough. Neither of us were that willing to bend, and it was sheer stuborness and a belief in our love that kept us together. Our final rule is that we accept the other for who they are and not who we wish them to be. If this means overlooking and working around traits that are less desirable, that that is what we do to make it work. It drives my hubby crazy that I'll get mad and refuse to talk about it. I'm a tempermental person, but I'm not good at venting that anger. Then out of the blue I'll attack with something saved from before in retaliation for something that has pushed me over the edge. It still makes him angry that I do it, but he accepts it, and I just accept he'll be mad when I do it. I try not to, but it still happens from time to time. I can't stand that he is lazy when it comes to picking up after himself. He'll leave dishes and wrappers around the house, and I follow behind because I don't like the mess. All the nagging, talking, and arguing in the world hasn't changed it, so now I'm resigned. I still complain, but I just pick it up and don't get too mad.

I guess that is just marriage to me. It is one big HUGE compromise. I've very few decisions that have not been altered from their original conception, and I'm sure Tom feels the same. I only hope that the girl at work can understand what I said, and that she will have as happy of a marriage as me.

Take Care,
Meg