On paper, my husband and I are not a good match. Oh, sure, our astrological signs, at least as far as the Chinese are concerned, are compatible, but most indicators say otherwise. We'd been married for only a few months when I took one of those magazine quizzes designed to tell you compatibility based on background comparison. It rated our compatibility as low and our chances of staying together as "grim." Honestly! We got a good chuckle out of that.
There are many ways to classify people. For instance, some people's sensory awareness is high, some people's is low, and most people fall in the middle. Of course, mine is high and his is low. I swear, I have the hearing of a dog - many supposedly ordinary sounds are absolutely painful. Sirens are misery. Loud, shrill or sudden sounds don't just startle me, they honestly hurt. I can't drive next to a motorcycle without plugging my ears. Things my husband can't smell drive me to distraction. My beloved, on the other hand, is just this side of oblivious. Tapping his arm to get his attention has to escalate to an almost bruising level before he finally notices and gives you a distracted, "Hmm?" I find large crowds, loud music and flashing lights to be absolutely exhausting; he finds them to be exhilarating and energizing. Just as I'm ready to collapse in a heap of fatigue, he's just getting revved up. The longer an unpleasant sound - say, an alarm - goes on, the more it shreds my nerves, while the more time it sounds, the more my husband relegates it to background, white noise and finally fails to even register it.
"Shut that thing up!" I'll yell, and he'll look at me, puzzled - "What thing?"
The problem with this is that he tends to think I'm overreacting to any given scenario, while I find him to have all the sensitivity of a rock. This also bodes badly for long term cohabitation.
He likes his beef practically still mooing; I like mine almost turned to leather. He would happily have bread or rolls with every meal; I tend to forget that bread exists unless I'm making a sandwich. He likes to sleep in a cold room; I prefer mine almost hot. He loves having a fan blowing on him; I hate the sensation of wind on my skin. I can't even sleep with my head on my arms, because my breathing blows the hair on my arms and makes me miserable.
Have you ever taken the "What Color Are You?" test, and read about your personality? Dan is a yellow who very much wants to be a red. I used to test at 60% blue, 40 % white, but as I get older I test more as 60% white, 40 % blue. I think I have 1 red and 1 yellow answer on my entire test.
Watching us make a joint decision is either comical or infuriating. The only reason I entertain any idea is to make and act on a decision. I want the time weighing options to be brief, and feel that it exists only as a stepping stone to taking action. Not Dan; for him, the entire point is weighing options. He can happily weigh options for literally years. Making an actual decision causes him stress, and acting on it causes even more stress, because, as he sees it, you've now "eliminated all your options." He cannot imagine why I spend all my time actively trying to eliminate options. I cannot imagine why he is willing to spend enormous amounts of time and energy thinking about anything unless he intends to do something about it.
The more important, and the more permanent, a decision is, the more it ties him in knots. He will happily spend x number of dollars on a restaurant meal, but balk at spending the exact same amount on clothing because if he buys something physical, he'll be "stuck with it," whereas if he has a lousy meal, well, he can rectify that in a matter of hours.
He is afraid that any decision he makes might be the wrong one. I find this to be fear of commitment of the most profound sort. I think that very few questions even have a wrong answer - who cares if you get the brown one or the green one, as long as you get one? If you're going on vacation, you absolutely must pick a destination, or you're going nowhere. Most of life is not "Sophie's Choice."
Whenever we've bought a house, I have been unable to imagine signing the papers unless I can imagine being 90 years old in the house. The very first time we bought a place, I had a one year old and one on the way, and I checked out what high school they'd be going to and where the bus stop was. We were still packing up the apartment when Dan started saying, "When we sell this house..." It exhausted me to even think about. "We don't even live there yet! How can you think about selling it?" He was baffled. "Do you want to be stuck there forever? Don't you want something nicer?"
Occasionally, someone will ask me how Dan ever got married or had children. Some of them aren't quite sure whether or not to believe my answer, which is that he was able to because he didn't think it would be permanent. Between the belief he grew up with that monogamy is unnatural to his belief that no one was ever actually going to like him enough to live with him long term, he figured it was pretty much a done deal that one day he'd come home to an empty house. That was OK by him - he took an "it'll be fun while it lasts" approach.
I, on the other hand, was crystal clear on the fact that marrying this man meant that some day I might be changing his adult diapers. I certainly didn't plan on having children with a weekend dad.
After a few years, adding kids and mortgages to the mix, it dawned on him that we were always there when he came home. Don't get me wrong, there are absolute deal breakers that would have me out so fast that I didn't even stop to pack, and he knows what they are, but in their absence I'm in it for the long haul. He had never bothered to make a long term decision, assuming that he wouldn't have to. Now, and from his point of view, very suddenly, he had to make a permanent, lasting, no do-overs decision. Was this the life he wanted, or wasn't it?
It freaked him out. He lost his mind a little. (Especially since he'd always thought, for reasons unclear even to him, that he'd be dead long before he reached middle age.)
After deciding that he really did want this life and this family, he was almost giddy. I have to admit, my reaction was more that he was coming late to the party. Nice of you to finally show up, hon, we've all been waiting for you.
I asked him, years later, what in the world he'd been thinking. "Nobody stayed married," he said, pointing out that he'd come of age in the late 70s. I have to admit, society's track record in this regard is not sterling, and the 70s didn't do much to help.
Fast forward: our next wedding anniversary will be our 25th. It's not actually that much different than the 24th or 26th or any other number, really, but I still think it's a big deal. In a few weeks, we will climb on a cruise ship with all of our children and our son in law, who'll be celebrating his first wedding anniversary with our daughter. We'll go to the Bahamas, snorkel, eat too much and get sunburned. It will be well deserved.
Happy anniversary, Dan, and many more to come.
(Yeah, we enjoyed that cruise.)
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