Silly Me

Tony and I have been married for 5 years(and some). The first 2 were sucky. I mean really really “I am going to leave your ass” sucky. The only reason we made it through is because we are Stubborn. And, you know, in love and all that.

These days if you’re around us for more then 10 minutes you would wonder how we manage to stay married at all. We constantly bicker. We’re always yelling at each other. But that’s just how we do it. Think Jon and Kate (minus the 8). You really only have to start worrying when we stop yelling. Then you know it’s bad. I know that sounds backwards and upside down, but it makes perfect sense. If whatever you’re arguing about is nothing in the grand scheme of things, then yelling releases any frustration you might have. As long as the other person gets you, it’s no big deal. But if whatever it is is Bad, yelling would be Not Good. Better to be calm and talk it out like grown-ups. See? Brilliant.

Take last night, for instance. I don’t remember what we were fighting about. I think it was something about video games and Eliana’s bath time and could you just pause it for 5 damn minutes please?? Yeah, so I guess I remember. So we bitch bitch bitch and then proceed to have a huge water fight in the kitchen. It started out with Eliana’s squirty bath toys and quickly escalated to the spray nozzle on the sink and cupfuls of Eliana’s bathwater. It was awesome. We were soaked. At the end we hugged and laughed and Eliana looked at us like we were crazy. Good times.

Not that our relationship is all fights and water. Tony and I are actually really really close. We do almost everything together. I’m sure it borders on unhealthy codependence. We don’t have many similar interests, but it doesn’t seem to stop us from wanting to hang out. We prefer each other’s company over anyone else. In fact, we hate most people. Especially people who drive. But that’s a different post. We’re affectionate, but not so much in public. I mean we’ll hold hands and maybe have an occasional make-out session peck, but I’m not big into people watching me slobber all over my hubby. But that would be so sexy. (Ha!)

Everything in our life is 50/50. Most of the time. At least it evens out in the end. When Tony is home he does half the Eliana stuff. He doesn’t mind and even likes it. He helps clean the house all the time. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I swept or mopped anything since he always does it. (He is NOT allowed to fold towels. He does it wrong and then I have to kill him.) He’ll sometimes do the dishes, or at the very least empty the dishwasher. I don’t like the way he loads it, so I generally do it myself. I don’t bring in the paycheck, but any money decisions are made by both of us. I pay the bills and do the monthly budgeting, but since he gets deployed sometimes, that’s just good sense. It would suck if he left and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. He plans for the long term future (retirement, kid’s college) since I am no good at any of that. He also deals with the car. Cuz I don’t care. We have a system that works great for us.

It took us a long time to get to this place. Where we’re comfortable and happy and managing the stress of day to day life. It’s not all sunshine and roses, but it’s a good place. I’m not so naive as to think there’s no way our relationship could ever end (seriously, no one ever thinks they could get divorced and marriages that have lasted 20 years can still end). We just keep working on it. We keep talking when something comes up. We try to be honest (that has been a huge issue with us in the past) and put everything out there, trusting that the other person will understand. It’s working.

I couldn’t be happier if I tried and I hope he feels the same.