You knew I was going to do this, right?  You knew I just HAD to take advantage of my last day of Eeyore-ness before 30 days of bright side begins? 

If I’m going to embark on my very own happiness project, it behooves me to take one last look at the mistakes I’ve made.  Put another way, these are the things I need to look out for over the next 30 days.

Enthusiasm is good.  Single-minded determination, not so much.  I’ve been wanting us to combine our finances since last spring.  Why?  I’m not even sure.  I think that I’ve always been uncomfortable that I make more money than he does, so I’ve overcompensated by trying to give him more control over my finances.  I don’t like it, though, so then I wallow in the discomfort by telling myself it’s good for me while insisting that he do something equally uncomfortable.  He, like every other normal person on the planet, doesn’t think that something’s worthwhile just because it’s uncomfortable or difficult, but he loves me so he tries to agree while not actually doing anything about it.  And then I’m pissed.  Follow?  Yea.

So no more of that.  Discomfort exists for a reason, if only to make you think twice before pushing through it.  I’d stopped thinking twice.  Wanting to share my life with someone? Good.  Not losing the point along the way? Priceless.

How? Deep breaths, incremental changes, relentless relaxation.  Yes, being relentless about relaxing.  It’s not the oxymoron it seems.

Overcompensating makes you crazy.  I worry that he thinks I have too much power because I make more money, so I am careful about anything involving finances, to the point that I booked our honeymoon rental car in his name because I thought he’d like that better.  We couldn’t pick up the darn car because it was booked in his name and paid for with my credit card, leading to much frustration and a few tears, and it turns out he could have cared less who’s name was on what, ESPECIALLY if the simplest option kept me from having to argue with the car people for an hour. 

So, no more of that.  Hi, I make more money.  {Note that I’m refraining from balancing that statement with a long list of all the things he does that make it okay.  I don’t need to make it be okay.  It is okay because it’s just how it is.  Period.}

It’s okay to be happy about being happy.  At some point long ago I started hiding the fact that I was happy or excited.  I’m talking back when I was a kid.  I felt that if I was happy, I was stupid. The only way to be happy is to not notice all of the bad things going on around you, and I didn’t want to be stupid, so I was never really happy.

Now, when I’m happy, I’m trying.  And if I’m trying, and you respond by being negative, I let you deflate me easily, so easily, too easily.  I’m going to try to be happy regardless of how you feel. 

This is hard for me, having learned to perceive the feelings of my parents and DO SOMETHING lest they start crying or yelling, a habit I’ve carried into adulthood.  But I’m going to try, because I’m tired of trying to make you happy so that I can be happy.

Ask nicely. At least at first.  I’m more than willing to fight for what I think is right – on behalf of my husband, my animals, or myself.  More than willing often translates to too readily willing.  Example: I don’t like to be scolded (does anyone?) and Joey’s tone with me often feels like scolding.  I am not a child. I am a competent adult who did just fine before he came along, thankyouverymuch, and while I understand his attempts to goad me into doing what he thinks is best, telling me over and and over in that tone of voice just makes me feel stupid and scolded.

So I told him that.  And then he got mad, and then I got annoyed, and then he got frustrated, and then we ended our lunch early.  I made my point, but neither of us enjoyed it much, something I’m willing to live with.

But.  BUT!  But what if I’d just said, “Will you please not scold me like that?”  Nothing else.  No justification or argument or explanation.  Just a request.  “Please will you not talk to me like that?”

Might have been better.  There’s always hope!

I’m really looking forward to the Bright Days of Blogging! (Though I’m obviously still searching for a good alliterative title.)  I really, really, really am.  I’ll post more details tomorrow, but I’m going to start a gratitude journal, reread some of my favorite dog training books (where better to learn/ practice positive reinforcement) and make the final decision on doing a formal happiness group.

I’ll end with one question for you.  I’m noticing that I married Joey hoping certain things about him would change.  Really accepting who he is today and being okay with that has been difficult.  I didn’t even realize that I expected him to change, and if you’d asked me, I would have told you that marrying someone with the expectation that they’ll ever be anyone other than who they are today is CRAZY… but I did it.  So last week was difficult because I realized, painfully, that he is who he is.  Lucky for me, I’m crazy about him, even when he makes me crazy.  I love who he is – except when it conflicts with what I want for me (aha!) – so I’m working on that. 

Did you find yourself wishing, hoping, waiting for changes in your mate without even realizing it?  I suspect many of us do it, but maybe I’m wrong.  If I’m right, then suddenly I understand why the first year of marriage is so tough for many of us.

I mentioned in my post yesterday that I had a new idea, one to help drag me out of my angsty spiral and force me to focus on the positive things in my life, so many of which I don’t notice because I’m more comfortable trying to fix the things that aren’t.

Interesting, isn’t it, how much time and effort you can put into the small percentage of anything that’s not working?  Again, I go back to Marcus Buckingham and his mind-boggling take on careers and success: rather than focus on your weaknesses, what would happen if you focused on your strengths?  I’ll never be as good at patience as someone who is naturally patient, though I can work really hard to be a little better.  But what if I spent that energy cultivating a talent I do come by naturally (my enthusiasm, perhaps)?

Contrary to what you might read, I do have a naturally positive outlook.  In any situation, I’m the one looking for the bright side.  Really.  But because I believe (and have practiced) that you have to learn from the bad to make it mean something, I am spending so much of my time and energy trying so hard to prevent the bad.

It’s not working.

So, starting September 1 – and for the entire month – this blog is celebrating the bright side.  Really.  It just so happens that I love fall, and I love love fall in the south.  Plus, I really do have a sweet and loving hubby who tries just as hard as I do and we have a pretty cool piece of property that will be beautiful when the leaves turn.  And though I’m not in school, I’ve always loved the start of the school year.  Time to start using the oven again, cooking again, going for long walks and wearing sweaters.

Okay, maybe not wearing sweaters, but at least thinking about sweaters won’t make me sweat.

For one month, I’m going to blog about the fantastic-ness of my life, and I have a sneaking suspicion that my whole life will seem better, my marriage will be happier, and I’ll get closer to my goal of being a more content person.

Wanna join me?  I’m not so good at organized things, but I’m willing to try. I think.  In the meantime, check out Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project blog.

{Ah, those were the days, planning my Saturday nights around the air time of Bill Maher’s HBO show. Remember them? Pre-tivo, pre-Hulu, pre-find-it-somewhere-on-the-internet. At least then I had a good excuse for never doing anything interesting on Saturday nights. Or, in retrospect, maybe not.}

Marriage is rough. Really rough. Don’t-know-if-I-can-do-this-one-more-day rough. If you haven’t been there and you’re like the rest of us (normal), you will. It might not be today or tomorrow or even this decade, but you will hit a patch so rough it can’t by any rights be called a patch. It’s a freaking chasm. It’s okay. I’m finding that many of us hit that patch in the first year, and some of us call that patch THE FIRST YEAR. And I guess you might not hit a rough spot at all, in which case I wish I lived your life, something I say without a drop of venom. Seriously. But if you’re not, and you’re struggling, you’re not alone. And it’s not just me. I’ve talked to so many newlyweds who had no idea it would be this tough. Sometimes, it is.

Divorce is always an option, even if only in my dreams. You know what they say: if divorce is even an option, it will be an option. Heck, even I’ve said it. And I get the point, really, I do (and if you’ve said that to me lately, I assure you I wasn’t upset and it even probably made me feel better). But it’s always an option, and thinking it – even wistfully, with relief and exhilaration – doesn’t mean you won’t stay married. It just means you’re human and you can dream. Thinking the word, saying the word, not being afraid of the word – none of those things make me a bigger risk for getting divorced. You know what does? Not knowing myself well enough to know what I need, say what I need, and get what I need, even if I have to get it myself.

“I need…” might save your marriage. I suspect it will save mine. Yesterday morning my husband and I went to see our couples counselor. (Doesn’t “couples counselor” sound more fun and hippy dippy than “therapist”? It wasn’t, but let’s pretend.) I’ll admit I didn’t catch or remember every word, weighed down as I was by Theraflu and emotion, but he did say that we should tell each other what we need. Now be careful. The phrase isn’t meant to end, “… you to do/ be _____.” Well, it might be meant to end that way, but it won’t help your marriage. Being able to clearly state what you need and ask for it, however, will. Let’s try:

• “I need to feel loved. Will you hug me?”
• “I need a break to control my temper. Let’s pick it up in 30 minutes.”
• “I need two days with no fighting. We can keep a list of things to talk about later. Will that work for you?”
• “I need Theraflu, a beer, and reruns of The Closer. And for you to not touch me. Can we try again tomorrow?”
• “I need to feel like you’re not going to leave me at any moment. Help me understand how we can keep that from happening again.” {Okay, so I haven’t managed to say this, finding it difficult to even type the words, but I’m working up to it. If you can’t ask for what you need without rolling your eyes, choking on your tongue, or spitting with hostility, wait a moment. And ask yourself if you need something else first.}

Drop It isn’t just for dogs. I teach my dogs to Drop It whenever I ask, usually in exchange for something better. “Well, what have you got there? Drop it!” The whole phrase generally keeps me from barking the command (pun intended). I’m learning to drop yummy subjects because they make my husband uncomfortable. I like nothing more than to pick apart a new topic, learn and debate and come to agreement. Him, not so much. To him it feels like being thrown in front of a Senate panel to talk about pooping or puberty or some equally-embarrassing subject (you know, like FEELINGS). I want to push through the discomfort and get it over with; he wants to take many many breaks to get his head together.

But, I don’t get my way because I’m married and if one of us feels the pressure (literally, his chest will ache because he breathes funny), we both take a break. What my dogs have found with Drop It, though, is that sometimes I’m lazy and don’t give them anything better, and sometimes I just give them back the same treat (for practice). But they still Drop It when asked, because the chance that they’ll get a piece of roasted chicken is worth the little wait and slight risk. So I try to learn from them and Drop It as much as I can. Like my dogs, I don’t like it, and I might not get something better, but I’ll eventually get to chew on it again. You know, like in front of our therapist.

When in doubt, hug it out. Two nights ago, my husband told a fib, left our house, called me a few hours later to tell me he was staying at his parents’ house, then turned off his phone. {Note the maturity I’m exhibiting my stating that in a clear and factual manner. My response to the chain of events, however, should not be taken as evidence of my maturity, but rather as evidence of my temper.} After a series of events – including an out of town trip, discussion about moving, major sacrifice resulting in awesome concert tickets followed by a less than expected reaction, and did I mention I’M SICK? – culminated in the perfect storm of Bad Me meets Bad Him, we fought late into the night, then called a truce the next day. Or so I thought.

In reality, he was finding it harder and harder to get over the feeling that being with me was a futile exercise in trying to make me happy. He did the only thing he thought he could: he lied so I wouldn’t pitch a fit when he told me he was leaving. Not LEAVING (all caps means permanently), but staying elsewhere for the night. LEAVING and leaving are the same to me when I’m upset. Whether you’re leaving for 30 minutes or leaving me for good isn’t a distinction I can make at that moment. So he did what he thought he had to do. We’ve since had many discussions about why that’s not okay and what being a husband and wife and married and having responsibility to our family means, conversations that are ongoing.

The biggest thing he couldn’t get over? When he was mean and made me cry, I wouldn’t let him hug me to make me feel better. I was fighting the urge to yell ugly things, so the last thing I wanted was to be touched.

In all honesty, I’m a hugger unless I’m pissed, then I wrap my anger around myself like a shell and I don’t let anything permeate it for fear of having to go through it all again. And then I’m pissed because I’m alone and uncomforted. Well, yes, because I won’t let him. So I’m trying to separate those things in my head.

I really DID want a hug, I just didn’t want to set aside my anger to get it. If I took the hug, wouldn’t I be letting him off the hook? No. You can give and take comfort without absolving anyone of anything, just like you can love someone without liking them very much. So when we struggled through all of this last night, and I noticed that he was getting overwhelmed and breathing funny, I hugged him. No words, just a hug. That kind of connection can get you through a whole multitude of hurt if you let it.

I’m not sure I’ll always be able to accept a hug, but I’m giving them out more freely, and he’s reported feeling better. More objectively, after a long hug, we’re able to pick up the conversation we dropped and keep going.

If you find yourself acting like a baby, try treating yourself like a baby. When I’m hurt, I get angry. When I’m angry, I cry. When I cry, well, I stomp my feet, ball up my hands, and growl in frustration. I will bang my fists on the ground while snot drips from my nose to the ground. I will cry inconsolably, fight loudly, and actually wrap my arms around myself to push away the bad. The only bummer is that I’m not a child and my parents aren’t going to pull my into their lap, rub my back and make the bad go away. Or send me to my room, whichever is most appropriate. That’s up to me, not my husband because he’s not my parent. Let me repeat, because this was an epiphany for me: it is not up to my husband to soothe my inner child. Babies have to learn to self-soothe; pick up a crying baby every time and they won’t learn this skill. Even dogs have to be taught to handle frustration with grace, lest your pooch lose his sh*t the next time he doesn’t get what he wants. If babies and dogs can learn, so can I.

So when I feel like a widdle biddy crybaby, I need the adult side of my brain to give the baby side of my brain a hug, a candy, and tell me it’ll be okay. And then we’ll deal with the anger, which needs action or distraction, and since I’m still trying valiantly (and often futilely) not to yell, we’ll sing songs backward and randomly search job boards. {By the way, any activity that requires focus but not logic will work – read a book, recite the alphabet backwards in Spanish, play word games on the internet.}

“All you need is love” is bullshit; YOU NEED SKILLS. I don’t come by relationship communication skills naturally. I am good with the written word, so-so in person, and super duper killer articulate when I’m pissed. I share and share and overshare, but generally only on topics I’m not personally tied to, and can say the same thing nineteen different ways. I am absolutely willing to split hairs (selfish and self-centered are not the same) and am very very very careful and sure of the words I use, even… ESPECIALLY when I’m backed into a corner. I know what I said and I will stand by it, repeat it, scream it if I must. I mean what I say. Oh, and I don’t lie. I may exaggerate when telling a story, might get the exact details wrong when I’m trying to make a broad point, but ask me if I like your hair, hate your boyfriend, or agree with some dude on the radio, and I will tell you the truth. I sometimes fall off the wagon, but having lived through the results of many many lies, I hop back on pretty quickly. I know how and why I communicate. In detail.

When you put an overconfident communicator together with my husband, you get head-banging frustration. My analogies don’t succeed, my words don’t split, and with every synonym and restructured sentence we get closer and closer to the place where he’s not listening, not trying, not thinking anything but how he can get me to STOP. Not a good place. And one person with more than average skills plus one person with less nurtured skills does not equal two. It equals whatever looks like this: @#%$%^$*^@#.

After hearing his interpretation of my words, I understood how he felt so wronged. The words I said got so mangled on their way, it’s a wonder he’s still here. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t say them incorrectly, but they certainly didn’t land successfully. So we’re working on that.

We both have things to work on, and seeing as how this is my blog, I only share mine. They include being more direct (crazy, but true), not trying too hard, setting boundaries and holding us both to them, and being happier. Really. I’m not generally a content person, something I’ve always struggled with. I know being married shouldn’t be this hard, for either of us, but I’m confident that if we figure out where to try, we won’t have to try so hard.

We both try really hard. I have hope.

More tomorrow on a new plan to be happier. Thanks for your words of support and advice; they helped more than you can possibly know. I love you all (especially the one who brought me two boxes of Kleenex, a magazine AND chocolate, then sat and talked with me for four hours – especially you).

{This was written last week while I was out of town.}

Very strange to be back in a city where you lived a life now long gone.  It was great fun meeting a new friend, gabbing it up for almost four hours (yikes) as if we’d known each other forever. Walking from the East Village south, we were suddenly standing in front of the place where my ex-husband once worked, and I could no longer ignore the unsettling feeling.

As the car drove me over the George Washington, I remembered the trip we made in a moving truck almost five years ago.  A lifetime.  Flush with the excitement of starting a new life together, we never once fought in spite of the heat and the traffic and not having any idea what we were doing.  We were young and doing the thing we’d always talked about.  Why fight?  We’d left our hometown, driven across the country, and although we were running, it felt like we were heading toward the same goal.

The thought that with half the effort, life with another could have been twice as easy… that’s the downside to second chances.

A year and a few months later, I crossed the GW again in a rental car with the company of my two cats, leaving as fast as the traffic would allow.  The city was never mine.  It was ours, and without him, it lost all its shine.

I was back one other time — to celebrate my little brother’s graduation from NYU, running from an unexpected explosion of a break-up with a coworker, avoiding my phone and email and finding solace in enjoying the city with my family.

But this was the first time I’d been back as the settled me and it was unsettling.  What once was sits uncomfortably in my throat threatening to overflow into tears.  I look up to the heavens and apologize – for the millionth time – for being immature and not good enough. 

And then I call my husband and thank him for meeting me and marrying me, because since I met him, my life is a thousand times better than ever before.  I’d forgotten how bad that kind of drama felt.

This won’t be a well-written or properly edited post.  It’s been a very long day.  Along with the flu bug I picked up from the training class last week (thank you, Kyle) and the start of my period (yea, yea, the concept of TMI no longer exists on this blog), my husband and I are struggling.  Every little problem in our two years together has cropped up into one huge challenge, an fork-in-the-road challenge.  After hours of talking and crying and trying to understand, I know where I stand.  For tonight, at least, he’s staying elsewhere.

While many people heard of Julie Powell through her book or movie adaptation, I found her through her article in the New York Times magazine.  I was between relationships, sitting alone in my Chicago apartment trying to heal, and her calm asides about the challenges of marriage spoke to me.  I’ve been making okra her way for years, a version of that soup every winter, and every time I’m alone, I crave both.

I don’t have any big updates, except that I’ve remembered how to be alone, and that it’s not all bad.  I’m sitting on my couch with a dog in my lap and a cat at my feet, and if it weren’t for the fact that I can’t taste anything anyway, I might have garlic soup and okra.  Instead I’m sipping Theraflu and watching endless episodes of The Closer.

I’d forgotten that being alone isn’t the scariest thing, not by a long shot. 

In Julie’s words:

Maybe one day, I thought, my husband and I would eat our meat and two sides together again. (As I write, several months later, we are.) Though the pleasure was interrupted by a pinprick of remorse, that night I wanted to be there, alone with my simple dinner and my aching but quiet heart.

Just because we’re struggling doesn’t mean it’s over; just because we’re apart doesn’t mean we’re not together.  I will stay because I’m not ready to leave, and I will stop trying so hard, because the harder I try the worse it all gets.  Really.  I know that if we don’t make it, I won’t run away.  I’ll stay in my house because it’s my home, take care of my animals and do my job.  I’ll take time to think and decide, and then I’ll do whatever comes next. 

And if we do make it – and I really really really want us to make it – it’ll be because I gave him room to step up and take responsibility for our family, too.  I have many months of being patient and not doing it myself ahead of me.  It won’t be easy, but who wants easy? (Um, I do, but I’m looking at the bright side here.)  I’m letting go of the oars.

Do you have one? I do. My brain can’t help but form them, and it only takes a second before I know what I’d do if we weren’t together. In fact, the logistics of leaving are so easy that I avoid thinking about them lest I be convinced to take an easier path.

I don’t stay because I don’t have options; I stay because leaving’s too easy.

I left my first husband because I didn’t want the ugliness that my life had become to see the light of day. I loved and admired him enough to not want him to know what kind of a woman he’d married, so I walked away and shut the door behind me. Three thousand miles separated us, but more than that, my unwillingness to see his disappointment and hurt kept me from contacting him. The day of my hometown reception, I saw him in the checkout line at a store with a tall blonde. “Good for him,” I thought while hiding behind racks of purses. {What? I haven’t seen the man since we parted at the airport four years ago. Not breaking into a full out run was enough of a success, thankyouverymuch.}

Staying would have been harder and I was too immature for hard.

So here I am. There comes a point where you see the person you married with complete clarity. I thought I knew him and was walking into this marriage with open eyes, thought I knew exactly what I was getting into, thought I’d learned enough to KNOW.

I was wrong.

I get it now. I am officially the last to admit that this relationship is fubar. I’m admitting it. Three months after I married him, I’m staring right at his essence. I’m not sure I’m okay with that. I have a lot of thinking to do, all while fighting the urge to do what maybe I should have done all along.

Put the house on the market, pick a new city, and move. Easy peasy.

{Funny story: even as I sit crying as I type I’m wishing I was a better writer. Even now, every “that” and “this” and “it” and potentially inappropriate comma bugs me.}

So I have a backup plan. It materialized in an instant with such clarity that I felt relief. Leaving – that I know how to do. I don’t like it and it won’t be fun, but knowing you can walk out the door in a few week’s time is empowering. I wonder if he understands this about me. I don’t think he does. He asks me where I’d go, what I’d do, as if the rhetorical is enough to scare me.

I’m not worried about leaving. Leaving would be a relief. Blah, I’d have to date again, and the idea makes me cringe, but whateva. We do what we have to. It’s staying and failing that scares me. It’s running out of a single thing more that I can do to make things better. It’s giving and giving and giving in and realizing not once did my point make it intact, not once has this relationship been easy, not once have I been able to stop trying. so. fcuking. hard.

So tonight my cold and I are taking a double dose of Theraflu and hoping that the morning will bring a man with a spine and willingness to work – really work – on our marriage. Yes, I said it. There is such a thing as trying too hard, and I’ve been doing it. No more.

This is me, the too-loud too-direct too-honest woman with expectations that are too high. I am thirty effing years old and it’s time to accept myself. No more changing. If I’ve really learned anything, I won’t have to try so hard to prove it. And if I’ve really matured, I’ll decide whether to stay based on who he is and not who I wish he could be.

Here we go. Again. {Yes, I said that too. There are no elephants left in my life.}

Are you humming Willie Nelson now?  You should be.  I am.

I’m hitting the road tomorrow traveling to a corporate leadership class by way of NYC (oh, how I love NYC).  I’m meeting a friend, then spending a week learning good things.  What?  You can learn good things at leadership classes, especially when you’re as a big a sucker for rah-rah as I am.  Worst case, you learn that nobody should ever take that class.  Am I right?

Posting this week will either be lighter or heavier than normal, not sure which.  I might either be lost in the spiral of future geographic opportunities or fired up and planning my next gig.  I’ll let you guess which one of those will mean more posts.

I will miss you.  Really!  So in the meantime, let’s have an informal delurking day to keep us all unproductive catching up on each other’s blogs.  Unlike my usual posts, commenting on this one doesn’t require you to do any soul-searching or divulge anything uncomfortably honest. 

All you have to do is say hello and how you found me (unless you have a better comment to make, in which case you totally should) and include your blog link.

I’ll start: Hi, I’m Marisa, and I’m still looking for me… but I found this blog by way of a marriage, divorce, engagement, blogging gig at Weddingbee, and marriage. 

Wocka, wocka. 

You can just say something simple like, “I Googled dramatic relationship angst and found you.”  Or whatever is appropriate.

… but words can really hurt me.

I started this post last fall, in my early blogging days, but I hadn’t yet found enough of myself to know how to finish it.  We’ll begin with that beginning:

I’m a words girl, a rather dangerous thing to be, and the older I get, the more profoundly I understand the power of the words that come out of my mouth.

And so I wonder where to find the balance between sharing and protecting, between the relief of relating and the bond of loyalty.  Much like shadows are benign in sunlight, many of the fears I have get less scary when voiced.  I’ve found few things more comforting than relating to other women who can say, "Hey, me too!"  But to know me and understand me you have to know my life, and my guy is a huge part of my life.  As someone who loves him, I have a responsibility to protect his image, don’t I?

Here’s the other thing: bad things tend to spiral.  If you’re annoyed, you tend to look at life in a way that confirms your annoyance, right?  So if I talk about my annoyance at his leaving facial hair all over the bathroom (seriously, why?), I stay annoyed.  If I instead talk about how hilarious he was when he chased the dogs or cute when he smooched the cat, will I be less annoyed?  Where’s the line between avoiding reality and letting go?

I have a friend who rarely speaks negatively about her husband and if she does, she quickly balances it out with a positive statement.  "It took forever for him to finish!  But of course,  he always finishes what he says he’ll do, so I knew he’d get around to it."  Another friend never uses editorial phrases about her husband, only speaking in statements of fact.

Sadly, I tend to the sardonic, going for the nyuk nyuk more often than anything else, and my guy gets caught up in that.  And you can’t speak badly about someone, even in jest, without forcing yourself to then defend them.

Yea, so, evidently the facial hair on the sink has been an ongoing frustration.  Back to the present.

The idea that the storyline in my head affects the happiness of my life is a scary one, but oh, so true.  Happy people think happy thoughts.  When reviewing a couple’s history, therapists look for evidence that the spark remains – Do they remember the good times or bad? What outcome are their stories arguing?  You look for memories that support what you’re thinking or feeling, which is why people generally make terrible eyewitnesses.  I am a terrible eyewitness to my own past.

Pay attention to the way people give directions and you learn a whole lot about them.  Me, I’ll tell you to pass that little food stand with the great drinks, take a left at the yummy hole in the wall, and go straight past that overpriced place with the bland food.  Bet you know what I like.  (Speaking of, dinner’s approaching… in four hours, but whateva.)

Pay attention to the way people describe their relationships, and whoa, boy, do you have a story.  But where’s the line?  If I’m telling you all that he’s driving me nuts, I’m not snarking on him, I’m asking for help.  On the other hand, I do find myself leaning heavily in the direction of stories that’ll make you roll your eyes with me – at him.  That’s not cool.  I might be willing to share that version of myself for the sake of a good laugh, but I really shouldn’t take that liberty with him.

So I am trying to change that.  If I have a real problem, a concern, or a challenge on which I’m actively looking for input, I’ll be as honest as I know how to be, and you (like my good friends) know that my fears color my stories.  But if I don’t, I’m going to choose the positive storyline over the wocka wockas.  Like anything, there are more than two sides to every story, and I have pretty great options.

Who wouldn’t want to be portrayed positively and in a flattering light by their significant others?  Isn’t that kind of the point?  Except somehow I find that embarrassing, like people will think I only see the good and don’t acknowledge the real.  I don’t want to be thought of as silly or unaware.  But more importantly, I don’t want to be thought of as an unsupportive spouse – by my husband. 

And more than that, I desperately want us be a team, yet my internal storyline is that I suck at relationships, we suck at communication, and we’re not a team.  Giving up something that matters doesn’t feel good, not one little bit of good, UNLESS IT’S FOR SOMETHING BETTER. (This is an a-ha moment for me.  Bear with me.)  Want to teach a dog to drop something yummy?  Give them something better when they do.  “Hey, whaddya have there?”  My dogs will bring over a rotting carcass because they know to expect a fresh one in exchange (sorry, if you were a dog you’d understand).  That’s why I’m struggling.  It’s my darned storyline!

Time for a new one. Ready?

My husband and I are a great team.  In under two years of dating, we did major renovations on one house while moving in together, getting engaged, planning a wedding (at home), getting a puppy and then another dog, adding two more cats, meeting our neighbors, navigating work issues, and landscaping close to two acres of land.  Together we’ve painted close to 4000 square feet of house, paid for thousands of dollars in improvements, laid tile, and built a relationship.  And we met at a bar, on a fluke, because we’re blessed that way.  Without him, I wouldn’t be settled. Without me, he wouldn’t be dreaming.  We’ve changed our spending habits, adapted to one another’s quirks, and managed it all while learning to navigate our very different backgrounds and experiences.

We’re a DAMNED good team.

I’m a work in progress.  It’s time for another construction sign.

My friends will laugh. I’m very predictable if you know me. Heck, I’m predictable if you don’t know me and have a passing idea of what a Cancerian might be like.

Regardless, I’m faced with the predictability of the topics I care about, because they’re NEWLYWED TOPICS. Argh. So yes, dear friends, I care about eating and living and puppies, which really means I care about cooking and decorating and puppies.

So, so predictable. Also predictable? I have a DSLR I don’t know how to use and want to take better photographs. This might not be so predictable for newlyweds, but definitely is for bloggers. Mos def.

{Please tell me that wasn’t predictable, because if it was, it has officially outlived its hilarity.}

And, again with the word-I’ve-overused-already, you can guess this is coming: I’m going to combine my desire to improve my photography with my excitement at eating food by periodically posting pictures.*

Bacon, asparagus, and tomatoes from the garden, because everything is better with the addition of bacon. Except my waistline. But definitely my state of mind.

*Because we should all know by now that I suck at following through with anything requiring consistency. Luckily my dogs and cats know this and are kind enough to remind me – quite insistently – that they need to eat again today.

My blogger friend Jenna started quite a debate with her post about her husband and her readers’ perception of him as domineering.  I’d been kicking around a few thoughts for a few days (okay, for close to a year) about the words we use to talk about our significant others and what that means about ourselves and our world views, but I hadn’t found the right way to blog about it.

I know that I wonder how my stories – as told in my own head – influence the success and failure of my relationships.  A friend of mine remarked that her man had many of the same quirks as mine.  You know, things like leaving facial hair on the sink and somehow neglecting to do the obvious things (hi, slice of onion, meet Ziploc bag, and go party in the refrigerator!).  She’d just described her relationship as good and easy; having many of the same experiences, I’d described mine as tough.

That topic – one’s worldview on marriage and relationships – always makes me think about parents.  Look, I’m not blaming my parents for anything.  After all, I think they did a fabulous job (thankyouverymuch).  However, I can’t deny that their example wormed its way into my consciousness.  Because of them, I hate to be late, always cut fabric on a flat surface, and don’t think the kitchen is clean until the sink’s been wiped down.  I value empathy and learning and not shooting an idea down until you have a better one.

But I also default to going it alone, don’t know how to fight productively, and struggle to believe in happily ever after.  Why would I?  In spite of the powers of my brilliant brain (please tell me you know I’m guffawing as I type that), I learned what I saw, and what I saw would have made me a really great single mom of three or divorced dad of two girls and a boy, but not so much on the solid lifelong marriage thing.

So I read Jenna’s post and I wonder if the fact that her parents are married has any impact on how she views her husband.  I read the line about her dad’s opinion of her husband and I think, “Yes, and I would have believed a very strong, very present father to whom I was close enough to ask that question of, too.”  Why not?  She’s undoubtedly seen the benefits of compromise and making changes for someone else.

I struggle to see the strength in giving in.  I can’t help it, though I try with the powers of my aforementioned brilliant brain.  My heart feels weak.  I see any little evidence of a potential problem and every fiber in my being screams, “Run. This won’t work. He’s asking you for too much.”

I often find myself lost somewhere past the intersection of Compromise and Principles, searching for Myself.  Then panic sets in, and I dissect every action and word that got us here, looking frantically for clues I might have missed.  Should I have seen this coming?  Could I have done anything differently?  Is this a fair request?

If he likes my hair long, and says so, do I have an obligation to keep it long?  No.  Should I?  Maybe.  If he considers gun collecting a hobby and I fight the idea of a weapon as a hobby with every fiber of my being?  Well, that’s a different story, one bringing our pasts to meet our future as parents.

Knowing your principles can be tough.  Really.  Finding a compromise that compromises not one?  I don’t know.  I’ve compromised on behaviors and actions that were once my safety net.  Is safety a principle?  Probably not, but it can feel like one.  Ask anyone with a stockpile of supplies to give it up and I’m betting they’d tell you about principles.

If my worldview and his don’t match, can we still be a match?  If worldviews and principles are one and the same, and compromise is seeking a solution that works for everyone, and the blue train leaves one station going north at 65 mph and the red train leaves the other going south at 45 mph, when will they collide?  And who will survive?  WHAT IF THEY’RE NOT EVEN ON THE SAME TRACK?

I wonder how you’d describe my husband.  I doubt you’d think he was domineering, but you might think I am.  I wonder how you’d describe me.  If you painted a picture of my life, which facts would overwhelm the others?  Would it be my state of residence, my budget-consciousness, my apparent dysfunctions as a partner?  Because in the end, the way you’d describe me and my hubby says a lot about the lens through which I write (er, screen?) and now I’m curious.  I want to tell you all the facts that I think you need to know but if I haven’t needed to blog about them, are they really that important?  The size of my salary, the details of my career, the fabulousness of my furniture… they might only be important in my own little head.

{Well, this post didn’t go at all the way I thought it would, evidently ending with a rather brazen request for you to come out and tell me how you see me and my hubby.  But let’s leave it that way.  If you take the bait, I won’t hold it against you.  Really.  And then I might finish writing the post about sticks and stones and the words we use to describe our loves.  You know, the one I started to write here before I hijacked my own post.}

{But before I move on, I was touched and intrigued by Jenna’s husband’s replies to the commenters.  Sometimes you just need a better explanation.  We weren’t allowed to watch The Simpsons as kids, because, as the children of teachers, the show glorified bad behavior.  Same with Saved By The Bell – the teachers were portrayed as bumbling idiots so we didn’t get to watch it much. Along the same lines, I don’t like to watch movies or be involved with video games that glorify violence or drugs, and my kids won’t get the chance.  I don’t think that’s domineering; I think it’s good parenting.  Making sure you’re on the same terms as your spouse?  Priceless… and a big reason I’m writing this post.}

{And, because it’s been a couple of days of heavy topics, I leave you with this: Indiana Jones Jr. Poopinsky doing his best impression of a mountain goat.  He’s a talented one, folks.}