Manic Monday in Marriage

Today has been an interesting day in the marriage of Sassy and Himself.

And the day's barely half over.

It started innocuously enough. We both had a day off. I slept in. He went out for a massage. I woke up. Eventually he came home.

Maybe that's where we went wrong: me waking up and him coming home.

Because when that happened, the shit hit the fan.

What we argued about is certainly not relevant here, and possibly not relevant within the context of the our marriage. To be terribly reductive, we'll just say that it came down to chore division. For now, we'll assume that there are not underlying issues. What is relevant is how we handled the quickly-escalating situation.

It had the potential to be not pretty. In fact, it was fairly unpretty. It seems unkind and petty to say "he started it," and not even that is particularly relevant. What IS relevant is this: I think we both did something right in how we handled the situation. I didn't rise to the bait, and ultimately, he didn't pursue it.

What did happen was this: he went off to the spare bedroom, and I began to clean. The entire time I was cleaning, I was thinking angry, frustrated thoughts. I was hurt, I was boiling mad, and at least in my head, I was on a warpath.

And then he came out of the guest room. I threw him one dark, deeply foul look before continuing on with my current task of vaccuuming. After a moment, he said, "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings."

You know when in a disagreement, someone offers an olive branch, at least ostensibly? And sometimes you take the olive branch, and you begin to communicate and hopefully make up and forgive each other, but it degenerates into a continuation of the anger and miscommunication of before?

That could have happened.

But it didn't.

I looked up at him with tears brimming in my eyes, and I said, "I can't talk about this right now. Because I want what is best for us and our marriage, and talking right now won't be helpful."

He went away again. I continued cleaning. He took a nap, I filed some things...do you see where this is going? I took the time to cool off; I deliberately avoided a situation of saying angry things; he respected that, he took the time to cool off.

After about ninety minutes, I went into the guest room and laid down on the bed with him. I threw my arms around him. He woke up. We cuddled. We looked into each others' eyes, and we soothed each others' hurt feelings. We still haven't discussed the issues; we will when the time is right.

The main thing is this: in marriage, in ANY romantic and committed relationship...bite your tongue. Give your anger time to cool off. With time comes perspective, and with perspective comes the awareness that really, what does it matter, in the great scheme of things? It doesn't matter who's right and who's wrong, at least not at this point. It matters how you can fix things together, and avoid them getting broken in the first place.

Sassy and Himself earned major marriage points today, I think.

Breaking News

...I have the world's best husband.















After a long and draining Monday, what better thing to come home to than a husband who has made you a margarita as big as your head?

On the minus side, this might complicate tonight's crafty endeavor. Oh dear.

American Wife

Today I had my first dress fitting.

This whole wedding thing is not unexpected--I've been engaged for five months now, and that's plenty of time to adapt to the whole concept of "til death do you part." I'm fine with that part--commitment to a person has never been a difficult thing to achieve. So the concept of marriage is nothing intimidating. And yet...

Holy shit, Batman, I'm supposed to be a wife?

It's just that I always associated wifedom with grown-up things, like responsibility and paying medical bills on time and cooking and, I don't know, things that I generally suck at. I'm not even particularly adept at making my own bed in the morning, and the whole corner-tucking thing? Not a hope in hell. Forget being a competent wife, most days I'm not even sure I'm a particularly competent human.

And after all, what is the meaning of "wife"? (There's a book by that title that I keep meaning to read). I associate things like cooking, and mending, and making sure the toilet paper is stocked, and silly things like that with wifedom. And yes, I am fully aware that said concept is subscribing to traditional gender roles. So, in theory, once we throw all of those roles out the window, what is the new "meaning of wife"? What are the duties of the modern wife? What are reasonable expectations? Sex every night? A minimum of nagging? Lots of laughter? What do I do to make an adequate, equal, modern helpmeet? Particularly when there are no children in the picture (other than delinquent and mainly absent stepchildren) and indeed, no plans, desires, hopes, or thoughts to having them?

And why the hell aren't the men trying to figure out what the meaning of husband is?

These were the random thoughts going through my head today as I moved about the department store, looking for the necessary knickers to wear underneath my wedding gown. As I debated the merits of thong vs. full coverage underwear, a phrase kept floating around in the back of my head: "A year in the life of an American wife." From time to time, I would substitute "American" with "clueless" or "incompetent." But mainly I began to think that maybe this here blog's a good place to follow my first year of marriage, my ups and downs and what I figure out and how our partnership (and hopefully my domestic talents) flourish.

Perhaps fittingly, perhaps forebodingly, I nearly passed out at David's Bridal during the dress fitting. Apparently standing very still while dressed in a gown with four layers of cloth and a built-in corset can really be a brutal experience. Yes, an incompetent wife, indeed.