There’s a meme going round at the moment:
Yep - I can relate. As proven by the fact that as normal, I am writing this one evening whilst my husband is asleep in bed. He’ll also have left for work in the morning before I have even got out of bed. I know for a fact I’m not the only one of my friends with this sort of set-up
Last night I had a rare evening out to talk to a friend, and as we normally meet up en famille as a big group, it was an opportunity to talk about our spouses and children without them in earshot.
“We are chalk and cheese!” she told me. “LITERALLY chalk and cheese!”
Funny.
And then we both went home to creep to bed and read quietly next to husbands who were already asleep.
Why do we do this to ourselves, forge relationships with people whose body clocks are misaligned with ours?!
There’s a couple at church getting married, and there's another couple, whom I’d really not call “old, married” but who are certainly well-established and very wise, who are going to meet with them for marriage prep.
“Ooooh – do you have a book?” I asked.
You see, during our own (fairly brief) engagement, as well as meeting for marriage prep sessions with our pastor and his wife, we worked through a book with all sorts of questions to ask each other, like “Where is your ideal holiday destination?” and “Do you want pets?” and “What do you think is the best family size?”, which I thought was just the best thing ever, and whenever we had a spare minute (which was rare – during our engagement it was my NQT year and we were doing up a house, as well as obviously planning a wedding) I was like, “Yes! Let’s do THE BOOK!” (He didn’t quite match my level of enthusiasm for some reason.)
The best page of all had all these continuum lines on, like spend it/save it, plan it/wing it, arrive early/cut it fine, and the ideas was that we put ourselves on the continuum line and then compare, and it was pretty hilarious, because on a few things we were at opposite ends.
He enjoys being spontaneous. I remember thinking this was the most exciting thing ever, this free, what-shall-we-do-today? approach, especially as I grew up in a home where things needed to be in the diary well in advance. A few years in and now I chase him round with a calendar, “PLEEEEASE can I just pin you down on some dates so we can organise our LIVES?!”
To be fair, the book warned us. It said, that whilst opposites attract, those different approaches can later drive us crazy. I suppose forewarned is forearmed?
More on being opposites: https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-balancing-needs
It’s not just marriages, though, right? Any situation where you are up close with other people has the potential to highlight the differences. Sharing a kitchen in university halls was a revelation. People actually had different ways to use toasters, and open and close orange juice cartons (in the pre-pull-tab/-screw top days) – who knew? During my PGCE year I had a best friend who found it strange that I didn’t talk to her whilst we watched TV, and I was in a shared house with international students, some of whom took some convincing that toilet paper could go down the loo, instead preferring to put it in an overflowing bin.
Why are we surprised when people are so different from us? Some friends who are generously hosting Ukrainians were telling me how strange their guests’ washing-up methods are, and how that must be a cultural difference to overcome. Without wanting to minimise the additional adjustments of cross-cultural relationships, I was like, “Yeah – when you live with people they’re just weird, whatever their background is.”
I shouldn’t yet be brave enough to offer to help couples with marriage prep. (See https://sarahhadfi.wixsite.com/website/post/on-changing-labels ) But my one pearl of wisdom to anyone getting into any kind of close relationship, house-share, whatever, is that you have to expect that the other person will be different from yourself, which can be both lovely and annoying. I don’t think it matters if it’s your new spouse who you’re madly in love with, or your mum who doesn’t understand why you don’t rotate your plates for more even plate wear, or a house-mate who is living in a different timezone to you the other side of a thin wall – people are just weird.
And that of course includes me. If I think my way of doing things is normal or superior, and anyone who deviates from that is wrong, well, then, I am probably just arrogant and inexperienced.
We are individuals - owls and larks, planners and wingers. Maybe it would be pretty boring if we were all the same?
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