Cooperative: Better said as "Marriage is Testing My Ability to be a Hippy"

Hello, world.  Wife here, with her first attempt at cooperative blogging.  Originally, I was going to write a follow up to the money post that Zack just wrote, but I figured that there isn't really very much left to say about that.  What I want to talk about is how it's really difficult to give up the deeply-ingrained isolationism I (regrettably) hold so dear.  

It's Memorial Day, so we split the day between both sets of parents.  While we were hanging out with my parents, we were talking about this blog and about why we were writing it.  We were telling them how we wanted to give a realistic account of what the first year of marriage is like.  How "happily ever after" sort of begins with a 365 day closed session in the situation room.  That might not be fair.  We're 45 days into the first year of our marriage and we've been teetering between DEFCON 3 and 4 on most issues.  I defy any of you to tell me that this is abnormal as learning to exist as a team rather than a one-woman-show can be exceptionally difficult, especially after 30 some odd years of one's decisions only affecting one person.  

My mom put it best as she was telling me about her first year with my father.  It was something along the lines of, "no matter what you're doing, you always feel like you're giving too much leeway on every issue, but the weird thing is that both of you feel this way, even though both of you are compromising."  Man, is that ever true.  From socks to bank statements to who gets which bathroom drawer.  Everything seems to involve negotiations and dialogue.  Living single is so much simpler.

It's easy to say, "This is MY bathroom," or, "This is MY kitchen."  It's really easy to say, "This is how I balance the budget," or, "These choices affect ME."  The truth of the matter is that when entering into a partnership (and I'm not just referring to heterosexual marriage, I am referring to ALL chosen partnerships), there are degrees of compromise that will seem ridiculous to a person to even have to make.  I've been thinking about why it all seems so epic and I've come up with one idea.

Everybody secretly (or not secretly) believes that their own way is the best and only way.

As someone who absolutely does not want to identify as an isolationist - as someone who, in fact, might VERY much want to live by a personal policy of inclusion and cooperation - having to recognize myself as a closet isolationist is embarrassing at best.  

But the first step, they say, is admitting that there is a problem.  

So I'm learning to live with the occasional unwashed dish.  The occasional drips of water on the bathroom counter in the morning.  The differences in how we view major issues as well as minor ones. Has anyone seen the show Modern Family?  I am, without a doubt, the Claire Dunphy of this relationship.

In his speech at our post wedding lunch, my father gave us a few pieces of advice and one of them sticks out to me at this particular moment:  "Don't keep score.  It all evens out in the end."

Sigh.  

The best remedy for any disagreement is dialogue and compromise.  

Only 45 days in and I already know he's right.  

-Amanda

Money Woahs (or woes...)

So as I mentioned before, right before Amanda and I got married, I took a new job.  That job involves leading a team of fifteen people.  In taking this job, I ended up taking an actual "take home" pay cut due to a lack of commission.  This was something that Amanda and I discussed prior to taking the job. and decided it was worthwhile.  I wasn't really prepared for the financial shock that ensued. 

I suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and I fall within the subtype of "Combined hyperactive-impulsive and inattentive".  I spent a very long time denying this fact.  It wasn't until Amanda and I started dating that it really became apparent.  I remember sitting in an office and being read a list of "symptoms", and it was though I was being read back a list of what I had come to identify as personality flaws.  Or, ways that I identify with most house cats. 

So anyways, one of the places that my impulsiveness is most prevalent is in the financial realm.   So, on Thursday, I got paid and I realized there was a big inequality between what needed to be paid and what I had.  I am not particularly apt with money.  In fact, ask Amanda, the Saturday morning after pay day, Amanda and I usually get breakfast somewhere, but first I spend six hours on my laptop trying to figure out how to make my money work.  By the time we get breakfast, she is usually suffering from hypoglycemia.  Over the past several days, I probably spent 14 hours trying to figure out what to do when life hands you one lemon, but you need eighty five.  My mind suggested things like "Why don't you go to the Horseshoe, you might do well there.".  I am well aware of my propensity for downright stupid ideas, but this one was like... the stupidest.  I didn't do it luckily.  But the route I chose to take was not any better.  Having heard about finances and marriage and the divorce rate statistics that are associated,  I thought it best not to tell Amanda about this. 

Amanda's views and my own on finances are very different; and I respect that.  But she's very serious about money, and I'm always concerned that anything involving money will undoubtedly blow up in my face.  That probably stems from having a financially conservative mother growing up who was relatively responsible with money, and myself being someone who was not. 

So, anyways, Amanda spent six hours trying to figure out how to make eighty five lemons out of one.  Anyways, here we are six hour... okay, that's a lie.  She figured it out in two. three tops.  There was yelling. A surrendering of my garage space.  A review of the five w's from Introduction to Investigative journalism.  And now we're here, sitting beside each other.  It wasn't a pretty situation, she took her cat and ... okay that's a lie too... The details don't really matter.  But, we worked it out and made a plan.  And the future looks a little brighter; That is if I stay away from the Apple Store.  

The First Year

Search the first year of marriage on Google and you'll find no shortage of advice.  It seems the first year of marriage is the hardest.  If that much is true,  I am pretty lucky so far.  But here's what I've observed, or (think that I've) figured out:

The first year is alienating.  I find myself alone, with the exception of my wife, Amanda.  People somehow get the impression that upon entering marriage you need unlimited amounts of space so that you can appropriately court your spouse, so they stop calling.  Perhaps they're busy with their own lives.  I find myself equally apathetic about contacting them, so I can appreciate their lack of effort.

The first year is exciting.  There are so many new experiences that I look forward to, and so many experiences that I get to share.  After getting married to Amanda, I found myself having two sisters, siblings.  I think we've always felt that way about each other anyways,  but to make it official was exciting as hell.  I'm also excited for Amanda to share my family.  I am excited to start my own family with Amanda.