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