Those of you who know Amanda and I best know that we were both occupationally considered "negotiators" at one time. However, the brand of negotiations that Amanda and I were required to do involved compromising, but not usually to the extent that the party on the other end generally thought we would or could. As a result, we are both great at negotiating (see: arguments) and neither of us are very good at compromise (see: ending arguments). To further the problem, I'm really great at being painfully sarcastic when I reach the point where I no longer desire to compromise, so... you can guess how well that works out.
We both also choose really awesome times to argue, making both of us retrospectively look back and realize that we were both ridiculous. For instance, last night, I reached my wall and decided to go to bed without doing the dishes or cleaning up after myself in the kitchen. This is regular to me, and normally, I'd get up in the morning and clean them off, no harm no foul. Amanda is incapable of this. In her mind, if those dishes aren't done, we might get ants, and then we'll have to hire an exterminator, and she'll stay up all night thinking about it. Now, I'm not telling you that to make you think that Amanda is unreasonable, she isn't. She is very particular about the way things should be, whereas I am not. I don't know what contributes to those differences- if it was our respective upbringings or what, but Amanda ended up doing all the dishes. Which wasn't fair. Though I do my best to understand that she cannot leave the dishes in the sink, this action pisses me off, because it makes me feel as though she's cleaning up after me, which hurts the masculine, egotistical cock-wielding, self sufficient part of me. I'm speaking for myself when I say this: but I think that most every boy wants to grow up and have the ability to be self sufficient enough to "be their own man" so to say, and so, when Amanda washes my dishes that I left, thinking that I'd do them in the morning, it turns me in to Godzilla. Regardless of the fact that I was tired, and I could've just done them and avoided any ill feelings, I decided that 2230 hours was an excellent time to fight about this and act like a child. In short, though we said we love you to each other before we go to bed (...everyone gives you this advice at the shower, or at the reception or on your marriage day, prepare yourself: you have to say I love you and you can't go to bed angry at each other)... we still went to bed, neither of us having compromised our position. This morning, after having gotten a sufficient amount of rest, we both apologized, telling the other that we didn't know why it was such a big deal last night.
The point I'm trying to impart is: no one tells you that the first year is a constant process of negotiation. There is no one thing that does not affect the other person in some manner. And during the first year, you think that everything the other person does will affect you in some way, when in reality, it might not.
At the end of the day, though, Amanda and I can still find humor in this: no one tells you that the first year you will compromise more than you ever have before. And no one tells you how uncomfortable some of those compromises might make you. And no one tells you just how great those compromises might make the future. And no one tells you how uncertain you will feel when making those compromises. And no one tells you how often these relatively small things which you'll have to make compromises for can make you feel like you might get served divorce papers the next day. But most importantly, no one tells you that the driving force behind all these compromises is love and if you married that person, you must have loved them enough to make these compromises, and if you find yourself believing that any compromise is too much (unless of course it would cause you harm), then you must question if that love was really worthy of marriage. Through it all, I still love Amanda. I think the standard wedding vows must hold a special significance in the first year more than any other. Perhaps after the first year, we should go back and here them again, checklist in hand and review which of those situations we'd found ourselves in in that first year.
