February 2017

Year 2, Week 35: Life is short; Prioritize

Here’s a relatively unorganized list of our priorities.

Spend quality time with each other. Even though our schedules don’t really align at all, we make time for each other in the beginnings and ends of every single day.
HUGS. Morning hugs, afternoon hugs, before-bed hugs; it doesn’t matter.
Make time for play time. The daily grind is not sustainable, and it ultimately makes us unhappy, so we have to make time to just have some fun. This means weekends should be generally free of self-inflicted, scheduled, sadness.
Live intentionally; don’t live “other people’s lives” just because it’s popular.
Set time aside frequently for friends and family. Bring people together, especially people who don’t know each other already. We try to make community building our “thing.”
Keep a healthy balance of spontaneous and planned living.
Travel! Where to, how long, how we’ll do it, and why.
Make a ridiculous deal out of when the other comes home (i.e. “shaking our tails”). It’s almost stupid how simple, and yet how effective, it is.
Lots of giggling. Tell awful puns.
Read together in bed.
Don’t be afraid to have hard conversations, especially when we’re not sure how we’ll come to an agreement.
Don’t take each other for granted; life is just too short.
Eat clean, exercise, and live a relatively healthy lifestyle.
Don’t binge-watch shows; we delay-gratify the crap out of Netflix.
Make time away from each other! Absence makes the heart grow fonder and sweetens the reunion that much more; recently, it’s been Montana for me and camping trips for Cody (although I did crash the last one.. sorry I’m not sorry).
“Bed Time is the Best Time!”
Show our love through action (e.g. Cody picks up my messes, and I plug in his phone whenever he forgets).
Take concrete actions towards the achievements of our dreams.
Ask the other hard questions. Wait lovingly for the answer.
Pray at the dinner table. Pray again in bed, if it’s been a tough day.

Year 2, Week 34: ‘Rough Draft’ Talk

I keep forgetting it’s not just me anymore.
But then it is me – my likes, dislikes, and character.
But it’s not just about me anymore.
But how do we talk about stuff when his likes, dislikes, and character, sometimes seems to clash with mine?

This long weekend was tiring. We didn’t do anything crazy. We read a lot, laughed a lot, and walked around beautiful 60-degree sunshiney Chicago a lot, but we also talked a lot.

Or, at least, he talked a lot. And I thought a lot about how I’d respond.
This is a frustrating reflection to write because there isn’t an answer at the end. I just think you should know what the real difficulty is here.

Cody loves “rough draft” talk. “Rough draft” talk is the idea that, without any real aim (or with just a tentative end in mind), the speaker can feel free to just speak. It’s through speaking that she can create, or stumble upon, more ideas than if she had remained silent. I claim to love it, and I encourage my students to do it all the time (“Don’t be afraid! Talk it out! This is how we learn!”), but when it comes to actually practicing it, I freeze like an opossum who never saw the other guy coming.

Example:

Cody and I decided to go out on Friday night (Yay!) to enjoy the spring-weather in mid-February. We were waiting in traffic when a group of teenage girls passed by us and Cody commented, “Jeez. Herd mentality. Our kid will never…”

And that’s all I had to here for every single one of my porcupine needles to spring out of my usually-soft exterior. I’m pretty sure one even flew out of the open window, judging by the echoing shriek from the girls running around outside. I tried to coax them back in, lovingly reminding them that Cody isn’t the enemy and I should just listen and learn from his perspective.

So I asked him what he meant. And I didn’t like what he had to say.
Because I was already on the defensive.

I’m not here to air out our dirty laundry. I’m not even hear to complain that we had a spat – that’s normal stuff. I’m here to describe what happens when I close up, or “needle-out.”

When I feel offended, I stop talking. It’s a hearkening back to “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” There is no rough-draft talk. This makes Cody feel like (hold on, let me ask him).. “I generally assume that I have done something wrong and I can’t fix it because I don’t know what it is. Or, I feel like you’re holding back thoughts that could help us improve our relationship because you’re afraid of causing issues today. I, however, would rather work through any issues today so we can have a happier, more successful tomorrow.” Yes, he really said that. What an English teacher’s dream, amiright?

So I clamp up. In my mind, yes, I am holding something back because I feel like I’m not thinking the way I should be thinking. I look up to Cody so much that sometimes I feel like I’d rather just go along with his way of thinking because he’s older than I am, which means he has spent more time reading than I have and has, at the end of the day, lived more life than I have. I have spent most of my life looking up to my three older brothers, so I have tons of practice putting my thoughts aside to just listen to someone else’s opinions.

But Cody’s not interested in that submission crap. And that means I have to “rough draft” talk when I least want to. I want to speak eloquently always, making perfect sense in every sentence. I don’t want him to snap onto a few words that I may not have even meant, which could cause an even greater misunderstanding. It’s not that I don’t want to work on our relationship, it’s just that uncomfortable conversations really suck, especially when your significant other really wants to know what you think.

So I guess this is just a reflection showing what I know I still have to work on. Cody and I can flirt, joke around, and have surface conversations with the best of them. But what makes our marriage truly ours is how much hard labor we’re willing to pour into the foundation.

And if you want a sturdy foundation, you have to be willing to get dirt under your fingernails, some porcupine needles in your butt, and a lot of rough draft talk to get a perfect blueprint.

Proof from our Friday night that sums up our discomfort. But at least we were full on Mexican and chocolate. ..Maybe that was the problem.

Year 2, Week 33: “Go Save Your Marriage”

I give Cody permission to write this week’s reflection. In the spirit of our latest Netflix binge, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”, look away, look away, because Cody is going to be honest with my shortcomings. I promise it ends on a sweet note, because, even though we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, this week’s reflection is proof that we’re romantic even on days that aren’t endorsed by Hallmark. Here’s Cody.

At the beginning of 2017, we decided to make one of our goals for the year to have a pre-planned monthly “traditional” date night—a movie, dinner, ice skating, that sort of thing.

One of our biggest issues as a couple is that Ania likes to go out a lot more frequently than I do, whether it’s dinner out or fancy cocktails with friends. I, on the other hand, prefer having people over to our house where we can skip the long lines, cook dinner together, make our own fancy cocktails for 1/10 the price, talk without being drowned out by other people or obnoxiously loud music, and play an occasional board game. (I’m not biased at all. 😉 ) Add in the fact that we’ve set some very ambitious financial goals together, and dining out falls to the bottom of my priority list.

While this difference in priorities alone can be a source of contention, we learned a valuable “couple insight” for ourselves in 2016. We would go out with friends on Wednesday and Ania would be complaining on Friday that we never go out anywhere. But when we have a night out planned and on the calendar in advance, the act of looking forward to the evening makes her appreciate the experience more.

This brings us back to our goal of a monthly “traditional” date. With all of this in mind, we made sure to prioritize a pre-planned date night in our 2017 goals. (More on our “couple goals” process later.)

While we’ll still go out with friends spontaneously when the occasion arises, having a set night out for ourselves alleviates some of this anxiety and reinforces the experience. Similarly, we’re trying pre-planned group “dates” each month with a core group of friends as well. But that’s another subject.

So we scheduled a recurring night on the calendar for the 2nd Thursday of every month. This makes sure we don’t miss a month and gives us something to look forward to each month.

Unfortunately, there was a bit of a snag with this month’s plans. On the Wednesday before our date night, my office had to be evacuated. Long story short, we had some equipment fail. We ordered replacements to be shipped overnight. They arrived Thursday afternoon and my boss asked everyone to stay late to help install the new stuff.

I didn’t know how long it would take, so I stayed a little late to help get started. But as I realized we weren’t wrapping up, I had to excuse myself to my boss:

“I don’t want to be a quitter, but Ania and I have plans.
It’s date night.”

I’m fortunate to have a boss who understands. But behind this understanding is a plethora of conversations my boss and I have had together about priorities, starting before I was even hired. (Working in finance often means 12-14 hour days and I wanted to be clear from the start that a work-life balance is important to me.)

So when I asked to bail a little early, he just smiled and said,

“Go save your marriage.”

I know Ania is happier today because we chose to honor our date night this week. And that makes me a happy boy.

Year 2, Week 32: “WOW!”

Cody and I were at my parents’ house sometime before we got marriage, eating the breakfast my mom made for us, and she was still adding more items to the smorgasbord. As she stirred veggies in a pan for omelettes and folded deli meats and cheeses, my dad was getting dressed in their adjacent bedroom and telling her a story in between grunts and pauses (the man’s pants seem to shrink of their own accord, he claims). I couldn’t help but notice that my mom was not only kind of listening to Dad, but also preparing breakfast and also unsuccessfully eavesdropping on my own quiet Sunday-morning conversations with Cody over the funny pages. When Dad’s story seemed to come to a conclusion, like the movement of a song finding its resting beat, my mom gave an over-zealous “Woow..”

Cody and I started laughing immediately. We still don’t know if it was the effort she was trying to put in, signaling to Dad that she actually was listening and trying to engage with his story, or the fact that the response was so ingenuous it was laughable. Whatever it was, Mom knew she was caught and let herself be caught in giggles. We didn’t know it at the time, but these “Woow” conversations are quite normal in marriage. For my dad, they’ve been happening for 40 years. For me and Cody, we’re trying to figure out which topics we can get away with responding “Whoaa” to, and which ones we need to be serious for (as-it should go without saying- a serious topic needs a serious listening ear).

Rather than bore you with which conversation topics those “Whoaa” responses are common for us as a couple (I suppose if you really want to know, you can just ask – I honestly don’t know if you’d be interested or not), I thought this Big Bang Theory clip was spot-on. Enjoy!

Year 2, Week 31: Uncomfortable Conversations

There are so many quotes online about love and relationships, and they usually sound nice and uplifting, but I keep scrolling and move on with my day. I finally stumbled upon one, though, that I thought was right-on and thought it was important to share:

I am willing to claim that uncomfortable conversations are at the heart of every growing relationship. When each person is in the same place in life, conversations are easy; in truth, they’re probably so easy because they’re not quite deeper than discussing one’s likes, dislikes, and past formative events. It gets more challenging when factors beyond one’s control begin entering the equation – a new job, or an opportunity that is located in another city, or a new personality that’s entered the mix that threatens to destroy the dynamic you had grown accustomed to. Regardless of the circumstance, a relationship will always feel like there’s resistance – like there is something “in the way” of it becoming just perfect, or whole, or magical.

It is never whole, perfect, or magical.

It is only your perspective that can make it appear so. Therein lies the magic.

The secret? Remain committed to your person despite the hardest conversation. And, if you don’t have a “your person” yet, stay on the look-out for the type of person you wouldn’t mind having difficult conversations with. The only way to know if that person will be “yours” is if you can have a disagreement, talk it out, and feel like you love him/her more than before.

If it seems simple, that’s because it is. It’s really only the commitment that needs to be tried. Like a wise student told me the other day: “The quality of a relationship depends only on the effort put in.”

Potential difficult conversation topics no one told you to expect during marriage (these could be from experience, or not):
– Who actually pays for the wedding
– What if your vision of your wedding day looks totally different from your future husband’s?
– So we have a joint budget now? No? Yes? Does that mean I can still spend my money how I want? No?
– Wait, so we’re not having a dinner date night every weekend? But I heard it’s important!
– Do we celebrate Valentine’s Day?
– How would you like your birthday celebrated? No, really.
– Why are you actually a slob?
– Family. All the topics and sub-topics and even more you never saw coming.
– When do you want a baby?**
– Do you believe in God?
– Do you believe in unconditional love?
– How much time do we actually want to spend together after work? Do you need more wind-down alone time than I do?
– Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
– What’s your dream? Do our dreams match? Again, the scary part here is that dreams, just like non-negotiables, can change.
– How many times a week do we want home-cooked meals? Who’s going to cook them?
– Wait, what kind of school do you want our kids to go to?
– I’ll add more over time, I’m sure.

**It’s important to note here that before you accept (or propose) a marriage commitment, there are some fundamentals that definitely need to be discussed (not agreed upon, necessarily, but definitely come to a mutual understanding and respect for one another’s views), like whether or not you want kids, how important family really is to you, religious values, etc.

My point is – every couple will have different unforeseen challenges ahead. The goal is to find the person who will want to hear your ideas, feel safe enough to contribute his own, and ultimately see you at the end of the equation, regardless of the method you take to get there.