I'm sure that to anyone who has been married for more than a few weeks already knows this fact all too well, but marriage can be a real doozy. The revelations are different for all of us, but here's the crux of the matter - when you get married, you renounce your individual personhood to some degree and solemnly swear to try your hardest to henceforth spend the greater part of your life thinking of yourself as one part of a two-part unit. Basically, stop being selfish, stupid, and think about someone besides yourself, because it's good for you and it's the only way you'll come out of marriage alive.
Take yours truly, for example. I'm one of the most selfish people I know. Not necessarily because I'm a terrible person, but because I'm a socially-awkward introvert with ADHD (also occasionally because I really just don't want to get off the couch and clean up our mess). I've always been very shy and slow to actually, well, talk to other people, so I hang out with me, myself, and I most of the time. When it's just you, your brain, and the seven separate super-stacks of the Spanish Empire knocking at the door of your science city, you tend to forget that there's another human being sitting a few feet away who's in need of much more love than you can actually muster up for the Financial-Creative characteristics of Willem van Oranje.
So here's why I'm a generally crappy wife, helpfully illustrated by an equally crappy photograph. Stupid Instagram insta-darken.
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| Please remember that I only post flattering photos on my blog |
1. I'm a crappy wife because I am eating food that I have not prepared. Grace is not a domestic goddess. Grace is merely the library search goddess. In fact, Grace doesn't like anything domestic, including preparing food. Now trust me, I'll run you down armed only with my patented nearsighted glare if you try to tell me that as a wife, I positively should be a domestic goddess. I don't believe that. However, I do believe that I should be pulling my own weight around here, and by cracky, if that means I should be doing things like poisoning Dan with undercooked barbecued chicken, then I should do that, like it or not. Dan does the cooking because he likes to cook, and as I mentioned before, he thinks I need much stronger meds before he lets me cook. But cooking and cleaning and laundry and whatever are chores, too, and they should be shared.
2. I'm a crappy wife because I am obviously not ready for the picture. Dan and I like to eat food. Dan likes to take pictures of me eating food. Invariably, I look like I'm eating poop because I'm never ready for the picture. Basically, I am perennially focused on things other than my husband and his ever-ready camera. I'd like to blame this all on my lack of photogenicity or the taste of awesome food, but I really can't. Thankfully, ADHD really can take the brunt of the blame for this one. My thoughts are normally focused on the shiniest object within a ten-foot radius. Food is pretty shiny, as are books and things flashing across computer and TV screens. Dan has very dry skin, so he tends to not be very shiny at all. So I ignore Dan and focus on the shiny. Bad, bad Grace. I've been trying to work on coming out of my brain and giving time and attention to the one I love, not just the item that stimulates my brain the most at the moment. It's difficult, which is why marriage is hard.
3. I'm a crappy wife because I'm having lots of fun eating food. This picture was taken during our time in Poland. We had a blast in Poland. We ate food, obviously, but we also visited historical sites and old churches, shelled out mega-zlotys for Polish public bathrooms, and sweltered in the heat. And here's probably the number one reason why marriage is hard for the two of us. Dan and I are best friends. We insult each other, hit each other, totally blow up at each other, eat food together, travel the world together, watch TV together, solve social problems together, and nerd out together. We've been having fun together since October of 2004 when we went to see George Bush talk in Allentown, arrived too late, and went to the Allentown Farmer's Market instead and ate everything in sight. We're best friends first and foremost, and it can be difficult sometimes to be more than friends, to be romantic. It's particularly hard for me, since my social skills are made of fail and I have no idea what I should be doing. On one hand, we work so well together because we are the best of friends, but on the other hand, it's often easier to fall into a monotony of life because we're so very much at ease with each other. Bad Grace. Bad Dan. No.
Marriage is hard. Having never been married before, marriage does not come naturally for us. But learning how to work together and put each other first is something that you can learn, and I'm sure that we'll do well on this journey, since we are best friends, after all.
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| Grace ignoring Dan for something shiny, circa 2007 |
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