You Marry Whom You Marry

Yesterday at church, being that it was the first day of the new year, we had one of our very few topical sermons, which was on planning and goal setting. That's the kind of thing that really gets me going. My parents had me listen to Tony Robbins when I was a teenager, and I guess it's still in my blood. I wanted to run out from the sermon and set huge goals and climb huge mountains. But my husband is a very different person from me. He would prefer to have plugged his ears during the message. It got me to thinking of how you deal with such different approaches to life in marriage and reminded me of one of my mantras in marriage that has been ever so helpful: You marry who you marry. Or rather, "whom" you marry, since this is a grammatically correct blog.

So often in marriage when we come up against someone who is different than us, we can do one of three things: 1) try to change that person, 2) have steam come out of our ears in frustration, 3) realize that we chose to marry the person we chose to marry.

We marry our spouses at the exclusion of every single other person on the planet. No one forced us to marry that particular specimen of the species, and I think we have to take responsibility for what we ended up with. When I married Mike, I knew what I was getting. I knew I wasn't getting a football player or a banker or a Tony Robbins. I knew I was getting a funny, intelligent, laid back dude. And I love those things about my husband. So whenever my husband and I are at odds on a particular subject, I remember the strength that is the complement to whatever personality trait we're dealing with and remember why it is that I love my husband so darn much. And here are just a few examples for you:

I am Tony Robbins, he is island boy. As I said, I love having goals and planning my life. I'm a big planner. I would love to have, as the speaker at church yesterday did, a three-ring binder detailing three goals for each aspect of my life with action points and deadlines attached. But such an idea makes my husband's face turn green. He explained it well to me yesterday: "You know how you feel when you have too many plans on the weekend?" (I hate having lots of social commitments on the weekends, and if I do, I feel a horrible clenching of my esophagus.) "That's how I felt about that sermon today."

Eww! I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and it reminded me of who my husband is and why I love him: He is one of the most laid back, chilled out, stress-free dudes you could meet. Recently someone on our small group asked him, "Does anything ever bother you?" Being that I am easily stressed out, he is my perfect match. If I was married to a Type A dynamo, the two of us would probably run ourselves into early graves. But as it is, I can spur Mike into action when he needs a little kick in the pants, and he can help me just calm down for a gosh-darn minute and enjoy life. I knew this about Mike when I married him, so rather than wishing he was a go-getter slick business Alpha Male, I remember that I chose him because he was a thoughtful and thoroughly relaxing and enjoyable person to be with.

I am impulsive, he is methodical. Have you ever taken the Strengthsfinder test? On that test, I am an "Activator." I want a lot less talk and a lot more action. If I have an idea, I'm going to jump on it like a rabid puppy with a chew toy. Mike, on the other hand, is one of the slowest and most methodical decision makers on the planet. I cannot go grocery shopping with that man. He weighs the pros and cons of each different box of cereal in the football-field sized aisle of cereals, holding two boxes in his hands and looking back and forth from one to the other for 10 minutes.

I am more like Theo Huxtable on the Cosby Show who, when he asked his father if he could take trombone lessons, his father reminded him of all the many, many hobbies he had started and did not finish. Just this summer, I excitedly started taking piano lessons and then stopped out of disinterest after two months. My husband, however, started talking about learning to play the drums about one year ago. He talked about it once or twice and then never brought it up again. Yesterday, he started looking on Craigslist for cheap drumsets. "You're still thinking of playing the drums?" I asked, having assumed he had forgotten the idea and moved on, like I would have seconds after my first show of interest. "Yes, I've been thinking about it for the past year," he answered. If it were up to me, Mike and I probably would have moved to seven different countries by now, held seven different jobs and started learning to play seven different musical instruments. While Mike needs me to get him to take action sometimes, I need him to help me to drop the chew toy in my mouth that I am rabidly slobbering all over. I knew when I married Mike that he wasn't going to be the man to drop everything and move to Uganda with me. Good thing, because I really don't like African food, truth be told.

We are, neither of us, millionaires. One of the first things that drew me to Mike was that he was a philosophy major. I like the thoughtful tortured type. And so I always knew that if I married such a type, I'd have more the Raskolnikov existence than that of an aristocrat's wife. Despite our liberal arts degrees, God has blessed us so much, but we won't be rollin' in it any time soon. But I chose my husband because I loved talking to him, not because I expected trips to Fiji (though I wouldn't mind that). So the next time, I start getting that island feeling, I'll remember instead how much I love my smart, bookish man.