Next month will be my tenth wedding anniversary and I’ve been thinking a lot about what the last decade has bought us… both the ups and the downs. Between car accidents, back pain, infertility, IVF, resultant depression from both, the stress of losing a parent to an insidious disease like MND, losing jobs, and being separated from some of the people we love it unfortuantely feels as though there’s not a lot of joy in the rear view mirror. Well other than the Small Child of course 🙂
My married life has not turned out the way I had expected. I do not have the family or the home life I guess I had been raised to anticipate. We’ve got the mortgage and the dog but there’s been no 2.5 kids for me and the white picket fence is in serious need of repair because I spent our building fund (several times over) on IVF medical bills and I’ve not exactly been a big contributor around here with my less than stellar ability to work. So no this marriage of ours doesn’t even remotely resemble the pictures in the brochure….
Mr K and I seem to have spent the last ten years discovering how very different we are from each other on so many issues. Some of them frivolous like food, sports, tv shows, politics and hobbies… and some of them important like IVF, child rearing, intimacy and dealing with family issues. At this point I think we couldn’t be more different if we tried. Sometimes it seems so much easier to see our differences than it is to find any commonality between us….
He likes football – why grown men get wrapped up in it I don’t know.
He enjoys playing golf – I fail to see the appeal entirely.
He likes rice cakes – I can’t stand the way they squeak on your teeth.
He’s a cat person – and I think they’re skeezy diseased little creatures.
He enjoys skit comedy shows – I occasionally deign to be in the same room.
He likes crazy arse sprinkles – I can’t understand his sprinkles for the life of me.
I like opera – he’d rather stick himself in the eye with a fork.
I enjoy guacamole – if I offer it to him one more he might just throw it in my face.
I love reading classic literature – he hasn’t an appetite for it at all.
I want to do work on the weekends – he’d rather a coffee and a newspaper.
I like hotted up cars – he wouldn’t know (or care) how to do an oil change.
I love foreign films – he dislikes having to read subtitles.
And yet for all those differences I feel truly fortunate to have met you Mr K… fortunate that you didn’t fight me when I hunted you down, fortunate that you wanted to make a life with me and very fortuante that you have held in there for the long haul no matter how painful, draining or unorthodox that long haul has turned out to be. I know I am truly lucky that you accept me as I am – warts and all… and I know I’ve got some pretty hard to deal with warts. I’m demanding, challenging, single-minded, confrontational, argumentative, burdensome, pained and sometimes downright useless.
But my love for you is built on a deep and abiding respect for you as a person, as a husband and as a father and nothing could ever alter that…
.