Wedding Blog

I spent the evening sorting through old family photos in preparation for a wedding project I have conveniently delegated to another family member, and ran across some photos from my last relationship.

Mr. CC and I don’t really discuss my relationship with Mini’s dad. But I think he can sense the tension and change in my attitude when he does something that reminds me of that miserable experience. So tonight, I got to thinking about what made that relationship fail, and what makes our relationship work.

Mr. CC and I are a team. We try to share housework. Even though I still handle most of the domestic chores, like laundry and cooking and mopping, Mr. CC manages our finances and takes care of the yard. We work together on raising Mini. We make all the household decisions together, even if it means I narrow fabric choices down to three or four and he makes the final decision.

It’s taken us a long time to get to this point. We struggled to learn to work together and not against each other. And when I say we, I really mean me. My household was run a lot differently with my ex. He worked, and I stayed home and cooked, cleaned, and raised his son, and then our daughter. I was very used to managing the entire house by my self. I didn’t ask for help well. After I left my ex and graduated from Nursing school, Mini and I moved into our own little tiny apartment. I did everything. I was very in charge and kinda got used to “my way”. I developed some OCD tendencies, like how the forks have to be put away just so, and the towels folded just so. I am fully aware that these demands are highly unreasonable, but if it’s not done that way, I have to go back and re-organize. I’m a virgo, and that perfectionist nature has a pretty firm grip on me.

On the other hand, Mr. CC was a bachelor for 12 years before moving in with me. 12 years of man habits is a lot to undo. He never put his clothes away. Towels were scarce, and so not usually folded, but slung back over the curtain rod in the bathroom. Dishes were disposable. Dinners consisted of microwaved corn beef hash or cheese infused hot dogs. Vacuuming was a bi-annual chore and toilets never got cleaned; he just moved to a new apartment.

As an OCD nurse and a bit of a germaphobe, this was completely unacceptable to me. We’re still working on the frequency of how often things need to be done, and there’s still some man habits that need to be broken. I’m working on letting somethings go, and trying to assist him in being neater and not nagging him about it.

Mr. CC and I both have a very strong work ethic. He just started a new job after 7+ years at his last job. And while I’m on my third job since graduation, I am extremely loyal to my company and don’t intend to leave, at least not anytime soon. There isn’t a whole lot of concern about finances, although we are still trying to get some debt under control (which is hard to do when every spare penny lands in the wedding fund). My ex was under the impression that the grass was always greener on the other side and changed jobs about 4 times a year. This made making ends meet very difficult. I’ve spent most of my adult life worried about how the bills were going to get paid, and it’s nice to finally have some relief from that. Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t rich and we don’t live by a strict budget, but our bills get paid and we have some savings. We also own our home. We’re still not recession proof, but we are optimistic.

We support each other, almost to a fault. We don’t necessarily agree on everything, but we make a point to hash out our differences in private rather than embarrass one another by arguing in public. It doesn’t always work, but we’re not perfect either. Yes, we raise our voices and sometimes our fights get down right out of control. We are both as stubborn as the day is long and it shows. We just try to keep it to ourselves.

I think the most important thing that keeps us together is that we maintain our own lives. While I am usually perfectly willing to accompany him to a reenactment, I don’t have to go if I don’t want to. He doesn’t get my knitting/sewing obsession, but he supports it anyway. He does stuff with the boys, and I do stuff with the girls. Then we do stuff together. He has his friends, I have mine. Some of them overlap. I do have a jealous streak that comes out sometimes, especially when I find out he had lunch with a bunch of his girl friends, but I try not to let on. He’s a sociallite, and I’m a home body. He has to drag me out of the house sometimes, and our independence of each other makes that okay. I can stay at the house while he goes out and no one is mad.

We’re not perfect and there’s still kinks that need to be worked out. We’re still perfecting the chore routine (but I think it’s going to be a life-long project). We both realize that building a life together is work. Love is a verb and marriage probably should be one too.

What qualities do you and your FH have that make “it” work?