Weddingbee Blog

In my occasional board lurking, I’ve noticed some discussion of how soon is too soon to get engaged. Personally, I don’t see relationships as measured by units of time so much as the types of experiences you go through together. There is one thing that I think gets glossed over in the discussion of relationship quality, and this is it: you can hide your crazy for a really, really long time in a relationship.

I mean…that is a lot of what happens in dating at first, at least for me. I tried to reign in my idiosyncrasies in an attempt seem normal for as long as possible. Back then, Mr. PD never saw me in a cranky mood or in anything but a cute and date-appropriate outfit. It’s not that I wasn’t being myself; I was just getting to know him. Soon enough, I got a terrible cold, and he was introduced to my “big whiny baby” approach to health care. After that, my quirks trickled out steadily, and now all of my weirdness has unfurled in full glory.

He did the same thing. And although he is freakishly sweet and thoughtful, Mr. PD was a brand new person to me the first time we were stuck in traffic when he was really hungry.YIKES.

So, here are the top 10 crappy experiences—in no particular order of crapitude—that I think change and mature a relationship. Or, at the very least, bring out true colors.

1. Get really, really lost in an area you don’t know. Preferably away from intelligible signs and possibly safety.

2. Wait in a really, really long line (recommendations: amusement park, Christmas Eve shopping, Harry Potter midnight showing).

3. Get stuck in inexplicable, stand-still traffic. Bonus points if you are hungry or one of you really has to pee.

4. Have a restaurant experience worthy of a scathing Yelp review. (How people react to poor service says a lot about them, I think.)

5. Deal with being sick together. Not sniffles sick. I’m talking flu and incoherent-fever sick, post-surgical-delirium sick, stomach-pyrotechnics sick.

6. Meet each other’s extended families, the ones that won’t be on their “good behavior” like your nuclear family might be.

7. Get embarrassed in front of each other. I don’t embarrass easily, but I have had a few bright-red-face moments with Mr. PD.

8. Experience tragedy—real, gut-wrenching tragedy. Not that I would wish this upon anyone, but the truth is that it happens to all of us.

9. Spend a fair amount of time apart. Not like a long-distance relationship, necessarily, but a good week or two at a time. Chances are good that this will happen for one reason or another in your lives together, and it’s good to see how you fare on your own.

10. Experience any situation which compromises your sleep and/or cleanliness. My personal best includes a camping trip (sleeping on the earth…not really for me) in which I barely slept in a rain-soaked tent and awoke still reeking of campfire and mildew. I was a real treat on the ferry ride back, but he stuck with me.

It’s not that I think you need to complete all ten to be “ready” or something. There will be many more for us, and that’s OK. These minor annoyances and major heartbreaks…they’re kind of a blessing. They knit you together as a couple, give you the opportunity to step up and be there for each other. Half of ours are inside jokes or funny stories, and they’re some of the best squares in our patchwork.

Anything to add to my little list? Have you done any of them?