… this is related to the question of whether we (anyone) should go to marriage therapy?  I read a recent NYTimes article on this subject which suggested that many people avoid marriage counseling not because they don’t want to save their marriage, but because they fear therapy will open up new cans of worms and actually more quickly END the marriage… whereas, I don’t know… the alternative?  not to speak of things and hope that ignoring it will make it go away? 

I do think I have tended NOT to overanalyze my marriage, generally speaking.  In fact, we have a “No Drama” contract (figuratively speaking – this isn’t like the actual written childcare “manifesto” I tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to sign – this is just a verbal No Drama agreement, haha). 

This may be the secret of our success.  Unlike with parenting, I have NOT read every marriage book or spent sleepless nights wondering if I’m being the “right” kind of wife, nor do I make lists of things I’d like my husband to do in order to ensure his future success and mold him into a well-rounded person.  heh.  Marriage has been both more organic and more conditional.  It involves equal participation, equal respect, input, and communication from my adult partner - whereas the kids are just helpless little experiments upon whom I can test my theories

I also recently read a review of a novel about a married couple – or at least that is one of the themes of the novel.  The story is said to reveal how long-term marriage is built upon a thousand little resentments until they become one big wall (or foundation, choose your metaphor) of resentment and hatred (I’m paraphrasing).  In other words, the longer you are together and, presumably, the older you get, the more you are likely to project all of your disappointments, failures, lost dreams, onto your spouse.  Who is, let’s admit it, kind of annoying.  

So I asked my husband if this is true in our case - if he resents me at all for all the things he hasn’t done or wanted to do or just, you know, resents me for any little things, too?   

I don’t recommend asking this question.  It ranks up there with “do these jeans make me look fat?”  It’s a trick question and either feelings will be hurt or someone will be forced to lie.  Haha.   

No big drama – we agreed that we do not harbor any resentments toward one another.  I very self-consciously resolved quite some time ago to take responsibility for my own life and my own happiness.  Sure, we make decisions together, and compromises are made.  But deep down, I take responsibility.  And I’m able to do that because, deep down, I know that David would drop everything, change everything, and do anything I wanted to do to pursue my dreams.  It wouldn’t be logistically easy, but he would either talk some sense into me (which I’d resent) or let me go or follow me.  And he has done the latter.  When he quit a good job in San Diego to follow me to grad school, his boss told him he has making a huge mistake and was “blinded by devotion” to me, not making rational decisions.  I’ve always apprediated that boss for pointing out how much my husband cared about me.  I hope I would do the same – I think I have, based on some of the crazy stuff he’s done with my consent and blessing.   

My husband did say, in the course of the resentment conversation, “I do wish you weren’t so tied down by childcare.”  

My feathers began to ruffle (talk about a sore spot).  So, I pretty much ended the conversation before I found out whether he meant by this that he *apologizes* for saddling me with childcare… or whether he *resented* me for burdening myself with so much attention on the children?  It wasn’t clear.  But, as there was no good answer (I will resent him either way, right?), I decided I don’t want/need to know right now and changed the subject.   

At my creative writing group last week, our leader spead out several random physical objects onto a blanket in the middle of the floor and asked us to select an item to write about.  Since the item and the story I chose relates to when I first met David, I thought I’d share it here.  I picked up and wrote about a HAMMER:

   He can fix anything.  I didn’t know that, the first night we met at the dance club, and had he mentioned he was good with tools I’m sure it would have seemed odd and I wouldn’t have given him my phone number. 

But he didn’t mention it and I did give him my number and, to my surprise, he did call the next day.

“What are you doing today?,” I asked.

“Remodeling my parents’ bathroom.”

“Wow,” I said, although I had no idea what that involved, but it sounded impressive.  My own parents rented our house – had always rented – and while my dad seemed handy enough – working on cars and building a picnic table for our dining room table and generally keeping his few tools neatly lined up on a worktable in the garage – we never had to “remodel” anything.  But even if I didn’t know the specifics about remodeling a bathroom, I knew enough to be impressed with a 21-year-old guy who spent his weekend working on his parents’ house and seemed to be enjoying it. 

“You should come over and see what I’ve done.”

“Uh- o.k.”  I’d never been been invited to a bathroom remodel before.  It wasn’t the usual date, that’s for sure, but the next weekend he drove over to pick me up and took me back to his house to survey the tilework and the new toilet and his mom’s wallpaper choice. 

We were standing in the unfinished shower when his mom came in and asked if we wanted lunch.  She called me “Pam.”  He corrected her – “It’s Tiffany.”  She apologized and laughed nervously and scurried back to the kitchen. 

“So, you’ve brought a lot of girls to see the bathroom?,” I teased.

“No, she never even met Pam.  She was a girl I talked about when I was doing construction in Fresno over the summer.” 

We moved on from the bathroom and he showed me the new fireplace he’d put in.  “Wow.”  And then the garage he’d converted into a bedroom for his younger brother, still in high school.  The room was strewn with dirty clothes and smelled like pot.  “No wonder your  parents want him to live in the garage.”

“You’re funny,” he said.

I was joking around, but I was truly impressed witih all the work he’d done, especially since he also had a regular paying job working in bike repair shop and went to college part-time. 

“What are you studying?,” I asked. 

“Communications. Video Production.”

“You should be a contractor, though.”  My practical working-class side was showing.  I had taken Accounting and Typing as electives in high school and was working a full-time office job, not even going to college yet.

“No – it’s just for fun.” 

I didn’t see the “fun” in drywall and tile and painting, but was there something in the back of my still-teenaged mind that told me he’d be handy to keep around?  Because he has been.  24 years later and he’s remodeling *our* bathroom and bedroom.  I complain about the electric drill on the floor that I stub my toe on at night.  The sawdust, the one wall without insulation that keeps the room cold, the missing toilet, and the dangling wires, an electrical accident waiting to happen.  The work has been dragging on for months and years because he has another regular day job, plus two kids to parent in the meantime. 

It’s not so “fun” anymore, but what did I think I was getting myself into when I found out what he was doing that first weekend we met??  

 I distinctly remember driving through a fast-food restaurant with my mother on my 18th birthday, in late September 1986.  I was explaining to her why I needed a boyfriend – a “serious” boyfriend.  All of my friends had (or had at least gone through) a “serious” boyfriend and it seemed like I was wasting my time when it came to finding a soul mate.  I remember this sense of urgency, but don’t remember why or how I came to view 18 as a last chance to find a soul mate.  What was my hurry, anyway?  I do know that high school boys had been a waste of time and I had had a disappointing summer with my first older (he was 21) boyfriend, so I was wondering where all of the mature young men were hiding out and I wanted to find one.  I figured he should be between the ages of 19-25, have a job or be a serious college student, have a car, and be the type of guy who would lavish attention on a girlfriend – call every day, buy gifts and cards, have money to spend, that sort of thing.  I remember vividly the urgency and exasperation with which I explained my plight to my mother.  She assured me that I would find someone.  Having married and had her first child by the age of 20 herself, perhaps it’s not such a mystery that I inherited this idea getting started on life, already, as soon as one graduated from high school.

I had graduated three months earlier, in June 1986.  I had begun working after-school at a countertop company as an accounting assistant, doing accounts payable/receivable/tallying payroll hours.  I found the job through my high school accounting teacher.  I graduated on a Friday, spent grad night at an all-nighter Disneyland party, and on Monday morning I reported for a full-time position at the company, 8am-4pm.  No rest for the wicked – I was on a vocational track and I was one of the lucky ones who had fallen into a full-time, well-paying position.  (I remember that I started at $7.50 an hour and quickly got a raise to $8.  Keep in mind this was twenty years ago and this is STILL more than minimum wage today, so it was good pay.  I do believe my stepfather, main provider for a family of 5, was making at that time about $12 an hour at a union lumber company job). 
I loved working and being responsible and earning money, and I loved the work… I thought I was about 30 years old, but I wasn’t.  I was 17 and I didn’t even have a driver’s license.  My mom or dad drove me to work and either they, or my best friend, Michele, picked me up everyday.  It was on the other side of town from where we lived, but pretty near my dad’s work. 

I had gone to my senior prom with a 20-year-old named Donny…  He spent the night before the prom in a jail cell in Tijuana, Mexico.  He made it home the next morning, but he had lost his license and the night of prom my mom had to drive me to pick him up and take us to Michele’s house where Michele’s date would be driving all of us to the dance.  
The next month, in June, Donny did not go to grad night with me because he had already left for a summer job in Northern California doing construction.  He called me pretty regularly and, over the course of the summer, made a couple of brief trips home to San Diego during which we would go out for dinner or to the movies or to make out somewhere.  We kept dating, but we weren’t exclusive.  God knows what he was up to miles away in Northern California with all of his party buddies.  And I dated several boys during that summer after high school – or, rather, I went out dancing at an under-21 night club (do they still have those?  because our suburban town had TWO and urban San Diego had even more in the mid-80s…) practically every night of the week and always ended up having a good time with someone.  I re-connected with a couple of boys from my high school – it was very freeing, being out of high school – I went out with some guys whom I had never spoken with in high school and we marveled at being relieved of the social pressures of school and being free to date whomever we wanted now. 

Michele was also very responsible and she was working full-time at Sears, in the jewelry department.  We spent weekends with a Sears crowd that included several older guys, and by older I mean into their mid-to-late 20s.  These guys had nice cars and took us to beach parties where a lot of drinking went on.  As irresponsible alcohol use figured greatly into most of the social situations in which I found myself between the ages of, say, 17 and 25, I have to point out that I *never* drank.  I don’t mean that I never got drunk, which I didn’t, but I NEVER drank.  I know my parents trusted me, but looking back… why did I trust any of the people I hung around with and who DROVE me all over San Diego county?  Oh, I am going to be a paranoid parent when my kids are teenagers…

My parents did hate Donny, my prom date, and it is not hard (and wasn’t hard then) to see why.  He was older and he drank.  A lot.  He was rough around the edges, partied hard, and, in general, must have seemed way too worldly for their virginal responsible daughter.  Donny had returned to San Diego sometime in September, before my birthday, and, lucky for my parents (and probably for me) he turned out to be a big flake.  By then, my parents had forbidden me from seeing him.  This meant that I went out with him a few more times, of course.  But when he started expecting me to pay for dinner (since I had the fancy job now and construction work was hit and miss, especially for a partier/drinker), I started to get fed up.  I had enough self-respect to know I didn’t need this and he really had not much to offer, other than a good time.  I made excuses not to go out with him, we stopped seeing each other several nights a week and instead would only see each other on the weekends, but when he made no effort to do anything special for me on my birthday, I stopped returning his calls.  It didn’t take long for him to stop calling and that was that. 

Which brings me back to my dilemma of celebrating my 18th birthday with no boyfriend to make it special.   Poor me. 
By this time, my friend Michele had been dating a friend of Donny’s named Craig.  We had met Craig and Donny at the same time and Craig and Donny had been together doing construction up north, in fact working for Craig’s father’s company.  Craig and Michele were on-again, off-again throughout the summer, and they picked up a regular dating schedule in September.  Craig was cute and attentive and funny and well-dressed and worked for his dad and drove a brand-new VW Cabriolet, and so I was jealous that Michele had that going on and I was alone.  I was the third-wheel, regularly going out with them togehter, and had become good friends with Craig, too.  I could complain to him about Donny and he agreed, even though Donny was his “friend,” that he was a major loser who I was better off staying away from.   

A few weeks after my birthday, sometime in mid-October ’86, Craig had an inspiration – he said he had a “friend” for me to go out with. 

“I don’t know, Craig, I was not too impressed with the last friend of yours.”

“No, no, this guy is great!  I swear.  I’ve known him since we were in 3rd grade.”

“Well, if he’s so great, how come you’re just now mentioning him?  And how come I’ve never seen him?”

“He doesn’t really party, so he never hangs out with me up here” (in suburbia where I lived and where the players came to hit on under-21 girls at the dance club!).  “Plus he was with us up north working all summer.” 

“He was with you and Donny all summer and he doesn’t party?!  I don’t think so.” 

“No, no, he’s totally mellow.” 

So I agreed, ok, we could go on a double date.  What would be the harm in going out to dinner and going dancing?

And that is how I met David, in mid-October 1986.   He was 21 and he was invited to an under-21 dance club to listen to music he didn’t like in the name of a chance to meet a cute, slightly boppy, but very mature and responsible 18-year-old who wore big baggy sweatshirts out dancing and never drank.  And he not only showed up, but he called the next morning.

Just spent a week’s vacation at my brother’s house.  Wow, nothing like spending a week in the home of another couple/family to think about how you run your own marriage.  I’ll just say this:  I’m really pleased with how our marriage and household runs.  I hope David is, too.  

The hardest thing about marriage right now – at this stage of our family life, with kids in the “middle years,” ages 8 and 12… is that it’s impossible to ever have a conversation.  No spelling of words, not even even winks and code words – the kids are listening and they are onto us.  And they stay up too late.  And they know where we keep the key to our locked bedroom.  So David & I are engaged as parents, but otherwise walk around in zombie-couple mode, not able to talk or tease about anything non-kid friendly – i.e. sex or gossiping about friends/family or gossiping about the kids.  Discussions about jobs, careers, creative projects are a good topic, but constantly interrupted.  What is LEFT, I ask you?!   This is why my son once asked, “How come all grown ups talk about are mortgages and insurance?”   Yes, how come?   

During our vacation we did, however, have two days & two nights of kid-free time in a hotel while my brother watched the kids!  It was very QUIET… in a good way.  He was sharing in my conference & in my enthusiasm for the place we were visiting – me showing him the sights.  And we did talk, freely.  But we also walked around very *quietly,* holding hands, taking photos, I think both of us just enjoying not having to answer questions or break up fights or escort someone into every public restroom in town and remind them to wash their hands. 

I finally asked, “Are we going to be one of those couples who has nothing left to talk about once the kids are grown?”        

He says, “I think we’ll manage.” 

(stay tuned for next post: the story of how we first met)