Monday, December 7, 2009

How the New York Times has Almost Ruined my Day

I have a long list of silly little things to do, and when the list is long I get housewife paralysis and can't seem to do anything at all. I've already been shopping, and I've been back to the dentist to have him look at my filling and tell me that the pain will indeed go away, and now I'm home, strangled by what to do next. I've made phone calls, refreshed the facebook, pet the dog, and now here I sit.

I read a great NYT article this morning (here it is, its long, but its worth it) and, before I read it, Rob had been telling me about it, and I was going to write about how there are ten things I could think of to improve Rob's experience of our marriage, but I can't think of a single thing he could do to improve my experience of our marriage. Of course there are things that, were I painting the perfect man, I would change, like making him George Clooney, but I can't think of a single thing that he actually has control over that I'd want him to change. I told him I would work on it today and get back to him. I don't actually want to ask him to change anything, because then, to be fair, I would have to commit to changing something and God knows I don't want to do that. Let me just get through the holidays, and I'll consider making a bigger effort in the new year. No, my challenge is to think of one thing today that I would want him to do differently if we were at the bargaining table... and I got nothin'. Last night, he was bitching about me not hanging up the jackets or whatever, and he said, in his smart-alecky way, You know, if you only made a little effort... and I said, I do; I make a very little effort. Ha Ha, I'm so funny.

So I read the whole article, while not doing the five nagging things on my to-do list, and it was very engaging reading, but instead of being inspired to write about what I thought the article would make me want to write about, I got caught up in the serious, all-too-relatable parts, and now I'm worrying on my marriage. Not worried about my marriage, just fixating on those few little areas that, if I pay too much attention to them inside my head, I will lose a whole day to them and wind up in a funk, and later, when Rob gets home, he'll be all What's with you? and I'll be all, Six years ago, you did this thing that really hurt my feelings, and we now have to rehash the whole thing all night long. And he'll be all, Someone, please kill me. I will invite drama into my life, all because I spent too much alone time ruminating on the one or two issues, that will never - NEVER - be resolved in this relationship. And they're not even deal-breakers!

Every relationship has those couple of things that are never going to be solved to anyone's satisfaction. If you think you don't have those couple of things, you do, you just haven't poked them with a stick in a while. At this point, Rob and I only fight about one thing, and its the same fight every time, and it ends the same way every time. Its about who is the better parallel parker. I say its me, and he thinks its him, and he is wrong and will always be, forever and ever, amen.

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