Remember, You’re Annoying Too
Marriage isn’t all sunshine, flowers, and happily ever after, you know? It’s hard work, a lot of compromise, and a fair amount of teeth-gritting, especially when your partner repeats the same maddening habits for, oh, say…35 years, two weeks, and three days, but who’s counting?
For instance, Bill has a habit of flipping on every single light in a room and then leaving without turning one off. And stacking dirty dishes into a Leaning Tower of Pisa masterpiece instead of emptying the dishwasher (which he pretends he doesn’t know is full of clean dishes). And running the gas tank down to fumes, forcing me to coast into the gas station. And waltzing into the family room, grabbing the remote mid-Dateline episode, and changing the channel without so much as a “mind if I…?”
When those things happen, my brain immediately jumps to: WTH is wrong with him? Why does he DO that?! Is he testing me to see how long it takes to piss me off? NOT LONG DUDE! Is he freaking serious?! Step right up, pay your fee, and see the most clueless man in the world!
And then I go a little batty, wasting way too much mental energy stewing about it.
But one day, while cleaning out the garage, I came across a box of our wedding cards. Mixed in with the sweet notes from relatives long gone, I found an unopened card with $20 tucked inside (a vintage bill by now). Inside the unsigned card was a handwritten note: “Remember, you’re annoying, too.”
My first reaction? Who the hell gave us this? (Spoiler: I have a prime suspect in mind, but we’ll never know for sure.) More amazing was the fact that it got missed when we opened our cards on June 21, 1992.
Honestly, it was the best marriage advice we’ve ever gotten. It’s just too bad we didn’t get it sooner because every time Bill does something that makes my head want to spin around and pop right off, I remember: I have my own “quirks” that drive him equally nuts.
I snore (apparently). I sleep diagonally in the bed. I tell him stories about my day that are more boring than exposed brick. (Well, this afternoon I cleaned pollen off the patio furniture and bought an acorn squash.) I am, without question, the World’s Worst breakfast maker, and I complain when I’m hungry, tired, in need of caffeine, just woke up, just finished exercising, or within 15 minutes of the bedtime window.
And yet—at the end of the day, here we are - two annoying, imperfect humans who somehow fit together just right.
The lights will stay on, the toast will burn, and I’ll keep sprawling diagonally across the mattress. But marriage isn’t about fixing each other’s flaws. It’s about choosing each other, day after day, despite them—and maybe even because of them.