My Husband Likes Straight Lines, While I Prefer Curves
Here’s how we make this marriage thing work.
I like to believe that no one gets married thinking they will end up in divorce court, but divorce, unfortunately, happens. I‘ve been through it twice. The first time I was 20. The second time I was 37.
My first marriage taught me what not to do. My second marriage taught me what not to be.
After the failure of both, I developed an exhilarating sense of independence. For the first time in my adult life, at the age of 37, I could live by my own rules. I answered to no one. I did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it. I enjoyed an adult freedom that was very new and truly exciting. I looked at marriage with a been there, done that attitude.
Until I met him.
Neither marriage nor divorce could have prepared me for sharing my life with the man I now lovingly and respectfully call, my husband.
Where Discipline Meets Lackadaisical
Often the highlight of my day happens when I’m staring at my shoes. I always take them off right before I walk into the bedroom. Not out of discipline per se, but because I was taught to never let shoes touch the carpet because hiring a carpet cleaner can be expensive.
It never fails. While my shoes sit right outside the bedroom door, and as my husband walks towards the bedroom, I always place a silent bet with myself. He’s going to pick up my shoes and put them in the closet.
I never lose those bets.
My husband and I couldn’t be more different. He believes everything has a place and he seldom, if ever, loses anything. I put things wherever I feel like it at the moment. Needless to say I’m often the one looking for everything, car keys, credit cards, earrings, you name it.
In his own way he tries to help me without making me feel bad.
I never realized just how much learning I actually do, and just how much loving and forgiving he actually does, until we had to redo our home landscaping.
Plans. Oh yeah, those things.
We’d talked for weeks about needing to redo the front yard. We’d made four appointments with four different landscape artists and we were waiting for their quotes. We’d even hired a few tree experts to come out and look at our Italian Cypress evergreens, the ones we’d dreamed of having planted in the backyard. He’d envisioned a line of Italian Cypresses against the back fence, with spotlights and white gravel rocks in the flower bed. But things weren’t going smoothly. They were dying. He was worrying. And I found as many tree experts as I could find.
After much trial and error, replacing a few lost trees, replanting the others, and taking the advice of each expert, we were well on our way to having the backyard of our dreams. All we needed now were the quotes from the landscapers. Which was taking too long. So I took matters into my own hands.
While the hubby was at work, I went to the nursery, bought what I wanted, came home, and started digging. By the time he arrived home, I was finished with my little landscape project, the one we started together. I finished it. By myself. And I was proud. Of myself.
“Camisha, I thought we had a plan.” He looked at my amateur landscaping job.
“Yeah but I got excited and wanted to do something while we waited for the quotes.”
“Why didn’t you wait for me?”
“I wanted to surprise you.”
He looked at the yard, noticing the garden shovel lying on the grass, the piles of dirt scattered about the yard, the misplaced bricks that were too heavy for me to put back where I’d gotten them from, because now I was tired, and the weeds I’d pulled up, but had yet to pick up. I watched his face slowly shift from what looked like disbelief to what was undeniably disappointment.
My husband likes straight lines. I like curves. From the nursery, I bought everything that I liked and I just knew that he’d like everything too. The truth of the matter is, I didn’t necessarily think he’d like any of it. I just wanted him to.
Sometimes Quiet Can Be Very Loud
That night, we sat together for a very quiet dinner. Somewhere between running out of salad dressing and needing another serving of oxtails, I asked him if he liked what I’d done. He paused. Put his fork down, took a moment, and softly said to me,
“I like everything you do, but what happened to us doing this together? What happened to our plan?”
We Don’t Like to Admit it, But We Wives Mess Up Too
I didn’t have an answer for him. The truth of the matter was sitting there at the table with us, but it was an ugly truth for a wife to acknowledge. I’d cut him out. I’d cut him out of the experience of doing something together. I took away the chance to work through our differences of opinion, to compromise and get something we’d both like. I eliminated the option of straight lines and put my foot down on our yard. And I wanted him to like it because, honestly, that’s what would have worked for me.
The following morning he gave me enough money to get whatever I wanted from the nursery. He kissed me on my cheek, then went to work. Suddenly, the thought of going to the nursery by myself wasn’t as exciting as it had been the day before. I wanted to go back to yesterday and do things a little differently. I wanted to wait for the landscaping quotes and sit down with him so that we could compromise, figure out something that worked for us both. I wanted to do what I should have done from the very beginning, tag my partner and tackle this project together.
I didn’t go to the nursery that day. When he returned home he saw the money he’d given me on the countertop with a note that simply read,
“I’m sorry.”
I’m Learning Every Day
If I had to describe our marriage as simply as possible, I would say that my husband likes straight lines, rectangles, and squares. He likes to see uniformity, a definitive point, a clear path. I, on the other hand, well I like curves, circles, and anything without a point. I like to figure out the path as I go.
Still, we navigate this landscape of our new lives called marriage, not with ease, but with a whole lot of love, even more learning, and a bunch of patience and forgiveness.
My husband teaches me many lessons, usually by simply allowing me the space to figure it out for myself. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t hold grudges. He gives me what he thinks, says what he feels, and loves me through my moments of team-me. When we initially started dating, he once said to me,
“When I get married, I have to stop loving me so that I can love her. Because if I’m loving me, and she’s loving me, who’s loving her?”
He’s held true to those words every day and every day he quietly teaches me how to be a team player.
My grandmother once said,
“The first flapjack never turns out right, but by the third one, you should have it all figured out.”
I’m still working on the “all figured out” part. But I thank the goddesses that this time, at least I’ve found the right ingredients.
