Mind Reading and the Art of Matrimony

When I think about how long I've been married to Ben, it defies logic. Don't get scared, I just woke up in the middle of the night last week and thought to myself, "Why is Ben still married to me?" and in my mostly asleep state I couldn't think of any reasons and that really freaked me out. In the light of day I am a little more sensible, however, it still got me thinking. I mean when I really take a minute to really think about the 5.5 years we've been married, and then I add on the 3.5 years we dated and the 5 months we were friends I'm awestruck for several reasons.

1) I still really really like him. I'm not talking about love although I do love Ben. Love is great for those really bad times or emergencies or major crisis. But from day to day the most handy emotion is "like". I like to talk to him, I like to be around him...I mean...a LOT. If I don't get at least a couple of moments of concentrated Ben time my day is not complete.

2) He still seems to like me, this is weird for a completely different reason. It's more of a "how has this poor guy put up with me for this long and he still doesn't seem to mind." I mean really! Something about being married makes me feel it's ok to let it all hang out, I am often rude and childish, sarcastic, impatient, unladylike, inconsiderate etc etc etc. I mean I feel bad for the guy, somehow I tricked him into thinking I was worthwhile and now he's stuck. I really need to pay more attention to what he seems to like about me and work on those things more. He likes it when I laugh really hard but how does one go about doing more of that without looking completely insane?

3) We are polar opposites, which works because as we all know "opposites attract" but why? and why does it work? And sometimes it seriously doesn't work! For example, he likes to talk about computer and other sciencey things and sometimes I just sit there and pretend to listen because but for the most part I never have any idea what he's talking about and he kinda sounds like the teacher on the peanuts cartoons. Or like sometimes (ok, most of the time) he slips in to "Big Brother" personality and makes himself responsible for teaching me morality and basically bossing me around. And me, being the baby sister, can be incredibly needy and pathetic when I should be more of a partner in marriage.

4) Men and women are almost two different to make things work well. We think completely different, whether this is biological or environmental depends on who you talk to but it's there either way. Like cleaning house, I can walk into a room that he's been sitting in for 4 hours and say "How can you live in this filth?" and he says "What? I just cleaned up!"
Or the fact that he asks me where things are when he was obviously the last one to have it. And then I have to remind him to look with his hands and not just his eyes or else he'll just look around a room and never pick anything up and look underneath. I, being a woman, think to myself, "How can you possibly say you have looked for something when you never even touched anything". And he being a man is thinking...well...I really have no idea what he's thinking, maybe he's thinking he's a jedi and if he just concentrates hard enough whatever it is he wants will just find it's way magically to his hand. (I'm just keeding!)
At the same time, I don't feel any need to close the blinds ever and to Ben this is a huge deal. He also sees no reason why I need to buy new shoes every season. He is enjoying a plethora of facial hair while I'm doing everything in my power to get rid of it (both his and mine). Then there's power tools, politics, car repair, video games, lawn care, not to mention rationally dealing with emotions and so many other things where our thoughts and ideas are totally incongruous. How do I live with this person day in and day out!

However, I do understand that we couldn't be exactly the same. I certainly don't love myself enough to marry someone just like me. I'd probably have to punch him in the face if he baby talked like me or any of several other bad habits I have. I'm not even sure I would be friends with me.

I suppose, in the end, I just have to be really glad that of the millions of people in the world, I happened to find one that I can get along with and even when we don't get along, we find a way to get through it.

I have a theory, I think we're like sponges. And one sponge started growing on another sponge until the first sponge doesn't even remember what it was like before the other sponge came along. And the sponges, for the most part, enjoy each others company and they understand each other without having to do a lot of extra explaining and they read each others feelings pretty well, and sometimes they help each other out and can lean on each other, so even though it's not always convenient or comfortable or even nice to have another sponge around, they know that the good outweighs the bad and that it would be a major negative without a lot of positive to go along with it. So basically, we're like sponges with a lot of complex human emotions, but still...sponges...