You don’t know when you say those words how it’s going to turn out. If the decision of your youthful optimism and based in love will stand the test of time. Whether you both can handle life’s curve balls and both age gracefully meshed together.
I’m happy to report, for Ron and I, that those words we repeated to each other glued us together. We’ve melded and aged like a rich scotch, with undertones of individual flavours. It’s like a house restoration project — a work in progress all the time. Things ebb and flow within the relationship and that certainly gets easier as your time together increases. First married there is so much to figure out about how the other person “works” — what makes them tick and how. When to talk and when to listen. As the years pile on those aspects get easier and now you just deal with the issues that come up. Or at least that is how it has been for us.
We both had role model parents who worked well together although certainly in a more “traditional” role than what our marriage is. I have worked for our entire marriage (a mixture of full time and part time) and take care of 85% of the financial aspects of our day to day living. On the other hand he makes supper most nights, weekend breakfasts and takes care of wrapping all presents (something I suck at!) and decorating cakes. The house work isn’t quite equal opportunity work but he certainly does it. On the other hand he “burned” his hand twice ironing his clothes early on in our marriage so it became my job — I often get really behind but he doesn’t usually say much about it!
Along the way we have raised two children and occasionally our styles didn’t mesh totally here but as they are now functioning adults living on their own it would appear that we did the job. I had a rural background and Ron had a city background so he was better at setting appropriate limits on what they should or shouldn’t do. We had pretty different childhoods but meshed our views to give our children the best of both worlds. They got to travel but also were regular visitors at the farm.
We’ve both have a very strong work ethic and that has certainly helped over the years. His background didn’t include volunteerism but mine did. During our years together we have certainly given back to the community and set great role models for our children with that.
We are very supportive of each other to have time apart. Ron has his guy weekends of golf and skiing while I do girl retreats of a weekend (which starts Wednesday evening) at the lake or a craft retreat. We mesh that with traveling and skiing plus some camping.
All in all we have carved out a fabulous life together and feel blessed.
Bernie
Equipoise Life 