“All right, you,” I said to John. “I need help thinking of a topic for my Marriage Madness blog this week.”
“You can always write about sex,” he said with a grin.
I tilted my head at him in the way that married women the world over have learned to do. “I don't know that I can talk about sex on a PG-13 blog. More than that, I don't think anyone reading my blog wants to read about sex. At least, not the way you're thinking!”
He looked over at the kitchen that he had just cleaned, and that he was about to dirty again. “You could talk about how I do all the work around here.” At my look, he amended, “I mean, that we both do the work. Tit for tat.”
I grinned. “I said I wasn't going to talk about sex. No tits.”
He reached for me. “I could make you change your mind.”
I giggled and pulled away.
“I meant,” he said, “you could talk about compromise, how I do all the cooking and you do all the bill-paying.”
“That's because if we switched, neither of us would like the results.” I laughed.
“Well, that's true,” he agreed. He waggled his eyebrows and gave me that we'd-be-poisoned-if-you-cooked-and-we-both-know-it look that he's perfected over the last twenty years.
“Ha, ha, very funny. I was looking for something funny to write about.”
But the more I thought about it, the more I thought John had a point in there somewhere. Somewhere along the line – and I still say marriage is easier when you get married so young that you don't know anything else – you learn what you're good at, where to split up the household duties, and which duties to share.
After a while, we both learned how to do laundry without ruining anything. We both figured out how to scrub dishes well enough to not leave leftover broccoli on the side. (Though I would submit that I do it much less often.)
But John is an excellent cook, always has been. I've been a numbers girl from time immemorial. When it comes right down to it, we're both happier doing what we are good at and avoiding what we suck at. It's one of the ways we've found to make a pretty happy marriage.
🙂
