V-Day

In the spirit of Valentine's Day...


When we got married, we knew (and had people tell us) that it would be hard work. I knew it would take work...but I didn't really know what work, in that sense, entailed. Over the past three years, we've had to figure out what that work actually is and how we were going to navigate it. As a result, we've sort of developed some "game rules"...like, recently I think we had both had bad days at work and/or had other stuff going on, so of course we were taking it out on one another. After talking it out for a bit, we both realized how outside matters were effecting how we interacted...our solution? We came up with code phrases. Use of the code phrases is for only sincere use, and it's to let that person know that they may be acting irrational and to step back a little. For example, instead of yelling at Kyle and telling him he's being a(n) {insert whatever vulgar name you wish here}; I just calmly say Kyle, you're {insert code phrase}. Although, at the time I usually want to say the vulgar name...it doesn't seem to do much in the way of working out a conflict. 


By the way, he never wants to say anything remotely disrespectful towards me...because I absolutely never do anything that would cause that. Ha! [still waiting on that sarcasm font to be developed]


Anyway, I'm not a shrink by any means, nor do I have enough life experience to be giving marriage advice (the above is just one thing we've found that works for us), but I always think it's neat to see what other peoples' guidelines are. Here are a couple that I found interesting, and somewhat refreshing.

10 Things
I enjoy their refreshing view on marriage and dealing with real, practical issues.


100 Things to Make Your Marriage Rock
This one has more day-to-day things that you can do, but are equally important. The only ones I don't agree with are about letting him make the big decisions and her make the small ones. We pretty much make most of our big decisions together because we care what the other person's opinion is and that they may have knowledge about something the other one does not. And the small ones, well, they just get decided...there's no real set way or person that takes care of these.
I also don't agree with sitting on the same side of a booth at a restaurant. That's just weird.