Newsflash - I Actually Like My Husband

I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage lately, as I always do this time of year because I get to meet with couples to discuss their financial history of the past year. Each couple interacts differently and I can never tell, just by watching them, how long they’ve been married or if they’re happy together—which basically proves that choosing accounting over counseling was a smart career move on my part. The only thing I do know is that some couples really make it work.


So far, my husband and I are one of those couples and the fact that we work doesn’t make much sense, at least on the surface. Firstly, besides the children, we don’t have much in common. I’m a thinker, my husband’s a doer. I like music and he can’t name a single singer or group that debuted after 1985. I try to have a well thought out wardrobe and my husband considers any article of clothing that doesn’t have holes as his “good clothes.” My husband is fun and playful and great at parties. My mouth is naturally turned down at the corners so, unless I remember to walk around with a smile plastered on my face, I always look a little peeved. If marriage was a simple checklist, we’d fail.

But, we don’t fail at all. As a matter of a fact, we work rather well. Where one of us is lacking, the other picks up the slack, and we don’t have to discuss whether it’s fair—we just do it. As a family, we like to go boating but I can’t back up a trailer to save my life. Thankfully, my husband can parallel park a trailer. He can’t drive the boat without taking out docks like they were bowling pins, but I can drive and dock a boat so it all works out in the end. We handle parenting in much the same way. I hate playing with the kids. I played with Barbies when I was young and that was plenty for me but my husband loves to tickle and tease and they love being tickled and teased. He hates doing the homework, and I don’t mind it too much.

He’s also adapted to my strange ideas of courtship. I love dates, but I don’t love eating out or watching movies unless I’m excited about a particular movie—which only happens a handful of times each year. So we’ve been known to wander furniture stores where we can’t afford a welcome mat, check out thrift stores, take bike rides or even exercise together and call it a date.

I love to bring up all this strangeness like it proves something remarkable about our marriage, but it doesn’t. The truth is that we’re fond of each other and we appreciate each other. That’s our big secret. The rest of it is just compromise and we’re only willing to compromise because we still like each other enough to give something up for the other person. I realize that I’m not a fancy psychologist with a bunch of degrees but I think the secret to a good marriage is actually liking the person you’re married to. If you like them, then all the little things work themselves out. What do you think?