..and not much else. explore:
the question was/is 'what is there about being married that suprises you?'
the answer was/is
I do more dishes than I ever have in my life. when you cook real food (instead of bachelor food, which consists of cereal, ramen noodles, sandwiches, and macaroni & cheese), you suddenly have to use more real dishes. not just one bowl one spoon one cup per week rinse-after-each-use. those days are gone. the days of collandars and garlic presses and goblets and food processors and 12-piece dining sets are here. we have seating enough for four and place settings enough for a major holiday family get-together, and somehow this is all supposed to make sense.
also gone are the days of thinking in terms of 'I.' there is no 'I' anymore, except when I need to answer the question of who will do the dishes. (hint: the answer is always 'I will, sweetie.') everything is 'we.' this is certainly the hardest part for me, because very often the focus of my life, intended or not, is 'I.'
there's all the adjusting in the world to be done when living with another person for the first time. for example, I can't simply plan to sleep in on a random weekend morning. like, say, tomorrow. I enjoy the weekends for the sleep I can afford to have. she enjoys the weekends for the time we can spend doing things. it follows that this is a big problem for us. (see also 'in defense of the night life.') we're simply polar sleep-schedule opposites. among other sorts of opposites.
I am absolutely phlegmatic. she is absolutely not. I am an istj (things should be done well, and order is king). she is an intp. (things should be done with efficiency, and efficiency is king. she would copy edit that last sentence because the word 'efficiency' is in there too many times—it's not efficient.) I am eeyore. she is [fictional character who is completely unlike eeyore in every way and who would likely berate eeyore for taking too long to get over his depression]. you get the picture.
[aside: I am, of course, very curious to know what all you imaginary internet people are as far as meyers-briggs can tell. I would, of course, expect you to respond with your results. I do, of course, demand that you do.]
things get tense occasionally. for example. she likes to plan, plan, plan. currently neither of us has a real job. I'm looking and she temps as a secretary at a local university. she hates it; she's overqualified and the work is absolutely menial. (file this, collate that, staple these, deliver those, change the font on all our corporate documents to 13-point comic sans, …) the current understanding is that our situation could reverse completely within a week's time, incidentally dropping us off in any one of x-teen major cities in the region. planning in an atmosphere like this is tricky and short-term at best. oh how she hates it. and it's hard on me because it doesn't really bother me all that much. I'm just waiting to see, and she's not a wait-and-see kind of girl. I don't know how to deal with crying (not to insinuate it's something to 'be dealt with,' you understand) because it's not something I do every day, but I'm learning. slowly. it's all very taxing. it taxes me.
you think you know a person well enough to marry her (him, it, etc.), but you really don't know her at all. it's like this: think of a relationship as getting an education. so far for me it's been like graduating from grade school, giving eight years a miss and going straight to graduate work, and my professors don't bother to have any sympathy. they assign papers and homework and projects and it's just assumed that I'll keep up. I don't even know what all the words mean, and I'm supposed to have read and analyzed the book by now and I have a presentation due in five minutes and sparknotes can't help me WHAT DO I DO?
She loves coffee. I don't. I ride a scooter when I need to make short trips down to the store or to the post office or wherever and she hates my scooter and threatens to throw it out. I play time-intensive games like axis & allies; she plays easily-digestible games like rook and poker and threatens to throw my games out. I wear silly impractical shirts and she threatens to throw them out. she listens to tim mcgraw; I listen to led zeppelin and she threatens to throw them out. I very frequently threaten to throw her out.
and through all this retarded drama, somehow, miraculously, we're making it. we're not perfect but nothing is. so we do the best we can. she makes her coffee, I make my ramen noodles. we compromise. we're special naked friends. we're happy.
