Hey there! Hope all is well. This hangout sesh today might surprise you a bit. Many people have told me how great my husband and I are together, but they don’t realize the struggles we go through by being soooo different. I know the saying is opposites attract, but my-my-my, I think we are on a whole different level sometimes! GOOD GRIEF!
Sometimes, I feel like Ejuan purposely disagrees with me. If I say I’m cold, he’s hot. If I think something is cool, it’s just okay for him. When I think the kids should do this or that, he doesn’t care one way or another. It’s like Jake said to Melanie in Sweet Home Alabama, “I’d like nothing better right now than to piss you off.” I promise that’s what it feels like Ejuan tries to do to me. But honestly, we are just different. I don’t remember all of these differences when we were dating as kids, but that was that puppy love and love is blind foolishness. It was happening then, but we overlooked it because we were so madly in love. Now…whew!
We have disagreed on many things that caused us both to be highly frustrated. Neither of us has ever called the other out of their name nor been violent. However, there have been some very heated discussions to the point that I was second-guessing our decision to marry. I’m talking about way back when and sometimes every other day! No lie! While I NEVER have any plans to walk away from my marriage, I do sometimes think I was hoodwinked. Heck, I’ve even told Ejuan that. It sounds a little like this, “Love, you are not that same dude that was chasing me when we were teenagers. You hid all this extra stuff.” Then I would tell him Bigmama was right. She said, “They do all they can to get you, then change once they have gotten you!” Of course, he agrees with me, well only that he’s not the same dude from back then part. LOL! In all honesty, neither of us are the same. I believe we’ve both evolved, grown, and matured for the better, but those changes sometimes cause conflict and confusion. We both remember back then when our focus should be on “right now.”
My goodness, it’s so challenging! We often use history as the barometer to measure our current atmosphere. Meaning we can get stuck on what we were used to and struggle to adjust to what’s actually happening right before us. This mindset has definitely caused issues, but once we realized what was happening, we knew we had to make some changes. Not just communication, but as I like to say, “effective communication” for both sides has been necessary. There is no assuming because we all know what they say it makes out of you and me. We have to be very specific, and even after he has thoroughly explained himself, I will ask, “Did you mean XYZ?” Another thing I might say to get clarification is, “What exactly did you mean when you said that?”
We do not always see eye-to-eye, but we don’t allow our MANY differences to take away from our core values. We parent differently, have separate ideas on how we should save/spend our money, and even think opposite about hypothetical situations. However, we know that we will come to an agreement that doesn’t affect our destiny and overall well-being. If it’s simple stuff, I’m a huge fan of agreeing to disagree. We can think and feel differently about a situation, discuss it, be on two opposite ends of the spectrum, and then go on our way.
All in all, I will leave you with this…When you have created a marriage, partnership, and union, you can’t allow your differences to trump the commitment and vows you’ve made. Attending premarital counseling and having some trustworthy friends/family to lean on throughout marriage plus maintenance counseling is highly recommended! Your disagreements can be challenging, but at the end of it all, you will come through when your core values align. Learn to appreciate those differences and continuously work on trying to find the positive in being opposites.
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