being married to me is so fun

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Irreconcilable Differences

Last March, I wrote a post that resulted in one of my favorite comment sections ever. Relationships are so funny, aren’t they? Like, you could be absolutely committed to stepping in front of a train to save a person’s life, but if they hang the toilet paper the wrong way you would murder them with your bare hands. I guess when you spend year after year with a person, you have to find some ways to keep things fresh. 

Recently, my husband and I had an argument that made me think of the earlier post and the resulting comments. It was an argument that nearly led to fisticuffs, it was so intense. Neither of us wanted to cede even an INCH of ground. I wanted to scream at him, and surely he felt the same way. We finally stopped bickering about it but only because we ran out of energy; we never formally agreed that I was right all along. (I am right.) 

The subject matter of this fierce battle? Marshmallow size.

last year’s carb feast, with mashed sweet potatoes in the upper right

That’s right, folks. My lovely, generous husband agreed to go do all the Thanksgiving shopping for me and I nearly strangled him over his refusal to accept that the marshmallow size I requested was the correct and only marshmallow size.

Do you want some context? Carla’s favorite Thanksgiving foods are a) cranberry sauce and b) sweet potatoes with marshmallows (or, more accurately, marshmallows with sweet potato essence). So I put marshmallows on the grocery list. Because my husband likes to know Specific Details about the things he’s buying, I added the note Giant size to our grocery list. 

“We get regular size marshmallows,” he said. 

No, we don’t. We always get the jumbo size marshmallows. The kind you use for making s’mores.

“No, the little ones.”

Round and round we went on this, Internet. I found a photo of last year’s sweet potatoes, with the jumbo size marshmallows on top.

“Maybe we used them last year, but usually we use the regular size.”

For awhile, I thought maybe we were talking about the exact same thing and just using different terminology for it. Like maybe he thinks the jumbo size Kraft Jet Puffed are “regular size” and we were arguing about nothing. But no. He meant the small size. The kind you put in hot cocoa. 

Carla helpfully googled this photo so we could determine that we were, in fact, discussing marshmallows of different size. (This was only after a deeply infuriating aside, where I said that “tiny” marshmallows are the kind that come in packets of powdered cocoa and he disagreed, and I nearly detonated.) 

image from savoryexperiments.com

I tried to remind my husband that I have been making these same sweet potatoes pretty much every year since 2010.  Not sufficient evidence. I dug up a photo of that first Thanksgiving, in 2010, with the jumbo marshmallows. Not sufficient evidence. 

Is this the most RIDICULOUS argument you have ever heard of?! It didn’t feel like it, in the moment. It felt like this man was a stranger. How could he think I was a person who would put small marshmallows on top of my sweet potatoes?! Who has the TIME for such detailed work?! Not me! Did he not SEE me? Did he not KNOW me?!

Finally, I threw up my hands and told him that fine, if he insisted on getting the small marshmallows, he could place them all in concentric circles on the mashed sweet potatoes. (Even though marshmallow placement is firmly Carla’s job.) And he went grocery shopping. When he came home, he handed me a bag of the correct size marshmallows, even though he made it very clear that he was surrendering to me, not that he thought I was right. 

One of the most maddening arguments we’ve ever had. 

Although it doesn’t compare in any way to the all-out brawl* we had over which everyday glasses to register for when we got engaged. 

Okay, here is where you tell me the most ridiculous arguments you’ve been in. With a sibling, a spouse, a friend. I just want to hear the silly things that push your buttons. 

* Not an actual brawl.

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here. 

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On Justification

Here’s a disagreement my husband and I have a few times a year: He will ask for advice in getting out of something – like beers at an old college acquaintance’s house or going to a patient’s sister’s open mic night – and I will suggest he simply say something like, “Oh thanks so much for including me, but I’m unavailable. Maybe next time!” 

This is a method I employ successfully in my life. But he says he needs A Real Reason – that if he goes with something vague, there will be follow-up questions. 

I prefer vague in the follow-up instance too. Something like, “Oh, just a family obligation.” or “Oh, I have a prior commitment.” (Apparently, I say “Oh” a lot when I am making vague sorry-I-can’t statements.)

He never takes me up on it. He wants something unassailable, like dinner plans or a weekend trip. He thinks people will keep poking at him until he says something specific. I think people who do that are rude or unable to read social cues. Also, I have never once encountered the level of pushback that he anticipates! (To be fair, I have a pretty strong case of RBF, while my husband has the sweet face and warm eyes of someone who would never snap at you for asking too many questions. So maybe people just know not to push me?) I honestly don’t know that he has ever encountered the level of pushback he anticipates; it may be largely if not entirely in his head! 

Do you feel the need to justify things on a specific level? 

I mean, I get that sometimes specificity is important. It can give context, right? Like if your boss wants you to staff a client event and you can’t, you might feel like saying, “I have to prep for surgery the following day” or “it’s my only night with the kids that week” will give you more credibility than going the simple “sorry, I can’t” route. And if you can’t make your sister’s wedding, it probably would go over better if you could blame your absence on something more specific than “a prior commitment.” 

Also, I understand that the phenomenon of canceling or “we totally should”ing plans is poison to a friendship. Also also, I realize that are probably different levels of “need to know,” and you might feel more comfortable sharing specifics with a good friend than you would with a coworker or your dental hygienist. I am well aware that there are exceptions.

But in general, I feel like we are all allowed some reasonable amount of privacy in our lives. And we are allowed to make decisions about how we spend our time, and shouldn’t feel like we have to have A Real Reason to skip out on something. We should be able to opt out of opt-out-able commitments for the simple reason that we don’t want to do the thing, and we shouldn’t have to feel bad about that or worry about hurting someone’s feelings by saying it straight out or deal with the discomfort of coming up with a believable lie. 

It seems like I may be in the minority of people who feel that way, though. 

I am part of two separate groups, one an email chain and the other a text chain. This past week, both of them were active and there was a similar experience in both groups.  

In both cases, the group leader requested a headcount of people coming to an upcoming event. She specifically said, “If you can be there, let me know.” Nothing about “everyone needs to respond,” nothing about “let me know if you cannot be there.” 

In each case, the first person to respond was able to attend. (I know this because they both replied all, which is another thing I cannot stand but which seems to be an unavoidable part of the culture here.) Then the responses rolled in, nearly identical in both situations – even though one situation was a volunteer event and the other was a social gathering. 

It went something like this: The second person responded in the affirmative, too. Then the third person said yes, and she was sorry she forgot to reply all. (SIGH.) Then the fourth person said she couldn’t and then gave a specific reason. Same with the fifth. Then the sixth replied all and gave a rather personal medical reason for not being able to volunteer. (Seriously! The personal medical reason happened in BOTH CASES.) (Which then leads to another thing that makes me feel uncomfortable, which is that everyone in the group replies all to extend their well wishes/condolences/etc. Which is nice, but results in too many texts/emails and also both feels performative and sets up the expectation that everyone needs to respond. What if I want to email the person separately??? What if I have never met this person and don’t feel I should know the details of her nosehair removal procedure????)  

Dude. We should not feel like we need to JUSTIFY our inability to show up to things! If you can show up, do it; if not, DON’T. But I feel resistant and a little flaily, to be honest, about the unvoiced and totally unnecessary expectation that you need to have A Real Reason to bow out of anything, especially a social event or a volunteer position. What if my reason is, I don’t want to? What if my reason is, I don’t want to drive an extra half hour that day? What if my reason is, that day was my only free day all month and I just want to lie on my back on the couch and stare at the cobwebs gently undulating in the air currents? 

My manager at my previous job was really good about this kind of thing. He’d email me (his subordinate) and his manager simultaneously and say, “I’m taking a personal day today.”  That was it. I might find out later on that his kid had been sick or he’d had a dental appointment or whatever. But it wasn’t something he shared and it freed me from feeling like I needed A Real Reason to take my own personal days. It showed that he trusted me – an adult – to manage my own time. I’m sure if I’d abused the policy, he would have addressed that. But I didn’t and I was so glad that I didn’t have to say things like “Carla was up all night cluster feeding and I’m so tired I can’t think” or “I have a therapy appointment today.” I’d just say, “I’m taking a personal day” or “I need to leave early this afternoon” and that was that. 

I wish we could all have that kind of privacy in our lives! That freedom from explaining ourselves, or fretting about whether our excuses are good or “real” enough. The knowledge that others aren’t judging us for saying no because they trust that our reasons are our reasons and that’s sufficient.

Listen. It’s not that I don’t empathize! When the reasons start flying, it makes me feel like I need to have my own reason for opting out. Like people won’t believe me, or they will grumble about me behind my back, or they won’t invite me in the future.

Obviously, I am feeling super guilty lately about my lack of involvement in anything other than the endless appointments associated with Moving And Getting Settled and my impulse is to make sure that the people I am flaking on know I am doing something else, and it is Not Fun. So truly, I get it. I am a people pleaser. I don’t want people to think I’m shirking any sort of responsibility, or taking my friendships or commitments lightly. But I think – I hope – I show that, by making the effort and showing up when I can. And I hope we can give people grace when they say they can’t do something, and realize that we all juggle multiple priorities, and sometimes one necessarily takes precedence over another. 

Even if that priority is lying on the couch, wondering if cobwebs count as Halloween décor.