Beware the only child…

Not to beat a dead horse (be thankful that I didn’t go searching for an image on THAT one), but I do have to share my little tiny bit of wisdom on the “marrying an only child” thread that Cory started. You know, for any of you out there that aren’t only children and feel that you could use a warning some insight here. I’ll try to keep it brief.

Here’s the story:
We’d been married a few months, I think, and I decided to take an interest in something that had been a significant part of his childhood (heh, as if it stopped there). Anyway, he was a gamer/role player guy and had all those little metal miniatures and paints lying around and I asked if he cared if I painted a couple of them. He didn’t mind, and actually seemed kind of amused that I would do that.

After I painted them and showed them to him, I noticed he was a little bothered. I couldn’t figure out why. At some point, he admitted that it was going to take some adjustment for him when I used his stuff and didn’t put things back the way he had kept them.

Huh?

Okay, so, I realized at that point that I had never thought all that much about being an only child. Really. I mean, of course I’d had the “no one fighting with me all the time”….”I’d get my own room”…..”not have to share my stuff”…thoughts that (I think) we all generally think about. But I’d never considered the fact that, for an only child, their things were always where they left them and how they left them.

Right. As a middle of three children, that concept is completely foreign to me. Completely. Not only did I not really have many things that were truly my own, I certainly never expected anything to be where I left it. Ever. So, fast forward to married life and I now realize that I’m living with a person who has never really had to share much within the confines of his own home…who has never expected anything to be anywhere other than where he put it…..who has always been able to have his space exactly as he wanted it without worrying about anyone else’s feelings. Yeah.

Let me say, Cory has come a long way in these past 10 years. And so have I, I think. I’ve tried to become more respectful of his need for structure and order (though I’m still not good at it, nor does it come easily to me!). He, on the other hand, has become much more tolerant of my comfort in chaos and my inability to remember how things were when I found them, much less return them to that state!

The point here (other than my inability to be brief, even when I think I can be?)? As much as we love the person we’re with, a ton of factors went into becoming who we were before we got together. I love Cory. He loves me. And our love doesn’t mean we overlook our differences because we’re just too darn cute and love should make everything just perfect. Our love means we figure out how we take our different histories and lifestyles and make them adapt and work together. We don’t pretend it’s easy, and we don’t pretend that we always get it right in every situation. But we do both decide it’s worth the effort to figure it out.

photo credit: megeliza519