Opposites attract -- then what?
THE OLD ADAGE ‘opposites attract’ couldn’t be more true when it comes to my husband and I. But when two people differ on so many levels, how do they manage to cohabitate?
In our case, hubby and I have certainly become more similar the longer we’ve been together but when we first started dating you couldn’t find a pairing who were more like chalk and cheese.
I was loud and opinionated while he was soft-spoken and understated.
My idea of a holiday included fancy hotels and fine dining while his was camping and fish ’n chips.
And I loved trashy reality television while he would sooner watch paint dry than endure a single episode of Geordie Shore.
We’ve ended up somewhere in the middle on most of these differences (he pretends he’s not watching Married at First Sight but then comments on every episode and I don’t mind the odd outdoor holiday — as long as it’s more glamping than camping).
But there are still some core traits we are yet to see eye-to-eye on and that’s where the point of contention is.
At the beginning of a relationship, when you’re in that blissful honeymoon stage, all your partner’s quirks are harmless, even cute or endearing.
But after 10 years, they just become downright annoying — yes, I’m looking at you, hubby!
Where I’m the type of person who turns up to everything early, my other half couldn’t be on time to save himself.
It drives me nuts, especially when, in the days when we had the freedom to travel the world, he would meander through the airport like he hadn’t a care in the world.
If you asked him, he would tell you that I, for no obvious reason, turn into an uptight, stressed-out lunatic the moment we step through the doors of an airport.
But what he doesn’t mention is that he snoozed his alarm that morning, hadn’t packed his bags the night before and, the minute the airline staff said it was time to board, he decided it was the perfect time to browse the bookshop or shoot off to the loo.
I cannot fathom how he isn’t choked by anxiety at the thought of being late, while he thinks I worry for no reason because, “we always make it in time though, don’t we?”
This is probably our most enduring difference but there is one other that never used to be a point of contention until we became parents.
In our pre-baby days, if there were dishes in the sink and clothes on the bathroom floor, hubs and I were quite happy to ignore it.
After all, we’ve always lived alone and we both worked long hours so the last thing we wanted to do was spend our days off cleaning the house.
Our house was never dirty, but if it was a little messy, it was no skin off our noses.
But then I fell pregnant and as I neared my due date, I, like so many others, started nesting.
It was so bad that when I was a week overdue, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the walls and dusting down every piece of furniture in sight.
And while people said that would calm down once baby arrived, for me, it didn’t.
Now, if a glass is left on the bench, it goes straight into the dishwasher, loads of washing are done nightly and I can’t sit and relax until the beds are made, floors vacuumed and the benches are clear.
In short, I’ve turned into my mother, while my husband hasn’t changed a bit.
Do these differences drive us both up the walls? Of course! And will we discover new differences as the years go by? Probably!
But ultimately it’s our differences that help balance each other out and I think that’s how opposites who attract still manage to cohabitate.
(It would be nice if he picked up his towel once and a while though!)
Initially endearing traits don’t always stand the test of time, writes Stephanie Arthur-Worsop