Equations...

The other day I was talking with a friend who is going through a rough time in her marriage. She was saying that she felt like there were only a few good months in all the years she’s been married and the rest were wrought with turmoil. Now, I’m sure she is exaggerating a bit since the negatives always seem to outshine the positives when we are upset about something.

But, being the very analytical person I am (I almost got a perfect score on the analytical section of the GRE, nevermind that I barely passed the math and verbal portions), it got me thinking about my own marriage and the ratio of good to bad.

Then I started doing calculations in my head. (Yes, sometimes I am obsessive) Adding up the number of months that I could remember that were especially tough and trying, and comparing them to the really good times. I’ll spare you the sordid details of my multiple equations, percents, fractions, and variables all worked out on a piece of scratch paper. It turns out that my marriage was roughly 80% great and 20% not so great. I would’ve thought that we were closer to about 90% great. It doesn’t really matter what the number is, the point is that our good far outweighed our bad. I don’t know if we were just lucky, or worked harder than others at maintaining a commitment, or were just better suited for each other and extra compatible, or all of the above. Probably a mixture of all of the above, but that’s a whole other equation we won’t get into.

We decided early in our marriage that the unit was top priority; never ourselves, or our future children above the marriage. The sum was to be greater than the parts, so to speak. I think that served us well. Not that we didn’t have times of being selfish, or petulant temper tantrums of “But, I want…”, or focusing on the kids more than us, but the idea of the marriage first always brought us back to reprioritizing in our favor when things got kinda squirrely. Marriage is a delicate balance of sacrificing yourself for the good of the whole, but not losing yourself in the process. There is a lot of compromise, picking your battles, and just letting go. And of course a lot of hope that the scale is tipped in your favor and the good outweighs the bad.

So, today I’m feeling thankful that he stuck by my side. Always put me first. Never let me step down from the pedestal he put me on from day one. And that I did all the same for him.

And in the end, the scale was tipped in our favor and we had it pretty good.
We had it pretty good...