This phrase sums up my husband and I. We are a phenom to be studied by PhD’s and MD’s all over the world. Yes, it is possible to always think the exact opposite thing as your spouse. After 9 years of being together and 7 years of living together this should not continue to come as a surprise to me, but it does. I know opposites attract, but what about two people whose brains think on two completely different wave lengths? Thank goodness we agree on the major issues in life otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten married or still be married.

Some of our opposites are the obvious reasons why 2 different people may be attracted to each other.

• I don’t talk a lot but my husband could go on for hours
• I go to sleep early and he can stay up all night
• He likes to watch TV for his down time, and I like to sew, write or read a book
• Breakfast is my favorite meal and his is dinner (planning dinner is usually pretty interesting for someone who could eat cereal for all 3 meals).

When it comes to how we problem solve or work things out in our minds, amazingly we come up with 2 different ways to do things. For example, if we have to move a piece of furniture like a couch, I will attempt to walk it forward, and he will attempt to turn it- opposite. There are 2 ways to pull out of our driveway to get to the same destination. I always go right and he always goes left- opposite. I like chocolate ice cream and he likes vanilla- opposite. He loves the woods and wants to retire and live in a log cabin that he helps build and design. I have agreed to plan on this, but I am scared of the woods. I know. Crazy. He could sit in the woods all day just listening to nature. I am constantly looking over my shoulder for bears or something else big and scary.

This is different than Mars and Venus and how men and women deal with emotions and communication. We have that covered since going through infertility. We have a lot more work to do before we are a part of the Elite Communicators List but we grew a lot as a couple in the first 5 years of our marriage because we were tested.

It seems like many of the day to day decisions and ramblings are challenging for us because of the complete opposite way we think. We go to leave the house and I think we are taking one car and he gets into our other car. Exasperating! He wants to have steak every night for dinner. Besides that being a horrible choice for his health, I don’t like meat.
Maybe we’re not alone. Maybe these little daily challenges of being in a relationship are similar to your situation. I have no idea. Sometimes I/we can anticipate that the other person is going to be think B when it’s supposed to be A and we concede on doing it the right way. But, then an opposite moment will rear it’s ugly head when the right way to do something is so obvious. Get my drift? Like t-shirts should be folded in half and not in thirds or bowls should go in this portion of the dishwasher and not that one.

Just so you know we do happen to love many of the same things- thank goodness, right?

• Our favorite drink is Swedish Hill Champagne- a winery here in the Finger Lakes
• When we go on vacation, we do not like to be over scheduled. In fact, we hate to have a schedule at all.
• We both think our son is hilarious
• We both knew we wanted to adopt
• We easily agreed on where to get married
• I came up with the name of our dog, but he knew right away it was the perfect name for her

Noticing the little things that we enjoy together or the times we when we are in sync with one another make all the disagreements and complicated moments worthwhile. When we experience of those exhilarating blips in time when we are both thinking the same thing, I forget about little details like the fact that he feels it is imperative to put the toothpaste in the medicine cabinet and I like to leave it on the sink top; it’s tooth brushing accessibility is increased there, don’t ya know?