We Complete Each Other

I heard two clichés about marriage which sounded very nice, but I had difficulty accepting them in the early years of our married life. One was “We complement each other,” and the other was “We complete each other.” The difficulty came with the reality that Cora and I are so different in almost every conceivable way -- the way we behave, in the way we make decisions, our likes and dislikes, our qualities, even in our politics. There were many times when I wished she and I would be more alike. I was certain that it would be less stressful for me if she would do things the way I did them.

Early in our marriage, as the children were growing up, our differences caused a strain in our relationship. Our dissimilarities were usually the reason for most of our hurtful experiences. Conflict arose because I often judged that my way of thinking and doing things were always the best way, if not the only way. Cora’s qualities -- her attention to detail; her constant sense of urgency in doing things; her extreme generosity; her tendency to act on gut feeling; her propensity to react quickly; her need to be busy; and pessimism –I judged as negative qualities because they were opposite my way of doing things. I am the type of person who is more interested in the bottom line; I don’t need to rush things, in most situations I need time to think; I am very careful with money; I need to know all the facts before making a decision; I enjoy resting and keeping still; and I am an optimist.

It was only after many, many years, I slowly realized that my judgment of Cora’s qualities as negative was the reason behind us not being able to complement each other. Only when I see and accept the good in her qualities are we able to complement each other. I think that through the years, we have mellowed and have not tried so hard to change each other as much as we used to. I have also come to the point of seeing that I could learn a lot from Cora, especially since she has many of the qualities which I lack.

I truly believe that married couples can complement and complete each other. However, key to this is working to see that the other’s qualities, especially those which contradict our own, are just as good as ours. Being married for 37 years I have realized that Cora can never be like me, and I don’t think I can ever change her no matter how hard I try. Trying to change her will only create more stressful experiences in our marriage rather than joyful.

Cora often says that in marriage, we should not be sculptors who chisel away at a stone to create a figure - instead we should be gardeners who bring out the life and beauty intrinsic in the seed without changing it. God created Cora and he gave her to me. She is good and beautiful just as she is, I don’t need to change her. Instead I should try to make her bloom as a gardener would.

having fun

Our youngest daughter Boo spent the whole day with her boyfriend. They watched a movie, they had dinner in a restaurant and before she went home they stopped over at Starbucks for coffee. The following day our daughter had to spend the whole day at work while her boyfriend accompanied her until evening. Even after having spent so much time together, when I’m in the car with them, I notice that they don’t stop talking throughout the whole trip. I said to myself, these two must be having a lot of fun with each other. Both of them seem to be fun people.
I remember when I was still courting Cora during our early married days, I too was a fun person. We used to have a lot of fun. We were both beach people so we would go to the beach very often and the best part was always the sand castles we would build and the pictures we would take after. We also had dinners at our favorite Italian restaurant where we would always sit at our favorite corner table and we would order the same thing every time. We would spend evenings dancing at night clubs and play gin rummy games or play pool until the wee hours in the morning. On our first year of marriage we would stay in bed the whole morning on Saturdays and while in each others arms, we would talk the whole time. I guess one of the main reasons we got married was we were having a lot of fun with each other. Cora was a fun person to be with and I guess so was I.
Unfortunately after a few years, when the children came and as I slowly moved up the corporate ladder -having fun slowly diminished from our lives. The children and my career came first over having fun. As a matter a fact, the few times we would have fun now would usually include our children or friends. More often than not, fun for me was either golf or drinking with office mates and old buddies. I started to forget how to have fun with Cora . Because of different conflicts in our marriage I also became very formal and careful with her when discussing topics –especially the sensitive ones.
Now when I look back at those years, I regret having become too serious and having left out fun from our lives. We could have included having fun with each other more often. After all it was having fun that brought us together and encouraged us to get married. But now that I am getting older I think there is still time to bring back the fun we had but to do this I need to at myself first and ask the question “ Am I a fun person to be with or am I too serious? Do I even know how to hang loose?” The other thing I must do is to make an effort and be creative so cora and I can schedule fun activities. This is difficult for me because the few times we had fun, it was always Cora who made plans. I like to schedule my weekly activities and write down my appointments but I rarely put down any schedule for us to have fun. This I must correct. As someone said “ It never is too late or too old to have Fun” .