When you first get married, if you haven’t lived with each other, it’s your first go at learning all about compromise.
One would assume being one of five siblings, that I am a pro at compromise, and I am. The problem isn’t that I don’t know how to compromise or share, the real problem is that I don’t want to.
Years of being forced to share everything with my 4 younger siblings has made me super selfish…and I’m fine with that.
But you know…this whole being married thing, you’ve gotta learn to compromise, so this post is my 3 tips how I survived the first year of marriage.
Tips for Compromise:
-
Get Separate Comforters
I know, it sounds so mean, but my husband is a ballerina when he sleeps. I learned this very quickly with a swift knee in my back one night while we slept in our new home. It didn’t end there. I would wake up to fight for the covers multiple times throughout the night.
Then something happened that changed our lives forever, summer…
I still like to be under a big comforter in the winter, I’m the weirdo with the fan going extra hard because I like it to be chilly when I sleep, unlike my husband who likes a thin sheet in the summer.
We struck gold.
We finally sleep without killing each other through the night or fighting for the covers. Once winter came, I decided our marriage needed us to stick to this precedent.
It sounds crazy, but trust me…you will thank me for this. It will change your life for the better!
If you don’t believe me, check out this link, I’m not the only one!
-
Don’t Share the Bathroom
I’m not particularly neat, and neither is my husband. Both our moms had a good laugh while getting to know each other at the fact the neither of know how to keep anything organized.
They said we would learn hopefully together.
Seven years later and we haven’t.
We are still a disorganized mess, but we don’t like our mess to interfere with one another’s mess. So places like the kitchen, bedrooms, living room, etc. stay cleaned and organized.
But we choose to keep bathrooms separate. It doesn’t matter how big the bathroom is, it is not big enough for the both of us.
I WANT TO LEAVE MY MAKEUP EVERYWHERE.
It may be chaos, but it’s my chaos and I understand where everything is and I don’t want you to touch it.
So this was a quick and easy compromise, by not having to compromise at all.
We have moved and lived in probably 10 different places since being together.
I pray we stay happy and never have to share a bathroom ever in our lives.
-
Have Different Hobbies
Of course, it’s important to have hobbies and mutual interest, things you either both love or learn to love to do together. We have a bunch of those, we love to play Nintendo together for hours, we love to play volleyball together and go kayaking. But, we have stuff that we like to do even though the other doesn’t care to take part.
My husband loves to play football (soccer) and while I love to watch the game with him, I don’t especially care to kick around a ball with him. Believe me, we have tried to build this passion in me, one year got a bunch of “cute cleats” for me, that I used once and then lost the rest.
Just wasn’t for me, but I understand how important it is for him to be able to go out for a couple of hours on the weekend and kick around a ball. It makes him just as happy as it makes me to go on a hike for a few hours every now and then. I find it magic to be surrounded by nature. My husband doesn’t see the magic and that’s okay because we both encourage each other to do the things we like on our own.
For me, it’s important to still be Fai, even though I’m a Mrs. and a Mom now. Having my own hobbies allows me to do that, and having a supportive husband that encourages it makes a world of a difference.
You share a lot in a marriage, two lives blending into one, it’s so beautiful.
We learned in ours, there were a few things we didn’t need to share.
