Value Your Differences

Hopefully, you didn't marry someone just like yourself. I guess you can be happy with someone just like yourself if you love yourself, but that would seem to get boring after several years, wouldn't it? On the other hand, if you are an introvert, let's say, and you married an extrovert, you will never have to suffer with long bouts of silence on a road trip! Long road trips without any conversation can be weird unless you have kids or the radio as your companion.

Consider this, you are a morning person and your spouse is not. You awake cheerful, chatty and ready to face the day. Your spouse is silent, slightly cranky and would like not to have to deal with this morning or any other one. Thus, the cheery mate can make some nice coffee for the cranky one, even crack a joke or two and keep the morning interesting. Eventually, mr. or mrs. cranky can learn that the morning is not such a horrible time of day. In the evening when mrs. cheerful is ready to wind down and conversation and animation slows down, mr. cranky is now happy and eager to please.

The point here is that diversity in marriage can be good. One doesn't have to be so similar as to be boring. You can probably learn lots more from an opposite personality. Value your differences and learn to adapt and compromise when the little annoyances of a relationship get to you. In the long run, you will get to be more like each as you share experiences, intimacy and respect. It can be fun too.