Ask anyone, and they’ve probably heard the story of Beauty and the Beast. The cheerful and kind Belle finds love with the unlikely Beast, her total opposite. She sways him to see things her way, and they live happily ever after. But few have heard the tale of English Teacher and the Engineer. It’s a love story of two unlikely characters – essentially polar opposites – who find love in between the gritty crevices of their differences. It’s the love story I have with my husband.
Everyone warns young couples that the first year of marriage is rough. But there were moments in that year that I was pretty sure one of us wasn’t going to make it alive past our first anniversary. And we were pulling straws to see which of us got the short one.
If I complained about his messes, he complained about me never completely closing a drawer or jar (true story). If I wanted to talk about allllll of my feelings, he would try harder to sweep his under the rug. If I espoused the importance of education, he’d wax philosophically about how school never helped him achieve his career goals.
Sometimes, I think we both wondered how we even agreed to love each other being the polar opposites that we are. And even then our love languages and relationship expectations were completely different. These differences weren’t a surprise before marriage. We even joked about them with naive affection. But, things got real once the “I Do’s” were said.
And then we had to parent together.
And we learned that the one thing we have in common – even more so than the love we have for our kids – is that we’ve got grit. Call it stubbornness, perseverance, or loyalty, but neither one of us gives up. Because of this determination, along the way those sandy, rough spots of our differences are slowly being smoothed out into appreciation for the other person’s perspective. Between the two of us, we are trying to parent and also love each other using the best of both of our worlds.
He fosters the carefree and nostalgic side of our family, whereas I cultivate the routine of daily life. He values educational technology; I value the printed word. He encourages team sports; I gravitate towards unstructured activities. And together, we encourage each other to push our set boundaries just a little bit to make room for the grey areas in between him and me.
Between the two of us, hopefully, we can raise our kids to find a happy medium of our polar opposites and to understand that an important key to any relationship is… grit.
