35 plus 5

The smart thing that my hubby every did was to get married on his birthday.  That way, it would be impossible for him to forget our anniversary which happens to be today as well.  A few days ago, our friends have started greeting us with an inquiry of how long have we been together.  I always say, 35 years in paper, plus 5 year before that.  So in layman’s terms---pretty darn long.

So what is the secret of our staying together? Let me count some ways (for now--list might get longer if we’re still together...hahaha)

1. Have a good fight! Let’s face it, any marriage that has not had an argument is a boring one.  It’s because they have that notion that when people marry, they become ONE, but i ask, which ONE?  Have you heard that saying that in every marriage, there is always one who is right and the other one is a husband.  Oh well!!!
2. Hubby and I do argue A LOT, and contrary to many psychology books, we label each other.  I know it’s not the norm, but we get a kick out of it. He calls me the ‘Denial Queen’ or the ‘Drama Queen’  and I call him Peter Pan Pappy or sometimes the Prophet of Doom, that’s because he makes predictions on current events regarding Global issues while the only current event I know is what happens in the neighborhood.
3. And most important, we give each other lots of  space .  LIke the quote that says, “We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion. “

When we joined facebook years ago, we had several status on our profiles.  First, we had an open relationship, because initially I didn’t know what it meant until it caused a stir among our friends. I thought being open in a relationship meant a lot of honesty and trust, until I found out it was promiscuity which was way far from my vocabulary.  So we  changed it to ‘it’s complicated’, because half of the time I was in New Jersey while hubby stays in New York.  The complicated status became  controversial as well.  So now we just had to be content with being ‘married’.

Marriage has a lot of meaning to many people.  But to us, it is a commitment.  In many of our drama moments and in the heat of debates, I’d often blurt out, “If you can’t take my sh*t anymore, you can just walk out the door,”  and often his replies are so predictable he’d say, “What?! and make you the hero of your drama?  Never! I’ll never leave you!”  ----Isn’t that romantic, or what!!!!!

In other relationships, marriage could also just be a legal way to have sex.  In our case,  we have evolved, we just do oral sex.  We just talk about it.   In the heat of our bickerings and squables we yelp out  into  ‘F.U.s’  which is normally the climax of our oral sex.  And they say, that as you grow older, people just tend to have ‘anal sex’ - they just analyze what it is for. But we’re not there yet.

Oh well!  but whatever it is, I am thankful for the partner I have.  He may not be perfect, but he is a hopeless romantic and I am----well, I am who I am, I take everything with a grain of salt and find humor in every situation, after all, isn’t life just a big joke and we are jesters.

And to my hubby, cheers to those years.  The first 5 was the appetizer, these 35 years was the entree, let’s start having the dessert, oh but wait, did we have our veggies yet?t!!!! Happy birthday and Happy anniversary!  Even if we don’t agree at times, it’s still  l doobidoobidoo  labs you---hey! isn’t that a movie?