Love, Honor and Negotiate

Summer brings another wedding season and one thing you can always find to talk about at weddings is whether or not OBEY was in the vows. Everyone is committed to the love part, the honor part is not a source of dispute, but throw that obey word out there and all bets are off.  Traditional, same sex, interdenominational, nondenominational, civil ceremony or full blown church affair - the simple word in the context of marriage gets our hackles up.

Early on Mr. M and I had a plaque that read "Love, honor and negotiate" which worked for everything from what to have for dinner, to whose turn it was to control the remote, choose the car radio station,  and when it was - or wasn't - time to have kids.  The general rule was, if one person felt more strongly about an issue that the other, acquiescing to keep the peace was the better part of valor.  And in return, the other partner would do the same.  But if we both had principals invested in the matter, it could be a long, cold standoff - like how the toilet paper should be replaced on the spindle - YES, immediately and off the top.  What do you mean - roll off the back?!?!?

Those early childhood years tend to be more of a hostage swap than involved parenting - can you watch the kids while I do my important non-kid conducive task, and then I'll watch them while you do your non-kid conducive task?  The first five years with a young family is all about negotiation.  Most often the parents feel like the hostages, rather than the negotiators.  But that's a whole 'nother story.

We are getting to the age where our sons are adults and no longer at home needing fully involved parenting.  Now the parenting often resembles gentle advising - most often by text message.  We were just discussing that now that the co-parenting role is gone, many of our acquaintances found that they had little in common and divorced after the kids left home.  We both feel we are entirely too lazy to pursue that option and were then discussing where that leaves the role of our relationship. 

There are activities that we each enjoy independently, one of us loathes social events that the other thrives on, we don't travel well together and our hobbies are not all that appealing to the other person. Trying to come up with activities to share... made for a very short list.  So far we have playing cribbage and other card games, classic or exotic car shows and cheap dates mostly involving watching sunsets from a public beach with our lawn chairs, take out dinner and a flask of adult beverages.  I had concerns that this provides kind of a weird dynamic for our sons to pattern in developing their own relationships, but then decided if they happen to find people with whom to enjoy peaceful sunsets and life's simple pleasures, it makes the love, honor and negotiate parts more easily navigated.