Fights

Bryan and I believe similar, if not the same, things when it comes to lifestyle, politics, family, leisure, education, religion and health.

Our dinner conversations go mostly like this:
"Look at this thing that the world is doing wrong."
"I know! If the government wasn't working itself into EVERYthing, it would be okay."
"Capitalism!"
"Freedom!"
"Hot people!"
"Let's get another PBR."

We don't fight very often in our house. Even the little stuff gets handled in a similarly silly way.
"Hey, the house is a mess."
"It's your stuff."
"Yeah, but you loved me and my mess when we were dating."
"We're married."
"Let's split it up, but you owe me."

If it doesn't go like that, it will be a secret internal battle that we each fight. Like, if I notice something is messy, I'll clean it and parade in front of the perfectly clean living room when Bryan gets home. He'll be like, "Woa, looks great babe!" and then he'll take me to dinner, my choice. Or if I'm at the gym, I'll come home and Bryan will have done all the dishes, washed the counters and started dinner. I'll be impressed, kiss on him while the chicken cooks, and he'll get to force me to play Arkham Horror with him. (like last night)


Sometimes....we do fight. Like last Saturday. It was in the car. Even with our GPS and my iPhone, we still could not find the game store we were looking for in a suburb of Tulsa. We drove up and down the same road three times, tried neighboring roads, nothing. We could not find our way to the stupid game store. I was getting angry, Bryan was calm and trying to use my iPhone's Google Maps app. His calm demeanor made me angrier. How could he be so calm in this moment of true frustration?!

My frustration made him angrier, too, but he was keeping it all in. Turns out, we deal with frustrating situations like being lost in completely opposite ways. I would say our biggest arguments have been about which way to go, like that time in New York City about two years ago when we were trying to make it to Becky's place and we ended up in Coney Island at midnight (creepy). Even with all the technology and a smaller city, we still couldn't find the place. And my frustration wasn't helping Bryan keep his cool, and Bryan's cool wasn't making me feel any better.

So we had it out in my little Elantra:
"I want you to be angry!"
"You're angry enough for both of us."
"Do you LIKE being lost!?"
"I'm trying to keep my cool, so we can eventually find this place."
"Arghhhh! We're LOST!!!"

Okay, so typing it out, I was definitely overreacting. When we cooled down and talked about how we need to handle these situations (I'll be cooler, Bryan will be more outright about his frustration), we eventually found the place. Which was good because who wants to hit a game store with sourpusses.

Trade: Marriage Edition

Trade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person to another. And a network that allows trade is a market. My marriage is a busy market.

Bryan and I trade regularly. We have ongoing daily trades like Bryan emptying the dishwasher and me preparing meals. We trade long-term, too, like Bryan's job that moved us to Oklahoma: he chooses where to live and I choose where we vacation. We also trade with money. Bryan is currently paying me not to bring home a puppy. Most of the time our trading is simple and with a little bit of haggling, we can exchange goods or services that make both of us happy.

Recently, I had to trade my pride.

It was awful. But Bryan had spent the last evening with me and my friends being the designated driver while we gossiped about The Bachelor and Tosh.0. Here I was, at the house of Bryan's friend and also economics professor. I'd played all sorts of weird economics games there (Wealth of Nations, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Dominion, Pandemic) knowing it was a trade.

Something was different this time. The game on the table was one that I promised myself I would never play. The nerdiest of all games: Magic the Gathering.
Immediately, I started backing out and offering to play any other game. They poured me another glass of wine and peer pressured me into playing. They gave me the devil deck and started explaining the spells, enchantments, creatures, sorcery, graveyards, tapping, wizards and all that nerdy stuff. The game is very complicated and back in the 1990s, it was novel.

First, I ganged up with the other wife and attacked Bryan and his friend. We killed the boys off quickly and then she killed me.

Three. Hours. Later.

It was brutally complicated, but it was more fun than I thought it would be. I liked that my deck had special powers that their decks didn't have. I liked that you could build your deck out of the thousands of cards. I liked that there were demons and devils that could take lives away from players without costing me anything. I liked beating the professors. I liked that some people think the game is evil. I like a lot more of the game than I thought I would. It scared me.

That's kind of how it goes in my marriage to Bryan. He loves to trade things I've never tried (or think I won't want to try) because he enjoys pushing my comfort zone, and he has a quest to bring out the inner nerd in me.

We're operating in a free market: property rights are voluntarily exchanged at a price arranged solely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. We do not coerce each other, in the sense that they obtain each other's property rights without the use of physical force, threat of physical force, or fraud. Instead, we engage in trade simply because we both consent and believe that what they are getting is worth more than or as much as what they give up.