Marriage: Celebrating Differences

Sweet Miss Mandy is looking for stories on how you celebrate the differences between you and your husband. I’m wondering where to start. Do you remember this ? That is Kevin and me all the way.

He is country through and through. I thought I would marry someone who wore a suit to work; instead, his clothes are permanently dirty. I wanted to attend fancy parties but now dressing up is not wearing jeans.

I love to entertain or go out dancing (well, not right now). He would be fine with staying home every night. I’m totally a night owl and he likes to get up and brag about how he gets more done before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.

I need interaction with others and feedback; he’s totally an internal processor. I make decisions on the spur of the moment or because of emotion and he needs practically forever to decide even as something as simple (to me) as whether or not to attend a certain social function.

I like fashion. If it’s clean, he wears it.

I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the idea.

We sometimes wonder why God brought us together when we are so different and have such a hard time understanding each other. One of the main keys to overcoming our differences is working on our communication. Kevin is becoming better at speaking Jessica-ese and I have been working on my accent so I’m more able to talk in a way he understands. It has taken lots of practice and lots of fights and lots of prayer and lots of forgiveness to get to where we are today. I can only hope in another six years we are communicating even better.

Also, I have to recommend The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands. My reading that and employing several of her ideas and philosophies literally revolutionized our marriage.

9 thoughts on “Marriage: Celebrating Differences

  1. All I can say about the video is… “WHOA!” I obviously grew up listening to Paula Abdul but we didn’t have cable, so no music videos in our house! LOL!

    Anyway, wonderful differences. It was really hard for me to think up stuff about Daniel and myself because we love so much of the same stuff, but your post made me remember quite a bit of our differences!!!

  2. Hi, I normally just “lurk” on your blog. But I also read the book a couple of months ago and I kinda liked it. Sometimes I thought WHAT?! but I applied some ideas on my husband and voila … it worked! 🙂 Cora

  3. You sound just like John and I. And sure we butt heads aLOT. But we try and celebrate the times being opposite benefits us- like he bought himself a gorgeous TAG watch he had been wanting for YEARS but NEVER would have got if I had convinced him to JUST DO IT. Of course, he ‘s my rock. Opposites attract for a reason- if you can weather the lows, the highs are fantastic. 😉

  4. Neat post! Sounds like my hubby and I-except reversed. Of course I do enjoy wearing nice clothes! But the rest I’m alot like your hubby.

    Love all the belly pictures in the previous post. I think the shadow may be my favorite. Hope you and baby are feeling well today! And the girls too!

  5. Jessica! Sorry it took me so long to visit. Thanks for playing! We had a DSL outage for the past 36 hours. I was going nuts! 🙂 Great post, by the way. I always wanted a husband who went to work in suites and after 4 years of him being dirty than dirty working in the woods (logging) or at the mill or driving a tractor trailer, he’s a pastor wearing a suite. I love that I can hug him as soon as he walks in the door…but I would go back to a dirty husband anyday just because “it’s the good life”. I wasn’t really, really country growing up even though I grew up in the country, but after living on the farm for 4 years…I fell in love. Head over heels. I’d go back to the country life in a heartbeat! Enjoy…you never know when God will move you. I’ve not read that book, but I really enjoyed “Becoming A Woman Of His Dreams” by Sharon Jaynes, and A Wife After God’s Own Heart by Elizabeth George. Good, good reads!

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