The importance of being earnest

A friend once pointed out that the only question to be asked to assess the compatibility of a couple, wishing to spend their lives together is, "do you need the fan on at night?" Statistics, that I might have just made up, out of thin air, reveal that the commonest cause of the marital bed being abandoned and shelter being taken in another room is the absence of, what, for the lack of a better term I call, 'the chill equality.'

While I agree that it is the single most important criterion, there are a couple of useful pointers that can make the union less challenging.
As spouses we must first, work hard towards the spiritual upliftment of our better halves.
For instance, I have noticed that my father and my husband have an obsessive need to be organized. They need to file away documents safely and their wardrobes have to be organized just so. My mother and I exist, solely to provide them with entertainment on lazy Sundays when they have nothing to do.

They moan and groan about the heavy cross they have to bear. It makes them feel the pain of sacrifice and improves their moral standing in their own eyes. 

Having uplifted their souls in this manner, they can then proceed to stare blankly at the TV or any gadget of their choosing, without any guilt.

One of the biggest decisions that couples need to make, is allocation of surplus funds. Now imagine Mr A wants to put in 'x' amount of money in mutual funds but Ms Y who is married to A, but refuses to have an identity crisis by changing her name or hyphenating it, decides that property 'z' is what is more appealing as an investment opportunity. Both are equally convinced and bull headed. This leads to a situation where either both investments do not materialize or if they do compromise on one, the one who won (that's an example of a homonym) the argument, could potentially be in hot water if the investment idea fell flat . The pain of living with someone who is trying to convey "I told you so" by their expression alone is probably harder to bear than to pull out a tooth without anesthesia. It cannot help with hypertension for sure, so I will postulate the second theory that at least one partner has to (claim to) have poor financial sense and step back from the arena.

The third interesting area of conflict is the grasp of technology. I grew up in simpler times when, if you couldn't figure out how to make a gadget work, you hit it. We had a 'Nelco blue diamond' colour TV in the eighties. Whenever it decided to play truant and typically such things happened before a major sporting event, we just gave it a smart rap and ninety percent of the time that was all that was required. If that didn't work, we cursed the Tatas, not that it made it work but it helped relieve stress.
My ol' ancestor also says gems like "put on 'Star News', it's on 201," assuming of course that even at my home, the same channel number will feature broadcasts from the same station. He had once asked me to check his emails when we were traveling and his secretary wasn't around to do it for him and then proceeded to give me two passwords! I goggled, then instead of trying long winded explanations, I just tried both. Neither allowed me access though. Maybe we needed a third.

Having such fantastic genes, can I be far behind? I use 'Excel' like a 'Word' document. I do calculations on my calculator and make the entries in the various columns and then I say things like "I did it on Excel," hoping that I sound really cool.
The most powerful motivator for me to rewire the grey circuits in the brain, is when my ego gets bruised from time to time. For instance, when the man of the house refused to do online transfers for me, saying, "do your own work, figure it out," or when my older one told his friends "my mum doesn't know how to switch on the home theatre, we need to wait for my dad to come home."
Figure it out, I did.
I still don't know how to change the cartridge of the printer but I do know how to book an Uber, movie tickets and holidays. All of which are useful if I need to get away from the stress of being perfect.
I once told the better half, "please remember that it's the woman's prerogative to reform the spouse, you can't arbitrarily usurp that authority."
Very mildly, (for even he, brave though he tries to appear, is frightened of disturbing the slumbering volcano) he said "we must all strive to keep improving"
That is my third clause, that each of us, individually and together has to keep growing, expanding our interests and evolving. For if we remained static we might as well be a pile of dirt that needs to be wiped away.
Every third month, I have a new interest that I'm passionate about. When I'm carted out, yelling and kicking, I hope to be able to say, "yay! I did it all and some, in outer space."