The importance of being earnest

A friend once pointed out that the only question required 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 most common cause for abandoning the marital bed in favor of the bed in the next room is the absence of, for lack of a better term, 'the chill equality.'

While I agree that it is the single most important criterion, there are some 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 over the heavy cross they 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.

As long as a couple leads a hand to mouth existence, they clean crumbs off each other's lips in ghastly displays of affection but once they have surplus funds, the situation becomes sticky. Just like when you see an acquaintance with his fly open. You wonder at his sense of discretion and common sense but also worry whether it is your duty to  mention it to him.

Now imagine Mr. ‘A’ wants to put in 'x' amount of money in mutual funds and 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 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 person who clinched 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 a tooth out 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 you simply hit a gadget if you couldn't figure out how to make it work. We owned 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 the TV work but for some reason it reduced our feeling of powerlessness.
(That's another theory I'm going to postulate in another blog entry: when frustrated you must curse, if your argument doesn't hold water you must curse, if you win you have to curse and if you lose you have no choice babe.)

My old man spouts gems like "put  

Star News on, it's on 201," assuming of course that the same channel numbers will feature broadcasts from the same station in my house as in his. He had once asked me to check his emails when we were traveling, as his secretary wasn't around to do it for him. He then dictated two passwords while I keyed in his email address. I goggled, but proceeded to try both out instead of plunging into long winded explanations. Neither allowed me access though. Maybe we needed a third!

Having such fantastic genes, can I be far behind? I use Excel more like a Word document than the computational instrument it is meant to be. I use my calculator as necessary and then plug these numbers into their respective Excel columns. I then proceed to behave like that friend of yours who casually tosses the information into completely unrelated conversations that they vacationed in Reykjavik. (Admit it, you have at least one friend like that). Similarly, I let on to every single person I happen to bump into, with feigned casualness, “I did it on Excel!” Hoping to impress with my tech savviness!

However, even I occasionally rewire the grey circuits in my brain, especially if my ego gets bruised. For instance, when the man of the house refused to execute  online transfers for me, telling me to go figure it out myself or when my son told his friends they needed to wait for dad to get home because his mother had no clue how to turn the home theater system on. Figure it out, I did.
I still don't know how to change the printer cartridge but I do know how to book an Uber, buy movie tickets and make holiday reservations online. All of which are useful if I need to get away from the stress of being perfect.
I once told my better half, "Please remember that it's the woman's prerogative to reform the spouse, you can't arbitrarily usurp that privilege."
He responded mildly, (for brave though he tries to appear, he is frightened of disturbing the slumbering volcano), "We must all strive to keep improving."

This brings me to my last recommendation for successful matrimonial alliances. We must keep growing, expanding our interests, and evolving, both individually and together as couples, 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."