I have always been a list person. Blame it on my non-diagnosed OCD, I love a good list. Right now lists are trending, who knew that would ever be something that was "in". Anyway, here is a list of things I love about my husband as we near our 7 year anniversary of the day we got married and of course, just in time for Father's Day.
I am not numbering these, so if your personal OCD dictates that lists should be numbered, I am sorry in advance!
- I love how funny he is, this was the first thing that lured me into his arms. He and I could spend hours just laughing, because we are both that hilarious and neither of us takes ourselves too seriously. Being in a relationship with each other has seemed like second nature because we can find the humor in almost anything.
- I love how he does not allow gender roles to define him, or our relationship. It is crazy to me how, in the year 2014, there are still people who think certain things are a "man's job" or a "woman's job". That has never been us, in our relationship many times the stereotypical gender roles are non-existent. He happens to be wonderful at vacuuming and horrible at putting together furniture. I happen to be great at cooking, I'm a master builder. We both excel at taking care of our own children! Neither of us is a big fan of laundry, so we split the work load on that particular chore.
- I love his desire and ability to be a family man. When we met, he had a ten year plan that included getting married and having children, my ten year plan was to work and make lots of money. We wound up going with his ten year plan, obviously, and it turns out he is a good planner! He is involved in the lives of our children, he even took a pay cut to spend more time with us on evenings and weekends. That is one of the things I admire most about him.
- He makes me crazy. This apparently is essential to our relationship, either one of us, given a spouse who did not speak up for themselves or who was not stubborn, would probably walk all over the other person. However, we both have a certain line that cannot be crossed, we both know what we will and will not compromise on and luckily for us it has really worked in our favor. While for the most part we are easy going and don't require much from each other, we know our boundaries and I feel that has been important for us.
- He doesn't leave his family. This one is a big one for me. He does not go out boozing, he does not pretend that his only "job" for the family is making money and the rest is my job as the "woman". He has his hobbies, that he can do during the day time, sometimes alone and sometimes with me when we can find a sitter. It means so much to me that he does not spend every spare moment at the bar or at sporting events. He makes an effort to be present in his family, which to him includes not wasting time drinking excessively at a place he can not take his family to.
- When our son was diagnosed with Leukemia, he only left the hospital in order to work. Both my husband and I (and our infant daughter once she was born) spent EVERY SINGLE NIGHT at the hospital with our son. Every time he was hospitalized. Whether it was for a routine extended chemo treatment or due to low counts and/or illness. While it may be hard to understand or believe, we actually had a lot of good quality family time while staying at the hospital. We drew stick people with ports and IV poles, we met other families going through the same or similar circumstances. We laughed, we cried, we did what we had to do to survive that storm in all of our lives. We all rejoiced together, equally when we no longer had to stay in the hospital and when our son SURVIVED leukemia!
- He has an awesome family, okay, so this one might not necessarily be just about him, but his family is pretty awesome and I have to give them some credit here. I just can not get over how much fun his family is to be around. I love my family, but our families are very different, and I love that too. I love the relationships he has with people in his family, especially his older sister and his brother-in-law, his parents, many of his cousins and aunts and uncles! While I've only been hanging out with them for roughly 9 years, I feel like I've always been a part of their family. It blows my mind how many great people we are lucky enough to be related to!
- He and I are very similar despite how opposite we are. It is so funny how much that oxymoron is true here. He tends to be a pessimist while I am more of an optimist. I love to help people and he.... secretly loves to help people, but acts like he hates helping people. He likes fashion, I like yoga pants. ;) He has a few close friends, I have a few more close friends. However, we have the same taste in decor, color combinations, the clothes our kids wear, vehicles, houses, medical decisions etc. We have NEVER argued about any of those things, not once. It is amazing to me how different we are in other ways, but how similar we are when it counts. It is not that one of us makes the decisions and the other one goes along with them, we genuinely have the same taste/opinions on all of the really truly important things.
Honestly I could go on and on and I strongly doubt my list will ever be complete. My husband is far from a perfect man, and I am far from perfect myself, but somehow we are so perfectly compatible that it is scary sometimes. I have always been one who laughed at the thought of soul mates and doubted that I would ever want to get married and this man completely changed my mind. The longer we are together the more I wonder if maybe we were actually somehow destined to find each other. We have grown together and pretty much grown up together and while we were not in the best places in our lives when we met, we somehow came to this place where we have brought out the best in each other. Call it God at work, call it what you will, but we recognized that we are very blessed to have what we have and we hope to cherish it for a lifetime.
