Married people talk
When you are dating, you have a certain syntax in your conversations. You are getting to know each other, maybe falling in love. It is a long known proven fact, though, that the very things that make you smile helplessly with delight are the very same things that make you seethe either quietly or unquietly about seven years later.
I used to find it almost adorable that T insisted on folding towels a certain way. And color coded them. That would later prove to annoy me to end all. Finally, we reached an agreement. SHE could fold all of the towels a certain way and color code them but I did not have to do so and she was not allowed to sigh dramatically as she redid all the towels that I had folded and put away.
You make these sorts of compromises constantly or you end up being one of those couples who hiss at each other instead of converse.
Marital speak is not as fun as date speak.
In date speak, you get things like:
"I love watching you eat popcorn."
"I wish that time would slow down and we could just lay here forever."
"I love US!"
Marital speak can often be loving and warm, but it is peppered with other things like:
"Did the garage door go down? Are you sure?"
"Jaysus! How many birthdays does your family have in August? And we have to go to ALL of them?"
"How can you have forgotten to get milk? There were only three things on the grocery list! And we don't need any more ice cream bars. I'm trying to diet here, buddy."
If you have been married for over a decade, you sometimes don't even have to speak. That look means, "I know. He's driving me crazy, too. Are you ready to leave?" Or, "Don't even think about disappearing into the office and saying you have work to do. These are YOUR relatives, not mine."
The beauty of marital speak is that you also have private sentences that mean nothing to anyone else but mean volumes to the two of you, based on something that happened 14 years ago that you both still laugh about. In our case, the sentences are:
"Did you want me to buy that turkey?" And..."I could tell you was mad."
The first one is based on a supermarket spree with an old friend, a story too long to explain, but one that has to do with us being in our salad days and broke. The other has to do with a long ago trip to North Carolina and a waitress at a roadside cafe who was in the wrong profession. To this day, if one of us says either one of these sentences to the other, we both break into laughter. It's private. And no, we won't share.
That is also a perk of marital speak. It is uniquely yours. Everyone has it and it is different, yet the same for all of us.
Being married, in many ways, is not nearly as fun as dating. When we were dating, T would have DIED before she cut her toenails in front of me. Now, not only does she do this, but she LAUGHS when a stray one hits me in the face and I jump up mad as hell. When we were dating, T shared the popcorn at movies instead of hogging it. When we were dating, we never played the radio in the car....we talked. We couldn't talk enough. Now, we know exactly what the other's opinion is on almost everything, so we listen to the radio. If we do talk, it is usually to say something like, "Have you noticed that the water pressure in the shower is down?"
And that is home owner speak. A whole other branch of marital speak.
But, frankly, I prefer marital speak. We aren't in the learning phase of our relationship anymore. We pretty much know all there is to know about each other. She knows that I ate communion wafers with Dori in high school and felt guilty about it until I saw the movie, "Ladybird." I know that she and her sisters spent time in foster care due to her mother's mental illness. We know all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, and most of the really embarrassing stuff.
And we are both still here. So, there is that.
And there are more perks than not. Our texts to each other are short, but we both know what they mean.
She sent me a text a few days ago that simply said, "Blanket night?"
I know that this means she wanted to watch "Ozark" and cuddle up in a blanket together in front of the TV when she got home from work. I sent back a thumbs up emoji.
We have marital speak down pat.
I used to find it almost adorable that T insisted on folding towels a certain way. And color coded them. That would later prove to annoy me to end all. Finally, we reached an agreement. SHE could fold all of the towels a certain way and color code them but I did not have to do so and she was not allowed to sigh dramatically as she redid all the towels that I had folded and put away.
You make these sorts of compromises constantly or you end up being one of those couples who hiss at each other instead of converse.
Marital speak is not as fun as date speak.
In date speak, you get things like:
"I love watching you eat popcorn."
"I wish that time would slow down and we could just lay here forever."
"I love US!"
Marital speak can often be loving and warm, but it is peppered with other things like:
"Did the garage door go down? Are you sure?"
"Jaysus! How many birthdays does your family have in August? And we have to go to ALL of them?"
"How can you have forgotten to get milk? There were only three things on the grocery list! And we don't need any more ice cream bars. I'm trying to diet here, buddy."
If you have been married for over a decade, you sometimes don't even have to speak. That look means, "I know. He's driving me crazy, too. Are you ready to leave?" Or, "Don't even think about disappearing into the office and saying you have work to do. These are YOUR relatives, not mine."
The beauty of marital speak is that you also have private sentences that mean nothing to anyone else but mean volumes to the two of you, based on something that happened 14 years ago that you both still laugh about. In our case, the sentences are:
"Did you want me to buy that turkey?" And..."I could tell you was mad."
The first one is based on a supermarket spree with an old friend, a story too long to explain, but one that has to do with us being in our salad days and broke. The other has to do with a long ago trip to North Carolina and a waitress at a roadside cafe who was in the wrong profession. To this day, if one of us says either one of these sentences to the other, we both break into laughter. It's private. And no, we won't share.
That is also a perk of marital speak. It is uniquely yours. Everyone has it and it is different, yet the same for all of us.
Being married, in many ways, is not nearly as fun as dating. When we were dating, T would have DIED before she cut her toenails in front of me. Now, not only does she do this, but she LAUGHS when a stray one hits me in the face and I jump up mad as hell. When we were dating, T shared the popcorn at movies instead of hogging it. When we were dating, we never played the radio in the car....we talked. We couldn't talk enough. Now, we know exactly what the other's opinion is on almost everything, so we listen to the radio. If we do talk, it is usually to say something like, "Have you noticed that the water pressure in the shower is down?"
And that is home owner speak. A whole other branch of marital speak.
But, frankly, I prefer marital speak. We aren't in the learning phase of our relationship anymore. We pretty much know all there is to know about each other. She knows that I ate communion wafers with Dori in high school and felt guilty about it until I saw the movie, "Ladybird." I know that she and her sisters spent time in foster care due to her mother's mental illness. We know all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, and most of the really embarrassing stuff.
And we are both still here. So, there is that.
And there are more perks than not. Our texts to each other are short, but we both know what they mean.
She sent me a text a few days ago that simply said, "Blanket night?"
I know that this means she wanted to watch "Ozark" and cuddle up in a blanket together in front of the TV when she got home from work. I sent back a thumbs up emoji.
We have marital speak down pat.
Comments
Post a Comment