There is now another person to think about

I don’t suspect that this will be a long post or an insightful one as the title is pretty self-explanatory.

This is the 3rd instalment in my series on what I have learnt in my 2yrs of marriage. You would think that going into marriage you would acknowledge that there is someone else you now have to think about, hey, you would even think you would realise this simply by dating, but I obviously didn’t.

I can be extremely independent when I want. If I want to lift a dang heavy object on my own, I will try every possible avenue to move the blasted thing before admitting I need help. Some may call this being stubborn. I call it ‘trying’ to be independent. Maybe that wasn’t a good example. If I want to go somewhere or if I want to buy something, it is hard to think past what I want and extremely hard to think about what we want to do or what we need money for.

After spending a few years working and studying and using my money for myself and going wherever I want to go, its been a real learning curve for me to think about someone else. Even while dating we sort of shared our money, but the money I earned was mine and Russell’s was Russell’s. If I wanted to go away for a weekend with friends or spend a night having coffee with a girlfriend, I did it. Same went for Russell. Now, however we have to think about the other person. I cant just do as I please nilly willy any more, now I have to think about Russell.

I guess this causes some of the troubles that I spoke about in this post. Instead of being a lot more free to see friends and spend time with single and marrieds alike, we now have to structure our social lives around each other. Since the only time we get to spend together is scarce, I’m afraid our social lives have turned scarce also. It is much easier if we are able to spend time together with a group of people than it is one-on-one, and that would probably be the reason for many of the lapses with some of my close friends.

So, I know how have to think of someone else:

• With my time
• With my money
• and also with my habits

Just because I want to have a bubble bath once a week, doesn’t mean Russell does. Just because I want to walk around the backyard with not much on, doesn’t mean Russell does. Just because I am in a bad mood and want to stay in bed all day – doesn’t mean Russell does. Now, I personally don’t think those are really bad or if you could even call some of them habits, but I’m too gutless to mention any real habits. You get my drift though don’t you!?!

Even though it’s hard to put aside what I want it is a necessity for marriage – I believe anyway. You cant spend your life with someone, constantly putting yourself before your husband/wife. We are taught in Sunday school about thinking of others first, but it is so easy to grow out of this, particularly in our consumer driven society these days.

Most of this post is kind of leading into the next instalment of ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’. They really go hand-in-hand. So I will leave this post for now, as I’m pretty sure you all get the drift. If you don’t…then I don’t know what else I can say, so stiff bikkies.

Also, if you have an experience you would like to share…leave it in a comment.
If you have another bullet point…stick it in a comment!
If you want to just say whatever the heck you feel like…say it in a comment!

Have a good one all!