It’s a tale as old as time (or as old as toilets). You climb sleepily out of bed, find your way to bathroom, jammies to your knees, an then EXPLETIVE!, you think (or yell). Your warm clean buns have plummeted into the icy waters that are your toilet bowl. Where is your safe, room-temperature ledge? Behind you, while your husband sleeps soundly.
We all know it, or have heard about it in the playful husband-wife fights or clichéd movies. But I’m here to tell you that that seat can ruin your relationship, if you let it.
No, no. You say. We are so in love. He is my best friend, my soulmate.
But at some point, you may start to harbor how pesky that one little thing is, and then it will trickle into how it’s so annoying that his little mustache hairs are always in the sink, and then it will seep into that weird habit he has, and then, before you know it, you’ve got a list of “hates” bigger than your list of “loves,” with the blissful “honeymoon” days so far behind you can’t even see ‘em.
I don’t write this to be another one of those people who believe the first year of your marriage will be the only happy one, because I don’t. I have adopted it as a life goal to never think of my marriage as a chain link around my ankle, something I look at with a grumble and tell my younger peers, “Just wait, you won’t be this in love for long.” Because I don’t think that’s how something so intimate, personal, and sealed with an oath should be. I think people should strive to stay in love forever. I write it because I know, and have seen, the tiny little weeds of “real life” grow into the cracks of a 5 or 10-year marriage. And I think they usually start somewhere little, like in the bathroom.
When we first moved in together, the toilet seat spent a lot of time up. One evening, I non-threateningly said to Nick, “How much effort does it take to put it down?” And he casually said back, “It takes as much for you to put it down as it does for me to lift it.” Now, I understand that some people just have a “thing” about the toilet seat, but this was solid reasoning to me. I would rather spend those extra 5 minutes sitting with him on the couch than arguing with him from down the hall. Especially when I would remember this argument – label it and store it in the back of my mind where it would start to chip away at the admiration I have for my husband.
One of the most important things I have learned about marriage, or relationships in general, is not to mentally harvest the little things that don’t matter. I want to fill my thoughts and life with all the loving things of our time together, not our low points. I want my heart to smile when it wanders to him, not be rooted in why he isn’t as good a husband as someone else’s seems to be. These are the loves of our lives we’re talking about, so why focus on all those little ticks that make him imperfect, when you promised to love him despite them?
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I’m Kaysie, and I write a blog about whatever I want over here.
Thank you Melissa, for letting me tell a little story. Best wishes sisterfriend!
