Contradictions

After we'd tucked the boys in for the night, I settled in to ice my feet and watch....something. (lol--I'm a bit lost when it comes to what's on these days)  So what did I watch? I have that magic fios remote with the "last" button so you can flip back and forth between two shows easily; I watched the movie Juno simultaneously with Alien 3. Um....yeah. My husband came downstairs after a bit and sat with me. He lasted 7 minutes before laughing and shaking his head, he left. Cozy soft cuddly "coming of age" teen love alternates with bloody science fiction alien battle.

But that's me.

I've come to suspect that we are defined more by our contradictions than our similarities. I love wine....and whiskey. Munster cheese as well as gorgonzola. Summer and Christmas. Experience, variety, and multiplicity make life--like food...like sex.....make for magnificent rather than mediocre. I believe this is such a large part of relationships--yet an unbelievably difficult thing at the same time. The world's greatest love stories, the romances that ring in your heart and echo in your mind--are most often the passionate ones filled with fire and conflict. Of course there is sweetness and tenderness, but it is the friction that makes them splendid! I have lived through too many warm milk relationships; they were so...easy. I suppose that's why I got into them. Friends that always agreed with me, a first husband that generally did as I asked....warm white milk. Milk will only sustain you so long. There's just not enough in it. Your muscles atrophy, your hair falls out, your skin fades to paste--milk is fantastic for babies...

But we've all grown up.

Now I have a pomegranate and ginger martini of a marriage, served in a stiletto glass rimmed with crystallized hot chili sugar! (heh heh)  Sometimes I worry that our neighbors are scandalized. Between the arguments and the heated nights...(and mornings and....ahem) We are both equally strong-willed and fully armed. It's funny, I've encountered more than a few people in my life that have a drastic aversion to anything resembling disagreement or contridiction.  I'm not talking about character assignation or actual "fights" (which is when a simple difference of opinion escalates emotionally until both parties are swinging sabers with no regard for collateral damage) but that space where two similarly astute and perceptive minds sharpen one another.  For a lifetime of beliefs, assumptions and judgements should regularly be taken to task.  How else does one evolve?

Finding my "match" has not exactly been the e-harmony vision that permeates evening television with bashful smiles and hand-holding. However, it has been more challenging, more fulfilling, and more life changing as we have confronted, battled over and are in the process of embracing our contradictions.

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