Sleeping with the Enemy: I am the Enemy

I used to think that all my good traits came from Mom and all my bad traits came from Dad. I was compassionate and patient, smart, witty and funny like my mother. I was a short-tempered, critical, tactless, over-sensitive control freak like my father. It was a very convenient way to deify and vilify them in turn. That worked for me for a very long time.

Then I got married.

One thing most people don't tell you in your pre-marital mad rush to plan the perfect wedding that pleases everyone is that actually being married is like being in a 360 mirror--there's no way to avoid your short comings. Suddenly you realize that you have idiosyncracies, which go unnocticed when you live alone. When you live alone you think you're perfect. Okay, when I lived alone, I thought I was perfect.

Everything was where I wanted it to be and it stayed there until I moved it. I had a whole set of dishes, glasses and silverware, but I only ever used one of anything and just kept washing it, putting it in the rack to dry where it'd be waiting for me when I needed it again. Who needs cupboards? A fork, a knife and a spoon, a bowl, a plate, a glass and a skillet are all you really need. This was a life I loved so much that I was looking for happiness outside my perfect little apartment by myself.

So when I found the future Mr. Karin Stanley, I didn't quite realize that he'd actually have to live with me. That's been the hard part. Sharing sinks that I think should be dry to be considered clean and toothpaste tubes that I think should never have toothpaste on the outside of them. And towel racks that are hung level so that the towels will actually hang straight rather than at odd angles.

I could go on. I mean I could really really go on and on, but then I realize how lucky I am because--no wait, I mean what is it with putting away the groceries. He's like, "I don't know where this goes." And I say, "Here's an idea--how about next to the other things that are just like it." Sometimes I'll get really pedantic and say, "Hey look, I'm putting the beans with the beans and the tomatoes with the--tomatoes. It's a revolutionary system I like to call organization." This is never appreciated the way I think it will be.

I have to give him this though, it takes a lot of courage to put away groceries in the house of a control freak, because he knows as soon as he's done and leaves the room, I'm going to go back in there and rearrange everything and bitch and moan about it the whole time. Oh, who am I kidding, I'll see he's doing it wrong and elbow my way in there before he screws it up even further. I suppose it would be one thing if I thought it was good enough to put beans with beans, tomatoes with tomatoes, but no. I've got to complain about red beans with red beans, black beans with black beans, diced tomatoes with diced tomatoes, stewed with stewed. All the while making sure all the labels are facing front like that creepy scary husband in Sleeping with the Enemy.

But, honestly, it makes so much sense to me. It's so obvious that this is the way it should be. I get so frustrated with all these stupid little things, and they are never ending, that I even heard myself think, "I love him, but I just can't live with him." And then I knew. I knew I had just turned into my father, who had said nearly word for word the same thing about my mother.

Within the first year or two of our marriage, which could easily be classified as the worst, I discovered that my mother told my brother that I had married someone just like my dad, which was not a compliment but an exasperated sigh of incredulity. I can see her point a bit, my husband and my father were both made constantly wrong throughout their childhoods and daily ill-parented and therefore carried around with them this huge, crippling fear of making mistakes that didn't manifest itself as perfectionism, as in some, but as paralyzing self-doubt and an inability make friends or be easily liked. Okay, I can see that.

But what they didn't see, of course couldn't see, was how completely in love with me my husband was, and still is. How well he treats me, how he tells me every day that he loves me, and that I'm beautiful no matter how much I scoff at the idea, and how much he respects me and all women, clearly unlike my father. And that on the really big issues--money, kids, politics, religion and wall color, we agree.

As it turns out, I prefer to sit on the couch and watch TV all night, waiting for my husband to walk by on his way to anywhere so I can ask him to get me a glass of water or turn on the fan or shut the blinds because I'm too damn lazy to get up and do it myself. I'd ask him to pee for me if I thought it would work. "Hey, while you're in there, pee for me, too, would ya. I don't wanna miss this Trading Spaces reveal."

Yup, I am my mother's daughter. And my father's. Like it or not.