One Plus One Always Equals Two

Sorry folks, today you get a little bit of a rant...

After 15 years of marriage I have learned one or two things...I know I still have much to learn, but the years have at least taught me some. One of the things that both Duckie and I agreed to very early on was the need for our own personal space from time to time.

This is something that I have seen a lot of conflict over in other relationships. One or the other person believes that their life must be completely enmeshed with their partner's; that a marriage is the joining of two lives into one. Now this is not to say that some people don't thoroughly enjoy their partner being around them 24/7, I'm sure there is some couple out there right now that it is working for, but the people that I have seen, it doesn't work. One plus one is always going to equal two, no matter how you try to force it to do otherwise. I'm extremely against the kind of "control" that some will attempt in their efforts to prove this to be wrong, though. (And yes, the quotes are there for a reason, there is no such thing as control over another human being.)

You can exert your will on them, brow beat, guilt, manipulate, but eventually it is their decision to either go along with it or not. I don't think anyone can truly be happy in this type of relationship, but that's only my opinion and what I've seen around me. Duckie and I have always kept in mind that we are two different people, living in one space, sharing our lives together, but we remain two people. There will always be things that we enjoy doing with each other, but if we didn't each get our own quiet time, someone would most likely be injured. (That's a joke, but there would definitely be a lot of issues and unhappiness.)

I'm grateful for the time that I get to spend all to myself because it allows me to just be ME--not Mom, Wife, Daughter, Friend--just the Ducked Up Girl. I go to see Higher Briars, to a meeting or just go grocery shopping by myself; without Duckie asking a 101 questions about where I'm going or what I'm doing. Because that is a part of the understanding. I do tell him where I'm going, that's just common courtesy, but he never really questions anything because of our mutual trust and respect of one another. We treat each other well, love each other wholeheartedly and we trust that this is enough...the other doesn't need or want to go do something stupid because we've got someone so amazing right in front of us. If you look at it that way then marriage is really like two roads running parallel to each other, occasionally being blocked from one another by trees, but always knowing that just around the next bend they'll be together again. The twists and turns that our paths take us down on our own make the times together even more appreciated.