Saturday 11

My gratitude list today completely revolves around a fight that Jer and I had last night. Here’s the story:

Jer and I really, really value honesty in our relationship – almost to a fault. For Christmas, I asked Jer for some cereal bowls. Jer picked some out on Amazon and showed me before he order them and, to be honest, I really didn’t like them at all. I felt like it would be ungrateful to tell him that, so instead I just told him that I liked them and then kept my mouth shut for a couple days. Jer ordered them, they arrived in the mail, I still didn’t like them, but I still told Jer I did. I mean, it was a present, and I am grateful for the time, money, and thought that went into it. I was raised to be grateful for every gift given to me – no matter what – and that it is better to keep your thoughts to yourself than to hurt other people’s feelings. The problem? Jer and I are so honest with each other that I felt like I was betraying his trust by not telling him my honest feelings. I kept telling myself that it was for his benefit, but I just couldn’t get rid of the guilt. So I told him. And obviously he was upset because I didn’t tell him before we ordered them. So today, I am grateful for:

1- Honesty. It really is the most important thing in our relationship – so much so that I can’t even keep one opinion secret from him. We always talk about how the worst thing ever would be for one of us to have an emotional affair on the other one – we go to each other first for everything, and anything else would be cheating.

2- Jer’s ability to naturally calm me down. When I fight with my mom or sister, we yell our lungs out. Jer and I never yell. I don’t know what  it is, but he just naturally makes me not want to yell.

3- Patience. Jer never gets overly frustrated with me, even though there are plenty of opportunities to.

4- Understanding. Arguably, the thing that I love most about Jer is that he honestly wants to understand me. Instead of getting mad or defensive, Jer sat down and starting asking me how and why and all the ifs ands or buts about how I feel. He wants to know more than just my current feelings. He wants to know how those feelings came to be.

5- For cuddling while fighting. We always do this. It’s a little hard to be mad at someone when you are cuddling with them?

6- For our ability and desire to examine our relationship. Jer and I love picking apart our marriage, discussing all of its intricacies, and then making changes.

7- That I married my true partner. We consider each other intellectual equals, and we like to use logic and analysis to improve our marriage.

8- That Jer and I are able to talk about the ways that our marriage has both lived up and failed in comparison to our ideals of what marriage should be.

9- That we can do all of the above without getting offended or hurt.

10- For making up

11- For Amazon’s return policy . . .