January. The month of getting all resolved. Losing weight must be the #1 resolution. Has to be, right? Check out your neighborhood gym the first week of January. You can't breathe for all the enthusiastic perspiration! Now look in again around mid-February.
Cricket sounds and rolling tumbleweed. Yeah, January is definitely the month for resolutions.
When I was planning my wedding, there were very few things I was resolute on. Pricey gown? Eh, as long as I felt good in it, I didn't care how much it cost. Fancy frenchy cake topped with a 4 ft tall blue sugar sculpture swan? Nope. Little bakery down the street hooked me up with a simple rolled fondant number.

But there were some things that I wasn't going to compromise on. I was resolute that we would have personal letters to each other read aloud during the ceremony. (Glad I did - it's the #1 thing people commented on, and really personalized an otherwise boilerplate Catholic mass.) I was resolute that my adorable, but very young and fidgety 3 year old niece would spend a minimum amount of time up by the altar. And I was resolute that we book a night in a hotel the day AFTER the wedding. I can't tell you how glad I was I did that, by the way. Not having to check out by 11am and haul everything home was heaven itself.

So how about you? What are you resolute on? What do you care deeply about in regards to your wedding? What gets a "whatever"?

-Slam-

So sings the door, after our 700th fight about the same thing. A fight about what, exactly? The reason behind the fight scarcely matters (can'theevermanagetogetoutthedoor ontimeImeanhowhardisittolookatyourwatch everyonceinawhile?) What matters more is that we seem to have this fight over. And over. And twice on Thursdays.

So is this a sign of a bad relationship? Are we hopelessly broken? Should I be flipping through the marriage counselor yellow pages instead of writing this blog right now?

Nah. I don't think of this eterna-fight as a huge problem. Rather, it's a....a delightful little signpost! Fights like this are a great way to really zero in on what you love the most about your partner. There's a great way to take a chronic fight and turn it into an opportunity to appreciate your partner even more. Here, I'll take a hypothetical situation and break it down to show you what I mean.

So imagine there's this scorching heartbreaker of a blogger. Imagine she's been married about 4 years. And let's just say - oh I don't know - that her husband is sometimes late. That he sometimes takes what seems like forever to decide on anything. That getting out of the house and on the road is sometimes such an excruciatingly long process that sometimes she feels like getting in her little red car and speeding away without him to their favorite restaurant.

Their favorite hypothetical restaurant.

Anyway.

After a while, our hypothetical heroine decides to take away more than an ulcer from these fights. She puts a little thought into it and realizes eventually that which makes us crazy, is likely to be the flip-side of what made us fall in love in the first place. Being indecisive is just the flip-side of being very thoughtful and creative (which hypothetical husband truly is.) Taking a long time to get in the car to go eat dinner is maddening. Taking a long time to write a surprise love letter or to build us some gorgeous bookshelves is not. And personally, I'll take the shelves and sweet nothings over a quick meal - any day.

So think about it. What crazifies you about your soon-to-be-spouse? And what's on the other side of that annoying habit? I'm convinced that once you flip it over you'll literally love what you see...

I just returned from convention in Las Vegas. There I met all kinds interesting people (more on them later) and did all kinds of interesting Vegas-y stuff. But mainly I walked around and people-watched. And was struck by something.

Though I know people call it the City of Sin, it also seems to be the City of Couples. I'm sure there were plenty of loners there, but for some reason it seemed like everyone was walking with someone. Buddy, husband, group of friends, prostitute, what have you.

One type I found extra-fascinating to watch were couples. Couple-couples. I saw men betting hundreds of dollars while their wives or girlfriends watched and bit their nails. I watched women log hours at the blackjack table with a husband coming over only occasionally to say hi and to give her a good luck kiss.

And I thought: how cool.

How cool that gambling - which can be dangerous and destructive - can also be something entertaining for both parties. And even bonding. After all, I know a lot of the cash being pushed toward the dealer didn't belong only to the hand that pushed it. I'm sure some of it was the couple's collective money yet only one half of the couple was deciding to stick, fold, raise, split, double.

That's a lot of trust. Which brings me to something else I encountered during my Vegas trip. Most of the people I met at the convention were people who worked for themselves (and I might add, were incredibly smart and fun.) And most of those people had once worked for 'the man' but who grew their side business large enough to eventually leave the boss behind and go full-time on their own.

Exciting! Risky!

When I asked a lot of these people what their spouse had said when they made the jump and left that steady paycheck behind, all of them said they had their spouse's full support. Again, most of these conference-goers were smarter than your average clock-puncher, and so their entrepreneurial success was a safe bet. But still, it was a bet. A gamble. One they were able to take because they had a spouse believing in them and their dreams.

Which made me realize that when you enter a marriage, you're not just taking on a partner. You're not just taking on extra laundry, here, folks. You're also taking on their dreams, their risks. Accepting a proposal of marriage is also accepting how risk-happy your intended is.

How comfortable are you with dreaming someone else's dreams? Assuming their risks? What if they were the opposite:: conservative and very risk-averse. Would you be okay with that, too?