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Our Marriage

 National Marriage Week started the 7th and runs through Feb. 14. I am going to re-post some of the things I have written over the years. Feel free to post some of your own.

Milan and I have a family secret. We are not who you think we are! We have public and private personas and many times we reverse them.
I got to thinking about this when I noticed this morning how much he now enjoys going to Farmers Market so much. When it first started, he had no enthusiasm about it however, now he loves to go and I was reminded about how our personalities conflict in some ways and unite in others. So this is a true blog post with probably a limited audience, certainly won’t be interesting to most people on here. But that’s the nature of a blog - very personal but at the same time, pretty dull and boring.
Looking at us from the outside, most of you know me as being very opinionated and outspoken, always talking or writing, perfectly willing to tell you everything I know and probably more than I know. I love being in the limelight. In a social group I want to be the leader, the public speaker, in church I want to be the Sunday School teacher, the preacher, the singer, the pianist - not all at the same time, but at least one of them in any given service. I want to be the bride at the wedding, the clown at the circus, and the corpse at the funeral. You probably see me as the quintessential extrovert.
You know Milan as being the reserved one in the marriage, softspoken, never saying anything controversial, always on the back row, never wanting to be recognized, and intensely disliking speaking in public. You probably see him as an introvert.
But when we revert to our true personality, I am the introvert. I love being at home, preferably alone and definitely with only Milan or immediate family. I detest small talk. I don’t enjoy having people just drop in to visit. I don't like parties and I'm not a joiner. I never get cabin fever during bad weather (or a pandemic). The only reason I am so active on Facebook is because I can control my part of the discussion. I can post, or not, and I can do it only when I want to. I respond when I want to, or never if that's how I feel.
I dislike chatting on the phone and only make telephone calls when I have to and usually just for business purposes. I want to be left alone with my books or my writing and don’t like to be interrupted.
Milan is the one who likes to visit and talk to people. That's why he loves to work and can't bear to think of not getting to visit with his customers on a daily basis but he only likes to talk with them in person, not on the phone or the computer. He is saddened at the death of so many of his customers and friends but he enjoys meeting old friends and relatives at funeral visitations and will stay around until he has a chance to visit with everyone he knows.
He likes visiting with people he sees when he goes shopping, or Farmers Market, and he loves going to Walmart, Lowes, Harbor Freight, and all the antique stores and flea markets.
He too dislikes talking on the phone so I have to take care of all our business when it involves the phone. He only likes dealing with people in person. He refuses to even turn on the computer. He doesn't like electronic gadgets. I love them. He refuses to use a smart phone and is afraid his analog digital flip phone will break and he can’t find another one. He gets very annoyed when businesses only have digital coupons because he loves saving money and looking for bargains but he won’t get a smart phone so he can use digital coupons.
We are united in our dislike of movies on TV or in a theatre, or anything resembling a movie. We don’t like to travel and we don’t like to leave our home for vacations or stuff like that. We love our home. It is so cluttered and messy we won’t even let company in but we have everything we ever wanted, and some items several times over, and we would never leave our home and its comforts to sleep in a tent on a riverbank somewhere. Or even in an air conditioned RV!
We both love to cook, and eat out only when we have to. We have never had a desire to take a vacation. Back in the days when we felt like it, we loved going to all kind of church services and events. But generally speaking, we love staying at home and both of us work on something, even if its nothing but scrapbooking, when we are home. And of course we love our daughter and son in law and are intensely proud of our beautiful granddaughters which we have always spoiled rotten (and still do.)
We are big fans of Southern Gospel Music, with a little side of the 50s sometimes. We like Republican politics and Milan is even more conservative and has less patience with liberals than I do. We watch Fox News usually but we also enjoy antique road show and the “Pickers” and cooking shows.
So how have we stayed married all these years and enjoy each other’s company so much? Well, our church has priority in all we do and governs everything we do and we agree on our faith. Back when I was preaching he supported me in every way as long as he didn’t have to come up front and take part. He loved working with the children and in the kitchen.
We are coming up on 60 years of marriage and have never once considered divorce. (Murder occasionally, but not divorce.) So I guess our brand of split personalities works.
Joan Rowden Hart, copyright February 2020

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