Husbands Come in Handy

I love my husband.  In many ways, we're a lot alike.  We're pretty laid back, come-as-you-are people.  Our senses of humor are, to put it gently, slightly warped.  And yeah, we have a knack for sticking our feet in our mouths...

But we're also quite different from one another.  Besides the obvious fact that he's a dude and I'm clearly not a dude (at least I hope that's clear!), we just function differently.  It dawned on us about six months into our marriage, when we looked at each other, a strange realization rising in each of our minds.  I don't remember what precipitated the conversation, but it went something like:

Him: "I didn't realize you were so emotional."

Me:  "I didn't realize you weren't."

That was about eleven-and-a-half years ago, and we have had plenty of opportunity to witness one another's responses, with all their tears and stoicism, to life's major events and minor occurrences.  I'm not sure if Geoff has quite figured out what to do with my tears and worries - because along with this "emotional" thing comes a propensity to overanalyze everything to a ridiculous degree - but I do know one thing:  I am thankful he's not like me.

On more than one occasion, I have been ruffled to tears or nearly to tears over some event, the importance of which might be debated.  (And of course, I do debate the importance of such events from every possible and impossible angle, further exacerbating my emotional turmoil...)

Then my husband weighs in on the matter.

"So."

So?  The world might be falling apart or our children might be doomed to delinquency or so-and-so might have interpreted such-and-such that I said thus-and-so or... or... or...

Or maybe he's right.  Maybe the things that ruffle me so are mere passing breezes, not the earthquakes I imagine them to be.

Maybe... no, most definitely...  It is a very handy thing to have this particular husband around.