Note to self: Don't give options

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The relationship test

General speaking, I’m pretty neurotic about everything. And my relationship is no exception… I’m obsessed with finding the trick to making marriage work.

On any given day I’m scouring the internet for articles on marriage, or badgering Jose to take some idiotic quiz on relationships. (See: “no pants + beer + food = whatever the hell you want me to do”)

This usually leads to information overload, which backfires and throws me into a completely absurd state of distress over a myriad of hypothetical situations. Generally these situations revolve around events that could never actually occur in my lifetime. Ever.  

I also question any married person I can find on how they make marriage work. I find this leads to mixed results since the information is usually bizarre, conflicting, or completely outlandish. I’ve kept a list of the advice/insanity I’ve received recently:

-          Be best friends

-          Don’t keep any secrets, including passwords and logins

-          Your husband is your partner- not your friend

-          Never go to bed angry

-          Keep your own life

-          Don’t be afraid to halt a fight until the next day

-          When you’re angry, just take off your clothes. You can’t fight when you’re naked

This all greatly confuses me. Can we still be drinking buddies? If I give you my password will you manage my inbox for me? Should I go to bed angry and naked? Well now I’m worse off than when I started. And most likely alone and naked staring at my computer, trying to remember my login name.  

So all of this was settled recently with a very memorable accidental road trip. I say accidental because we only intended to drive home from work, which usually takes about 45 minutes. But that night our quick drive down 795 turned into something like this:

And this is what I like to call a snow covered train wreck. Ten inches of snow during rush hour traffic turned our daily commute into 8 ½ hours hell in a car. That night 42 cars were left on 795 because they couldn’t make it in the storm. And there we were… in a Yaris.

If you’ve never seen a Yaris, it’s about 2 feet longer than a smartcar. I’m told you can fit 11 clowns in it. It has a top speed of 7 and runs on sunshine and glitter. Not exactly a treacherous terrain vehicle.

So let me set the scene for you. There we are, in the clown car. No snacks, no phone reception, not even a pair of gloves. The guy in front of us has gotten his car impossibly stuck, and is now flooring it in reverse in a feeble and asinine attempt to free himself. The car next to us runs out of gas. That couple got out of the car and stared at it for a while, in what I can only imagine was an attempt to resurrect it from the great beyond. The guy behind us has gotten out of his car to stamp around and spew a horrendous vocal attack at the snow. So obviously he thinks it’s time to give up on rational thinking and instead go the course of shameless insanity. (On a side note, I very much enjoy people who point and yell at inanimate objects. He was much more amusing because he was pointing and yelling at the snow on the ground, not the snow that was still falling from the sky. “YOU AGAIN! NO! GET OUT OF HERE!”)

Jose is doing what men do. He talks to himself about all things the guy in front of us is doing wrong. He gives the Yaris pep talks. He gives himself pep talks. He sets unrealistic expectations of the cars abilities and impossible timelines for when we’ll get home. Jose is going to war, and Jose will win.

 I am doing what girls do, starting the circle of despair.  My bladder realizes that there is no bathroom within a 20 mile radius, so now I have to pee. I decide there is obviously no hope for us ever moving and we will spend the rest of our lives in the car. I will never get to pee. I whine excessively. Then I try to rationalize with myself-  we will triumph! But my thought process is clouded, I really need to pee. This begins the circle of despair over again.

Everything about this situation is literally begging for an argument. Jose has zero tolerance for whining, and I can’t keep my damn mouth shut to save my life. One wrong word in either direction and we’re that couple, fighting in a clown car stuck in a snow storm. Remember them? Behind the moron stuck sideways, but in front of the drunk/crazy/delusional guy screaming at the snow. Yeah, those two.

Around hour number four I became frantic, like a dog with a cone on it’s head. Just freaking out with no place to go. I was also extremely annoyed that Jose had made a conscious decision to not come unglued. Nobody wants to be the only one in a panic. When I look at him and prepare my tirade of word vomit about our dire situation, I see that he is physically biting his tongue and violently griping the steering wheel like a steel vice.

Clearly my pessisimism is already getting under his skin.

So I decided to take the best advice I’ve ever been given. And as much as it pains any woman to say, I got it from my mother.

Mom always told me to be as nice to the people you are close to as you would be to a stranger.

As weird as it sounds, it’s good advice. We’re always nice to people we’ve just met. But as we get more comfortable around them, common courtesies melt away.

So, I kept my mouth shut. And I decided I was probably more useful as a coma patient and tried to take a nap. Jose got out and helped the car in front of us. We slowly made our way… And eventually, at 1am, we got home. Car and relationship intact.