Deliberation is Good for the Marriage

As a newlywed and a practitioner of dialogue and deliberation, it won’t surprise my colleagues that my new husband and I have spent every night of our marriage (48 nights as of this writing) engaged in a nightly reflective practice about our day as a couple. Without word, we turn off the television after channel surfing between the monologues of David Letterman and Jay Leno (later if they have compelling guests or our favorite features –small town news, headlines, or the now infamous, but waning in punch, Letterman’s Top Ten) and convene on the back patio with a small cup of home-roasted almonds and a glass of wine.

We knew each other in high school. I was the editor of our high school yearbook; he was the photographer I obviously trusted or liked because we spent hours together in the dark room despite my deep (and first) love with someone else. But we lost contact with each other for thirty-three years until I recently contacted with him using my web search skills and Google’s insatiable application of metadata.

We spend our evenings musing over questions about what was memorable, what we learned, what inspired us, what we hope to accomplish, why we love each other…no topic is off limits as we sit in the dark on the back patio. We are a married couple dating for the first time.

Through this reflective practice, we define who we are as a couple. We define our dreams, our hopes our aspirations. We make plans. We weigh the costs and consequences of our decisions. Should he turn down work to rebuild our leaky garden roof and build a deck for the dormant hot tub we got bartering for his labor? Should he take a full-time job with benefits? What if the money is not commensurate for his contract work, but provides stability and health care benefits for both of us? Will he be happy working for someone else in a dead-end job with limited advancement?

These are exactly the kind of questions that would have frustrated me as an MBA prior to my exposure to deliberative democracy, but I have become (gasp) one who now appreciates process and reflection. Little did I know that learning to be a reflective, deliberative citizen would be good training ground for being a wife.

Rearranging our virtual furniture

In real life, women are always rearranging the furniture. At least that’s what I’ve heard.

My friend Emma moved sofas, standing lamps, end tables, and entertainment cabinets so often that Jess could go to work in the morning and have no clue what direction he’d be facing as he sat in his favorite armchair to watch the evening news. I can picture Jess coming home bone-tired from a full day of work after one of Emma’s energy-filled home rearrangement fits and sitting down on the cat tree to watch the dining room table. (What did you do with the t.v., Emma!)

My dad is always complaining because my mom frequently determines a better way to arrange the kitchen cabinets. According to my father, this strategy is designed to ensure that he can never find anything on his own.

Once when we were preparing to move for another, better-paying job, my father laid credit (blame) for the move on my mother. He completely shocked me when he stated that my mother, the nesting, creatively domesticated, mostly-stay-at-home mom “got restless”.

It’s time to move on,” he said. “Your mom’s getting restless.

So now, she doesn’t get restless to leave town.

But somewhere in her she’s hard-wired to rearrange the cupboards. Maybe it’s hard-wired into every woman.

Whatever.

It drives my dad nuts when he can’t find … well, nuts, for example. (Dad, they’re under the cabinet that you build on the kitchen table side.)

Or small bowls (up top to the left as you face the sink), or plastic containers (got me there, I don’t have a clue!).

He loves my mom, but this constant changing of the pot and pan storage space doesn’t sit well with him. Personally, I think that’s just an excuse for him to stay out of the kitchen. but that’s a blog for another day.

While Terry and I will surely deal with issues of furniture and kitchen arrangement, it’s also likely that we’ll have issues with the technologies that we use.

OK, everyone who knows me and is surprised that technology plays an important role in our relationship, please stand…I can’t see you…are you standing? Of course not. Silly question

So here’s the real test…when we originally launched our blog, this was the design that I suggested and we used:

But this design has lots of problems. I don’t like the way (or lack thereof) that it shows additional pages. I want a page the is dedicated to telling the story of how we met and re-met. (It’s pretty cool. I’ll get it up there soon!)

I’m tired of the dark background. I like clean and minimalist. Black feels formal. White can go either way which is why I chose this fun header.

I love the multiple meanings behind the two thumbs pointing at each other while our backs are still touching tightly. You can’t see our faces, but you can imagine (and you’d be right) that we are laughing and having a good time. We are also sitting on the floor barefoot so there is a sense of vulnerability, but so confident in our love for each other that we relish being vulnerable to each other. If you could see our smiles, you would understand the playfulness we enjoy with each other, but you could also see the lines and crinkles that indicate we aren’t just naive kids. (if you could see our middle range, you’d definitely know we aren’t kids. At least we aren’t kids who get out and play sports!)

So I made this change to our blog on my own because…

• It’s easy to change back and
• I have more experience with blogs.

But maybe I should have run it by him first. After all,

• We have the same cell phone plan so we talk for free.
• We skype. That’s free and easy.
• We iChat.
• We Twitter.
• We Text.

But we are also living our lives out loud on this blog. And one of the things couples do is to sort out when they do and do not need permission from each other to make changes. Emma never asked Jess where to put the end tables. Mom never asked dad where to put the tarragon.

So where does that place me in this brave new world?

• Can I rearrange this blog and give it a new look?
• Does Terry have that same right?
• If one of us doesn’t like what the other does, how do we discuss that?

We have many things to consider, but none of them scare me.

That’s why I put up the screen shots earlier.

By the time you read this, the header on this blog may change a thousand times just as the two of us will change. But we’ll love each other through every change. Some changes we’ll laugh about upon reflection.

Like these two for example:

I think that we are “much improved”

In the meantime, I’ve captured the screen shots of what the header looked like when I first made the change. That way, if Terry changes it to something else that I and others reading this blog think is goofy, I can always refer to an earlier iteration of my own choosing and say, “see honey, I told you so.”

It’s never too early to start preparing for that eventuality!

BTW, I love you, honey!

Taylor

To my Mason-Parker Family members

[Posted on our My Family web site]

Subject: Taylor Willingham is getting married

Yeah, that’s quite a shocker, I know. But after being single for almost three decades, I’ve found someone I want to be with for the rest of my life. I found Terry Crain online, but that’s not where we met. That’s just how we found each other thirty-three years after we graduated from high school in Florida and went separate ways – me to California and he to northern Michigan. (Who do you think made the wiser move?) But I reconnected with him during my research on democracy and social networking when I joined a network for high school classmates and discovered that he had been looking for me for two years. I called him last July and over the past six months we have met in Chicago (saw the opera “La Traviata”), Texas, Michigan, New York (where he proposed to me at Lincoln Center under the Christmas Tree after the opera “War and Peace”), and again in Texas where I finally accepted his proposal.)

I was editor of the high school yearbook and he was the photographer so we spent many hours in the dark room. (These poor kids growing up in the digital age are really missing out!) He had a crush on me, but I was dating someone from another school. Still, I must have felt some fondness for him even then because it really isn’t necessary for the editor to follow the photographer around the sidelines at every football game and then spend hours with him “developing” things in the dark room. Obviously I enjoyed his company and look forward to making up for losing the last 33 years.

At age 50, we are like teenagers – silly, romantic, technologically connected, (speaking of which, my 11 year old niece is sending me ichats as I write this!), and starry-eyed. But we also have the wisdom, patience, and resources of 50 year olds! My 50th year has been fabulous – I love being 50 and don’t know why it’s supposed to be so traumatic. It just makes sense that this is the right time for me to find someone right for me and for me to BE right for someone.

So, if you’re waiting for a wedding date, I hate to disappoint you, but since we are waiting to sell his house and don’t want to waste any time, we probably won’t have a wedding…just a small affair with the folks, Brent and Terri and Ben and Becca. At our age, we don’t need all of the pomp, I’m too busy to be in the event planning business, and we absolutely DO NOT want any gifts – we’re holding garage sales in two states to get rid of excess stuff. We have lots we want to do the house and we want to travel some so he can meet my relatives and California friends. Then we’ll throw lots of parties to celebrate.

High School Memories and First Meetings

As many of you know, Taylor and I met at Lyman High School, many years ago. She was a beautiful girl , who strode into the audio visual department, where I volunteered, and was introduced to me and the faculty as the year book editor. I was instantly taken by her beauty. I stammered some with the introductions, but remember very well to this day every aspect of that first encounter. I had a terrible crush on her all through our senior year. Volunteered as a photographer for the yearbook, to be close to her. We worked side by side many hours, in the darkroom, taking photos, and setting up the layouts for the yearbook. All a reason to be by her side. At that time she was seeing someone else, someone who became her first love. I had a terrible crush on her. It wasn’t to be for 32 years before we would re meet and fall in love.

Terry