I like discipline. I also feel comfortable obeying rules. My husband, on the other hand, likes to break rules and, unlike me, doesn’t feel comfortable being stifled by boundaries and any kind of restrictions. He is not an anarchist or a criminal, he just likes the freedom to chose but does stay within the wider boundaries if the country’s laws! Thankfully!
I’ll give you an example. If the speed limit is 50 miles per hour, I’ll set my cruise control to 50 miles per hour. My husband will set his to 52 miles per hour because he says that his car’s speedometer is slow! He hasn’t got a speeding fine but I’d be anxious in case one came in the post weeks later!
He also doesn’t worry. I worry all the time about everything. Last Wednesday morning at about 4:00 am he had a very bad nose bleed. There was blood everywhere and the bathroom looked like a war zone. I called 111 and within five minutes an ambulance was on its way. Luckily the deluge had become a trickle just as the ambulance arrived. His blood pressure, heart rate and haemoglobin count were normal so they left him some paperwork and told him to see a doctor later that day.
I couldn’t get back to sleep. After washing the carpet and changing our bedding my husband slept like a baby. I tossed and turned and then got up and did the ironing! He couldn’t get an appointment for that day and was told to ring back first thing the following morning! I contacted 111 again, explained the situation and within a few minutes there had been a cancellation and my husband saw a GP that same afternoon!
He hadn’t been too concerned! I had been really annoyed and very concerned! He was sent for blood tests. The doctor said that there might be a problem with his platelets. I diagnosed leukaemia immediately! My husband insisted that there was nothing wrong with him and moved on. Not me! Today I rang the surgery, gave the phone to my husband to ask for his results, much to his annoyance and he was told that all was normal! “As I tried to explain to you all week”, my husband said. “Nothing wrong with me! Just one of those things!”
So, I think I have inherited another dodgy family gene to add to the ever expanding murky pool! Both my parents were worriers. Someone had to inherit so, being the eldest, I took the hit! Not that my siblings appreciate it! Nor the rest of my family!
There is, however, a gene that my husband and brother-in-law were very sorry that neither my sister nor I had inherited! My mother was always very careful with her money! My father gave her control of the family purse as soon as they got married. My mother never abused this ‘privilege’ and stuck to the mantra ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’!
I overheard my husband and brother-in-law talking. “A pity my wife didn’t inherit her mother’s ‘mean’ gene” my brother-in-law commented when my sister and I had returned from a shopping trip. “Probably too mean to pass it on” came my husband’s acerbic retort.
So, my husband and I are poles apart. Chalk and cheese or yin and yang? Either way, I am grateful that I married someone completely different to me. Imagine if we were both the same? We’d never have had all our exotic holidays! We’d probably never have travelled further than our places of work!
We’d be sitting up together in the wee early hours contemplating our stressful lives and not wanting to go out at all. No, it doesn’t bear thinking about! We balance each other out. I’m the voice of reason (sic) and he is the catalyst that I need to bite the bullet and get on with life! A union made in heaven? Maybe? But one certainly made on earth! 👠
Jenny Burrell 