Oh, How I Loathe Thee! Let Me Count the Ways!

HOW I LOATHE THEE

“So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable, and strangely easy to mistake for loathing....”

Mitch and I quote this part of Stardust to each other often. I have experienced what this character is talking about, and my husband knows it, too. So in honor of our 14th Anniversary, we have been fondly remembering and have chosen to commemorate some of the ways my husband makes me LOATHE him! Haha!

1. He doesn’t know the color of my eyes. My entire life I’ve always known that my eyes are GREEN. My driver’s license even says so, okay? A lot of people comment on my eyes. A boy in high school even called them weird. I’d prefer “weird” to the ongoing fight my husband and I share that just fills my heart with rage! He says that because my eyes have brown with the green, that they are HAZEL! While I believe the word hazel sounds pretty—it’s even a beautiful name for a girl—it’s also not the color of my eyes. One time we read a cheesy Jack Weyland love story together and a couple in the book had this same sort of fight; the boy in the book won so my husband thinks that he gets to win on this, too, but these are MY eyes, and they are definitely GREEN!

• He has a love affair with his BIKE. Mitch likes to ride mountain bikes. That’s fine with me. I love that he has a healthy outlet and hobby. What I don’t like is when I find more picturesque photos on his phone of JUST HIS BIKE (or of him with his bike) than I can find of him together with me. And let’s not even mention the way I have to remind him to take photos of important milestones with the kids. But the bike? We’ve got plenty of those! He’s even written an ode to one of his bikes when the best deal he’d ever had turned too good to be true. He openly POURED his heart and soul out about his sob story on a biker page! Sometimes I even wonder if he LIKES that I am JEALOUS of his bike! 

• My Clarinet Puts Him to Sleep.   Poor Mitch may never live this one down. When I studied Music Ed in college, I was preparing to be a band teacher and had many performance classes for clarinet. One semester I worked on literally the hardest clarinet piece I have ever played. Mitch sat by me for the whole concert and was awake the whole time UNTIL it was my turn to perform (I did a great job, by the way). When I got back to our seat, my husband was asleep! Not just sleeping, but OUT COLD! I had to wake him up after my part of the concert! (Mmm-hmm.) I can laugh about it now. I used to say that was the reason I quit playing clarinet, but that’s not really true. What is true is that he gets a well deserved glare every time this story is brought up, even if we’re both laughing about it and especially if he says clarinets are boring! 

• He’s “Horn”-ie (His words, not mine). Whenever our family goes somewhere, he’ll load up all the children and lie in wait for me to stroll out to the car. Just as I walk directly in front of the hood, he honks the horn and I jump 10 feet into the air. It happens EVERY SINGLE TIME! I’ve got this startle reflex that I cannot control. It always makes him laugh and it always ticks me off, and he tries to smooth it over by calling what he does “flirting”! Grrrr! 

There are more things I could list, like the way he licks my hand to gross me out if I cover his mouth, the way he says exactly the right thing to push my buttons on purpose, and the way he makes fun of some of the most romantic songs of all time that I happen to love. When you add it up it all creates this sensation of highs and lows, happiness and rage, and before I know it, I am proclaiming to the world just how much I LOATHE MY HUSBAND! I loathe him and I love him deeply!

Here’s to 14 more years and beyond, Love!  I honestly love who I am when I am with you, and I love the way joining our lives has allowed us to create something beautiful together.

Happy Anniversary!