marriage.matthewthornton.info

When people first start dating, and then become engaged, I don’t know if a lot of them think about some of the details of married life. Sure, some of them do, but not all of them. I’m not an old pro yet (I’m hoping I will be by my late 90’s though!), but I have some topics that I think couples should really think about that maybe hadn’t come up before.
A lot of these also relate to living together as well.

Topic 1: Bedtime
As it turns out, Matt is more of a night person and I’m a morning person. Shouldn’t make a whole lot of difference, right? Riiight… When I’m ready for bed, he’s ready to start a movie. When we first started living together, we’d go back at the same time and he’d sit in bed and read. For the most part, this is not an issue. He stays up to play on his computer, watch a movie, etc while I go back, read a chapter in a book, and go to bed. This is good for me because he keeps the cats out with him so I can fall asleep easily. Once in a while, I ask that he come back and go to bed with me, but this routine is something both of us can deal with. Besides, it’s waking up beside him that is the best part of my day!

Topic 2: Pets
We really are just learning as we go along how to deal with having our own pets (if you don’t know, we have two domestic shorthair cats named Peanut and Lou). Both of our families had cats as we were growing up, and when we moved to Germantown, I think Matt was still feeling guilty for asking me to move. So, when I asked if we could get a cat, he said sure. My friend Jenn’s cats had kittens and the rest is history. We couldn’t just get one cat- we’re gone at work a big portion of the day and it would have gotten lonely by itself. So we got a pair of brothers. We’ve now gotten into a rhythm of taking care of them. Matt cleans their litter boxes and I feed them. We both play with them and spoil them. However, we’ve decided that once we’re in a house and pretty settled, we want to get a dog as well- A big floppy one. Matt described a scene that I’d love to see. We come home after work and the dog is sitting on the couch with Lou and peanut batting at his ears. Then the dog does one of those “I’m content, but a little annoyed” doggie sighs. *LOL*

Topic 3: Holidays
This is truly a subjective topic. Matt and I lucked out with our families, as they are both really flexible when it comes to WHEN a holiday is celebrated (could be the week before, week after, etc), so we don’t have to worry about angering one side of the family or the other with our time spent with them. Also, there are certain holidays that are more celebrated with one family rather than the other. Matt’s side always has something planned for Thanksgiving. My family doesn’t really do a whole lot for that one, since its kind of a catch-up week in the world of academia. So, we usually do something with Matt’s family for that holiday. It becomes sticky in the instance of Christmas, however. Big holiday with –big(ish) families on both sides with plans that change from year to year. We try to keep the lines of communication open far enough in advance so that we know what is going on, and how much time we need to take off of work.

Topic 4: Hobbies
Not just “what do you collect” kind of hobbies. What kind of movies do you watch? Do you like to go to the theater? Do you want to take a class (for example, cooking) together? Do you go to the gym, or go for walk? Do you enjoy sports?
A typical easygoing weekend in this Thornton household (during football season) is as follows:
Friday night: maybe get dinner out after work. Come home, play with the kitties and watch a movie/play a board game. Depending on if we have friends over, we might go for a walk.
Saturday: leisurely get up (this means around 9 for me and after 10 for Matt). Have breakfast/brunch either at home or going out to eat. Have football on the TV. I will sit and craft (crochet, beading, scrapbooking, card-making) while he’s on his computer as well. Around noon, we’ll eat lunch and take one room to straighten up, unless a game is on that we both want to watch. Then we do spurts of cleaning during commercials, or at halftime. Dinner is usually a “fend for yourself” kind of thing with sandwiches and snacks.
Sunday: Possibly church for me either at 8 or 11. Football is on the TV. Pretty much a repeat of the previous day, but we make sure that we get the chores that we avoided from yesterday done on this day.

Topic 5: The dreaded chores
After a few months of living together, Matt and I realized that we don’t have the same definition of a couple of things. What entails a room being messy or clean is included. Let me preface this by saying that my mom tried her best to get me to be a clean and organized person. It has somewhat backfired. When Matt finally told me that we HAD to clean the apartment, I chose to clean the bathroom, dust the furniture, and organize my clutter. I DESPISE doing dishes (and folding socks), but don’t mind washing the windows or scrubbing a toilet.
The best piece of advice I could give about this topic: work with each other’s strengths (or at least what they don’t mind doing). Matt takes care of cleaning the kitchen. I try to stay up with cleaning the bathrooms and I’m supposed to keep up with Laundry. Both of us don’t enjoy laundry, but I figured that if he’s responsible for dishes, I should man-up and take responsibility for laundry. Needless to say, we get backed up at least once a month.
I didn’t include topics like faith, money, kids, morality, jobs, school, family issues, and goals because those are things that EVERYBODY tells you to talk about. These are the things that I learned about just going along.

Jess

I read finance blogs on a periodic basis and this afternoon I saw an entry asking about advice on buying an engagement ring and I thought this may be pertinent to some that may read this site, so I decided to post my comments:

Go to Blue Nile. I loved the experience with them. My fiancee had an *idea* of what she wanted it to look like and armed with that and a little bit of research into what to look for in a diamond, (Cut, clarity, color, carat) I went to the website. They let you pick the specifications you want for the diamond and they’ll put it on the ring that you want. (That’d be my only problem with Blue Nile–their selection of ring types is somewhat limited but they have plenty of diamonds to go on them!) The ring is delivered via FedEx and it arrives in a pretty little polished wood box.
My suggestion would be to buy something between 1/3 karat and a 1/2 carat but make it as close to the best diamond you can find in that size range (Ideal cut, no inclusions, clear color). My wife’s hand *still* sparkles with all of the reflection coming off that small diamond and everyone that looks at it says that it looks like a 1/2 to 3/4 karat diamond. I was a grad student when I proposed and my budget was roughly what yours is and I got her a ring that she still comments on.
One extra bit of advice–talk with your insurance company about getting the ring insured (my company calls it a personal articles policy). It’s about 20 bucks/year (and they added it onto my car payment so I barely even notice it) and, at least through my company, it covers loss, theft, or even just loss of the diamond if it falls out of the arms that hold the diamond snap off.
Hope this helps and good luck!

Matt

After only just 5 months of marriage and over 3 years of knowing each other, Jess and I have developed a lot of inside jokes and habits that most people would find just plain odd.  I’ve decided to do a translation for those who will be near us in the future:

• If you see one of us pat the other kind of forcefully on the shoulder 3 times, this is our quiet way of say “love you”.  It comes from a Family Guy episode:
• If you hear something like a kiss and are wondering where it’s coming from, Jess and I tend to do the kissing sound from across the room and it’s the other’s job to reciprocate.  Don’t know where this began but it’s stuck.
• If you’re in the car with us, and I go off center, Jess will normally say, or I’ll beat her to it and preemptively say, “road”.  This came from when we were dating and I’d look at her on our way to Christiansburg and Jess would react and say, “Road!” if I started shifting at all.  Now that she is more comfortable with me as a driver, she just says it in a “whatever”-like tone.
• “The Blue One”:  About a year ago there was a commercial of a husband and his wife.  Every time she asks him, he answers and she does the exact opposite.  It was a verizon commercial and the husband wants the blue phone.  When the wife asks “Which color do you think is me?”  The husband thinks for a second and goes “…the blue one.”  She obviously takes the red one and he gets the phone he wants.  Whenever Jess asks me my opinion and immediately does the opposite, I always say “The Blue One.”

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but if I can think of any more in the next couple of days, I’ll add them.

Matt

On all of these social network sites there are these quizzes for what people are doing, thinking, and what their favorites are.  I was always curious as to why there wasn’t a similar quiz for married couples because while couples are still individuals, there are still some things you can learn about them as a couple:

Do you sleep on the same side of the bed every night?
Yes, but we’ve switched recently.

Have you ever had a fight where one of you had to leave the house?
Nope.

How often do you say “I love you” to each other?
10+ Times/ day.

Do you wear each other’s clothes?
Jess has been known to wear some of my sweatshirts and sweaters.  I tend to wear her t-shirts once in a while.

What music do you have in common?
We listen to a lot of the same music all the time.

Do you share the same political views?
We agree on the severity of the problems, but we never agree on the solutions.

What are you doing right now?
Watching “Almost Famous” w/ Jess while I write this blog and work on straightening up the Living Room.

What was the last couple you had dinner with?
Lee and Rach

How often do you text each other?
About twice a day.

What is the latest that you’ve stayed up together?
Around 3:30am.

What’s your favorite dinner together?
Spaghetti

Where’s your favorite restaurant?
Ceritano’s in Blacksburg…Best.Pizza.Ever.

What was something that we did that was the “first time” for both of us?
We went to a baseball game together.  (We’re the National’s good luck charm.)

What’s something you both hate to do.
Laundry

What’s your average bedtime?
10 for Jess, 12am for me.

What’s your favorite movie when you just want something “on”?
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Jess, Matt

Apologies to those who read Matt’s message and thought he was being serious. It was an April Fools “joke”.  Its not that we think that adoption is a joke… its something that we’ve discussed and think is one of our options if it turns out that we can’t get pregnant (when we decide to start having kids).

So, just had to clear that up before anything else- one of the reasons this is kinda funny is because Matt and I have made it clear that we won’t be having kids in the immediate future. We’re really just getting used to being married, and to tell the truth, I like having him to myself for a while. Its selfish and stubborn, but hey- its honest.

Also, I’m not ready for kids. I want kids, I like kids, but I’m definitely not ready for them. I can’t even remember to do the laundry half of the time! What am I supposed to do with a child?

Don’t get me wrong; as Matt posted before, I get bitten by the baby bug plenty of times. I see a cute baby while we’re out sometime, or we’ll be walking through a store and see baby “stuff” and I make the obligatory “awww” noise. I think that we’ll be good parents, but not for another couple of years.

Here’s my “lesson learned” for this week:
To keep from getting too stressed, make each other laugh. This has been a stressful year in many ways, for a lot of people I know as well. In order to not explode from all the little things that can get to you, let it out in a laugh.
Matt makes me laugh at least twice a day (intentionally or unintentionally) and I can’t say how much that has helped with things. It also helps that I work with some people who have a very unique view on life. So, in all, laugh a little… its good for ya!

Jess

Well, Jess and I have been together for a little over 3 months now and it has been the most fantastic 3 months of our lives.  We are loving each other so much that we now think it’s important to share the love with a new member of the family.  We have decided to start the adoption process.  The whole Kindle thing is really just the first in a number of steps to clear out our second bedroom to make way for the little guy (or gal).  I have spoken with my company and they have agreed to allow me to work from home for a while while the child settles in and Jess is beginning to look at different crochet patterns to dress the baby and we are looking into a lot of different ideas for home-made baby foods, so if you have any ideas please let us know.  Jess is determined to raise the baby Catholic, so in an attempt to fit in with the rest of the family, I will begin RCIA classes in June.
Jess and I have signed on with the AFD Malawi Adoption Agency (the same agency that Madonna uses, apparently) and have already had our first interview.  Because of the plans we have discussed above, they consider us a super, wholesome family and have moved to the top of the list and we should have news about our child in the next several weeks.  Please keep us in your thoughts as we look forward to this next step in our married lives.

Uncategorized

The Puerto Rico pictures I have are now on the web.  I’ll add more once I get Jess’ phone.  Have a good evening.

Matt

Jess and I rent from Netflix.  We try to alternate back and forth so that we each get something we’re interested in watching in each shipment.  I had heard out in the ether that the movie Pi was a really cool, interesting movie.  It was on a subject that interested me.  (Number Theory has always interested me, don’t ask me why.)  I had convinced Jess that it sounded like a good movie, that was kinda like The DaVinci Code, and that we ought to take a look.  The premise of the movie was cool; trying to find patterns in nature and, particularly in the stock market and this mathematician’s personal journey with schizophrenia, and the various conspiracy theories that emerge as a result of his work.

The movie sucked.

The movie sucked big time.

So at the end, Jess and I were sitting there and I asked her what she thought.  She said “It was…ok…I can see why people have liked it so much.”  I said something along the same lines and we headed to the kitchen to make a snack.  There was…something…in the air.  Not tension, but just something unresolved.  I broke the ice a little and said that the movie wasn’t quite what I thought it was going to be and Jess kinda agreed.  The next step was some additional critique of the movie that Jess sort of followed along and agreed with and then at one point (I don’t remember who.) one of us just point blank said “I hated that movie!” and the other person said almost relieved “So did I!!!”

Why is this “A Case Study in Communication”?  Because it was a microcosm of communication in relationships.  It’s whether or not you liked a movie…straightforward, isn’t it?  The more we talked after we both came to the realization that we both hated the movie, we found out I was worried that she thought I was someone with really bad judgment and taste in movies and she was worried I thought she wasn’t educated or cultured enough to appreciate the movie.  That “something” in the air?  Imagine something far worse lasting for a lot longer than 10 minutes.  Wouldn’t it be easier to just dispel it right from the start?

Matt

Sorry we haven’t been posting a lot recently.  Jess and I went on a long weekend trip to Puerto Rico.  We’re both a little more relaxed, a lot more tan, and looking forward to Spring.  I’ll post pics when I get the chance in the next few days.

Just as a quick review of Puerto Rico, Jess and I both highly recommend the trip!

Matt

Oh, boy have Jess and I been bitten by the baby bug recently.  It seems that every time we see a cute baby, it turns into a 2 or 3-day period of reflection about whether or not we want babies or not.  Jess has been, I have to say, a bit more symptomatic in this case, but I still get it once in a while as well.  The other night, we were talking about how we’d teach kids responsibility and whether or not sending them to college is a privelege or a right for the kid.  I’m sure next week we’ll talk about what kinds of names we want for the kids.

We have a strategy.  Not a plan.  Plans when it comes to this fail miserably.  (You know, the whole God laughing thing.)  We’d like to enjoy being married for a while, travel a little here and there, and decide what we want to do when we grow up.  In the meantime, as you could see from my minipost before, you can look at pictures of our other babies.

Matt