Random gifts

I love giving random gifts. When I see something that I think you'll like, or when I'm with you and you won't buy something for yourself, I like to surprise you with it later. After reading The Five Love Languages, a book that my husband actually gave me after we broke up the first time we dated, I have learned that my primary love language is giving/receiving gifts. My husband is an acts of service person, and so he has no experience with the gift giving or receiving, except for major holidays. He has worked hard on getting in tune with my love language, and gives me the best presents ever -- little notes that he writes and leaves around the house or buying my favorite snack when he goes to the grocery store. He has not gone to the length of actually going and buying me random presents, and so he doesn't quite know what to do when I give him random gifts.

Another concept that escapes Zach is the idea of giving gifts that aren't something that you need. When Christmas rolled around shortly after we got married, his constant question to me was, "So, what do you need for Christmas?" Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love the music, the decorations, the weather (when it involves the cold like it should - NC is ridiculous like that, a 70 degree Christmas, sigh), the smell of goodies baking, family, and of course...the presents! Christmas is the greatest excuse for giving people tons of gifts! I love it! I shop all year round for Christmas presents. Sometimes I forget what I have purchased and later find presents here and there still hidden after Christmas.

For me, Christmas presents are things that you want but won't buy for yourself because you might have other things that you actually need to get with your money. So, I like to give Christmas presents that are things you want, not necessarily things you need, though they do occasionally overlap. When my husband kept asking me what I needed, I would tell him, "There are tons of things that I need, but I don't want those for Christmas. I want you to surprise me with something you think I'll like." For any man, that has to be a difficult thing to hear. I know the thoughts going through his head were something along the lines of..."ok, so I buy her something and she might hate it and then she'll resent me because she got me great gifts and I did a crappy job." His next line of defense was to change his original question by one word. Honestly, that shows he was listening, so I am fortunate in that. His new question became, "So, what do you want for Christmas?"

I hate being asked what I want for Christmas. I try never to ask what someone wants for Christmas because I feel that it's my job to know you well enough that I can go out and find you something that you'll want. I have listened and paid close attention so that I have several options of things I know you haven't bought for yourself. Remember, gifts are my love language, and because I love you, then I'm paying attention to your "wants" so that I can show you how I love you. When someone has to ask me what I want or need, though I know I shouldn't think this way, the first thought that comes into my head is that they don't care enough, or know me well enough, to get me a gift without instructions. It shouldn't, but that hurts me. It makes me feel unloved.

My response to my husbands repeated questions to find out what I wanted were this, "You know what I want? I want you to surprise me." It was hard for him, but he did it, and he did a great job. However, random gifts of things you don't necessarily need are a talent and habit that he has yet to pick up from me. Honestly, that is fine, but being able to receive my random gifts with enthusiasm and as a show of my love for him is something I wish he would develop.

Recently, we went to the Orvis store, a shop that I just adore. My husband is a fisherman, I'm a fisherman, and I love this store, despite their high end prices. He also likes their products and we ooo and ahh over them together when we visit. When we were at the Orvis store, we saw a washable suede jacket for him that we both loved. Our taste is clothing is not always in sync. I believe he has no fashion sense and awful taste (gaudy and tacky are how I refer to it most often), so I revel in finding things we agree on. This jacket was one of them, and I wanted him to have it desperately. Not only would he look gorgeous, it would be suitable to dress his outfits up or down. My husband works hard for a living and most of his clothes are covered in the evidence of his labors - grease and grim - and so having versatile clothing that doesn't have a stain on it is my goal for his wardrobe.

Here is the jacket from Orvis.

The jacket was on sale. I went back a week later and bought it for him. They had to ship his size to the house, and so I didn't tell him anything about it, wanting it to be a surprise. When it came, he just looked at it and said, "You bought me the jacket." It's not that he wasn't excited about it, or that he didn't love it, but he doesn't know how to react to things that like. He is also not good at showing his excitement. That drives me insane sometimes, but my husband's outward persona is perpetually calm and laid back despite how he is feeling. That can be a gift in and of itself at times, but when you are hoping for a reaction, the even keel response is less than stellar.

My husband's approach to this expensive random gift then turned into acceptance through forced justification - he labeled it as a Valentine's Day gift, allowing him to assign a logical reason for my having purchased it in the first place. Pay no attention to the fact that the date was January 17th.

Eventually, I hope that Zach gets used to random gifts as signs of my love, and that I, in turn, learn to speak his love language of acts of service. I often do things for people and see them as "gifts" in my head, which helps me to unwhittingly speak his love language. However, I want to purposefully speak his love language in the coming year. Feel free to leave me a comment to the effect of..."Hey, Courtney, what have you DONE for Zach lately to show him your love?"

Our Story Continued...

So, the year 2008 changed everything for Zach and me. We have a close group of friends that we went through school with, and many of Zach's closest guy friends from the group decided to get married in 2008. We had five weddings on the calendar from the group of friends, and three of them were Zach's best friends.

When 2008 started, I was dating someone else, and had been for almost a year. The first wedding on the calendar came in April. I went as Zach's date because everyone sent him the invitation and knew that I would go with him. That first wedding was amazing. I was in awe of the whole thing. As Zach's date to the wedding, everyone just assumed we were together again, and it took a lot of patience to explain to everyone that we had just come as friends.

Here we are at the first wedding of 2008.

The second wedding on the calendar was in May, and was an absolutely beautiful event. When Zach and I were once again seen together by the same people who attended the first wedding, the questions came in earnest. "When are you guys getting married?" "How long have you two been together?" "Why aren't you guys dating?" "You're next, right?" Zach would smile and tell them to ask me, and then I would have to explain how we weren't together and that we were only friends. They would look at Zach (the fact that he loved me was written all over his face) and then look at me (see that I was frustrated at the inquiry) and they would tell Zach and me (mostly for Zach's benefit) that you never knew what the future held, and that everyone should start out as friends.

The hands of the happily married couple from the second wedding of 2008.

At the time of the second wedding, my then current relationship had been "in limbo", which was my fault. I had told Zach all about it, telling him that I loved my boyfriend even though most of the trouble we were having stemmed from me. I told my best friend about my relationship problems to get his opinion and advice, and what happened is that eventually Zach cried and asked me, "Why don't you love me?"

I was heartbroken when he asked me that. I did love him, I just told myself all the time that I only loved him as my best friend and not as anything more. Yet, I would have to repeatedly convince myself why I shouldn't be with Zach - the little things that irritated me about him, the reasons why it was better to have him as a friend than anything more.

When my "in limbo" relationship ended, I was out of excuses for really examining why I wasn't dating Zach. I had to be honest with myself about how I felt about him. When you are honest with yourself and really face the difficult questions that are easier to avoid than answer, it is amazing how things can change, and quickly.

Name changes...

I changed my last name to match my husband's. I know that some people don't do this any longer, but I love having a new last name. I changed all of my credit cards, my license, my social, my email, and everything else, except for my passport. When I told my husband that I really needed to get that done (it costs money to do that) he looked at me and said, "Are you planning a trip anytime soon?" He does not have a passport, and has actually never been off the east coast, so he didn't understand why I thought I needed to update mine. I thought about it, and decided he was right, it could wait.

We were soo wrong! My company needs me to travel to one of our foreign offices, and now I don't have an updated passport! Funny how things like that happen.

More of our story...

Zach and I were only friends for a long time. That suddenly changed after a Christmas party in 2005 when he kissed me. I had had just enough wine at the party to blur the friendship line and remove whatever hesitations I would have had in crossing it, and I'm sure the same thing could be said for him, in that I don't think he would have been bold enough to make a move if he had been 100% sober.

After that kiss, we started spending more and more together time without other friends, and started dating. I lived about 45 minutes from him, and he would come up and see me during the week, and I would go back to our hometown to see him on the weekend. Somehow, though, things just weren't quite right. I knew that he loved me (though he hadn't told me that), but I still couldn't promote him past the "friend" label. I started to distance myself from him, spending less time with him, and practically avoiding him at times because I knew that I needed to end the romantic relationship and was afraid of hurting the friendship we'd had for so many years.

Zach is very insightful, and probably the most insightful man that I know. He could see that I wasn't acting normally, and he finally confronted me. I told him how I felt and that I didn't think we should date anymore. He was very upset, but he told me that he would always be there for me just as he had been until that point. We spent less and less time together, though I tried to see him every time I went back to our hometown. He sent me a card that said he had always told everyone else, but had somehow never managed to tell me that he loved me. That was the first time he told me that he loved me, and it broke my heart that I couldn't tell him I felt the same kind of love for him.

The two years after we broke up were filled with casual visits, old routines, and conversations here and there as friends. He was always there for me if I needed him, and he never let me forget that.

The year 2008 changed everything....

The first Monday

This is my first Monday blog entry. This entry and every Monday entry going forward will be an upbeat post. This will be done in the effort to counteract the Monday blues...heading to work is never fun after a weekend of freedom.

My husband went camping this past weekend with the guys. He came back smelling like campfire smoke and dirt. I thought it was the most wonderful kind of natural cologne. He smelled so woodsy and manly, hahaha, and though I knew he hadn't showered the whole time he was gone, I didn't care.

Is this simply because we are still newlyweds? Will I eventually tell him to run upstairs and shower when he comes home from a camping weekend instead of drinking in the smells of experiences still lingering on his skin?

I hugged him for a solid three or four minutes when he got home. Time away always serves to clean out the cobwebs of irritation, held over childish anger, and selfishness that our daily experiences must filter through or get caught up in when they are left to accumulate.

I don't want our time spent together to become the background of our lives. Does anyone have advice for keeping each other in the foreground of our individual experiences?

I love my husband, even when he's dirty from camping with the guys. I'm glad that the newlywed-ness is still in effect, hahaha, sometimes it feels like it's gone too soon. I'm glad it has surged back into place!

Small things...

There are little things that I remember about Zach from before we were more than friends that I often think about these days that just make me smile. They are unimportant moments from the past. Little pieces of our story before we even knew it had begun.

For instance, I can remember sitting with him in English during the sixth grade. What I remember the most is that he had such a thick southern accent, that his eyes were an amazingly bright blue, and his eyelashes were so dark and long that they looked like a feathered fringe.

I remember being the only one able to successfully read his handwriting in high school. He's told me now that this was an obvious sign of our future together. At the time I was just proud of my own ability to easily read his childish chicken scratch, as myself and others called it, making me the only person able to grade his U.S History short answer questions from the daily quizzes during our sophomore year in high school.

He would call and ask me to help him buy clothes. He started this in high school and it continued despite our relationships with other people or what was going on in our lives. He let me pick out what I thought he should get, and he would listen and take my opinion seriously.

He let me drive his brand new Mustang when he had only had it for a week, though he had refused to let anyone else behind the wheel.

He loved me, though I was slow to see it or appreciate it's depth, and I know he always will.

I often wonder about these memories, these little moments that now have so much meaning. How have they helped to make the tapestry that is my life, Zach's life, and now our life together? Where do these little stitches come in? What color or detail do they contribute to the bigger picture? I know that his memories are different, that he recalls things that I don't, or that he can't remember moments that are so vivid to me. I do not know how it has all come together in the fabric of our existence, but I know that my view of this life is more bright and defined because of them.

Our story begins...

To start off this blog, I want to give you an idea of who we are, where we've come from, and how we got to this place in our lives with my next few blog entries. My husband has been one of my best friends since middle school. We met in sixth grade through our classes together, and shared many mutual friends. Our friends formed a nerdy/unpopular kid group that consisted of 8 to 10 kids over the rest of our school years through graduation and beyond.

We both grew up in Smithfield, NC, a small semi-rural town that can be easily identified with pick-ups, tobacco, and hicks. Zach lived out in the country, and I lived downtown. We didn't start hanging out after school until he was old enough to drive, and then we would get together with friends or occasionally on our own.

He took me on a date once during our junior year, hahaha, to a small ice cream shop where he didn't say more than a dozen words to me the whole time. I couldn't figure out why he'd asked me on a date at all. I knew that he was a quiet guy, but I figured that he would have something to say if we were out together. That was the first time we ever went on a date, and it was the last one of it's kind in high school. We spent quite a bit of time together, but it was always as friends after that, because he was not able to tell me that he liked me, while I was missing the obvious. I gave him my friend label and didn't think anything else about it.

Zach has always been quirky, funny (though only when he isn't trying to be), and a great friend. He would have done anything for me growing up, and later did more for me than any other friend. I never thought that our friendship would go beyond being friends into love and eventually to a committed marriage, but I am glad that I married my best friend. Having a relationship beyond a romantic one has provided the best foundation for our marriage.

I will spend more time expanding our story throughout the next week.

One Newly Wed

As the title of this blog implies, this is going to be a place where this newly wed individual is able to record and explore the experiences of being freshly married and what happens after the honeymoon is over. The joys and irritations, the actualities and previous expectations, the little things and the big, and the transitions inherent to being a married person are things that I look forward to writing down and hashing out, hopefully getting feedback and advice, and just having the space and time to see things develop. This will be my journey, but I invite you to be a part of it, and I look forward to sharing with you, and myself.

I am going to promise to myself, and to you, that I will record things here as they actually are, whether they are ideal or just plain ugly. I will try to be honest and fair in my representation of myself and of my new husband. I am going to strive to have this be far more than just a continuous string of complaints.

Mondays will be earmarked for happy little insights. These may have been learned over the weekend, or realized in the previous week without mention, but I am determined to have something positive for Mondays, a typically negative week day, hahaha.

I am going to set a goal of one entry per day, whether it is one sentence, one paragraph, one picture, or a one page entry.

I will work on getting my page designed this weekend.

Thank you for joining me on my journey to wedded bliss!