Climate Control

To the married women out there: do you ever wonder if you and your husband would be matched on those dating websites? I mean, don’t sites like E-harmony and Match.com make each person fill out ridiculously long questionnaires to help identify key traits, similar tastes, and common goals? I met my husband in college but sometimes I catch myself wondering if the internet fates would have aligned us together unknowingly, should we have needed to go that route. Do our personalities fit together on paper as nicely as they do in real life?

There are so many ways that we are literally the same person, but just different genders. We’re both first-borns, both leaders, and we’re fairly outspoken ; we are active, competitive, and incredibly stubborn; we both feel satisfied helping others, thus the exact same career choice in health care; we’re both sarcastic brats who put on a tough front while being tender-hearted on the inside; you get my point, I’m sure. But this post is about one big fatty difference we have. I wonder if the dating websites have a question that reads, “Would you rather die by heat or by cold?” because if they do, we’d never match up as potential soul mates.

Nate was born in Wisconsin which boasts extremely cold winters. I was born in Missouri which boats extremely hot and humid summers. We are both products of our environment, without a doubt, and for some reason this is just now hitting me after 2 years of marriage and 7 years together. It was obvious way back when, just by looking at our younger selves in college.

Picture this: it’s a cold and snowy day as college students walk to and from their classes, all bundled up in coats and gloves. Then you see this one girl literally running across the quad with her gigantic winter jacket pulled securely around every inch of exposed skin, hood and all. She does not stop to say hello to her friends, for she has her eyes on the prize—getting into the next building to shelter her from the cold. She becomes a mega-biyatch when the temperatures dip below freezing so you might as well let her run from class to class just to avoid her wrath.

Then there is this adorable Wisconsin transplant who decided to attend college in St. Louis. Neither he nor his northern parents had a clue what STL summers would be like, but they found out quickly as they moved their beloved son into the dorms in August (the hottest and humidest month eva). Said WI boy calls his mother after 3 days in a non-air conditioned dorm room and begs her to ship a window AC unit to him. He might die without it. He really might. He has now decided that Missouri summers are his own personal hell and he honestly does not know if he can survive four years in this heat. (Of course, it’s all worth it in the end when he meets that crazy biyatch who sprints around to avoid the cold. He’s glad he stuck it out in St. Louis, don’t worry.)

Fast forward to present day: that guy and that girl got married, and because the dude endured Missouri summers for 7 years the chick decided to suck it up and take on Wisconsin winters for a few. It’s only fair, right?

I sometimes forget that Nate’s fragile northern body cannot handle temperatures above 75 degrees without being FORCED to complain about his discomfort. Case in point? Tonight’s dinner time interaction that left me rolling on the ground in laughter while contemplating our differences in this marriage.

Nate: I have a bead that is about to drip.

Julia: No clue what you are talking about.

N: I’m sweating. It’s so effing hot in here. I can’t take it anymore.

J: (Note to self: the high for today was literally 74 degrees. It was approximately 68 degrees at the time of this incident.)

N: I mean, I take a hot shower, then stick my head in the oven, and proceed to eat steaming hot food. What part of that is going to cool me off?

J: Wait, why did you stick your head in the oven??

N: Because I had to pull out the stupid food! It made me even hotter!

J: You have got to be kidding me.

N: And why aren’t any of our windows open right now? This is just ridiculous.

I then proceeded to laugh for about 5 minutes straight while staring at this irritated face:

Yes, I received death glares as I snapped away to commemorate this moment.

It really just makes me laugh harder, you guys. He’s so cute when he’s hot and angry:)

I think it just drives home the fact that despite our similarities, my husband and I will never see eye-to-eye on the ’perfect’ climate. I’d take lying on a beach somewhere, drink in hand, while sweating my face off in 95 degree heat any day. He’d prefer to be downhill skiing in 0 degrees just because of all the fun outdoorsy gear he could wear for such an occasion. It’s a lesson of compromise my friends: we both get to complain when the weather gets a little too extreme for our liking. That’s normal, right?

Do other couples have this same climate control issue? How do you settle on a happy medium to avoid one of you moving to the Equator and the other to Antarctica? Yes, we are a marriage of extremes. And it makes me laugh at him when it’s hot and cry for me when it’s cold.