Issue link: https://imageup.uberflip.com/i/500385
4 OUR YUCAIPA | MAY 2015 There are few things harder in life than marriage. Maybe that's why people are doing it less and less and those who are doing it are undoing it more and more. But love… that's the good part of life. Love is fun and juicy and exciting. It's a completely unnecessary necessity. One of the best parts about love is that it's easy. Maybe that's why it's refered to as falling — what's easier than falling? Just give into gravity, obey nature, and you'll find yourself falling. It's our nature to fall in love and follow the natural course to marriage, ignorant of all the distractions that come with it: crying babies, mounting bills, work, meddling in-laws, dogs peeing on the new carpet, trying to sleep with the World's Loudest Snorer, finding out he sorts laundry by shape, discovering she spends $200 on a hair cut every three months — and that's all on day one. It's no wonder so many people flee the dark side that marriage becomes. Wow. That took a turn. Okay — marriage isn't the dark side, it just feels like it sometimes. Marriage is a lot of hard work filled with a list of so many things that must be done in the alloted 24 hours, keeping love alive quickly falls to the bottom of the list. I know. I'm married. One of the issues I have is that my husband thinks he's hilarious when he's actually just mean. "I'm going to need a receipt for the grocery money I'm giving you," ha ha ha. Other people laugh and encourage him but they don't have to live with it day after hilarious day. One of the issues he has to deal with is his wife writes about their marriage in a public forum. But there are good things… we make a great team as parents, we respect each other's work ethic, we have fun when we go on vacation to the same city and stay in the same hotel because he's resistant to change. Yes, there are things we can work on. I recently looked around and realized that my marriage is not unique. With all of our pros and cons, we've settled into a routine that is familiar and safe. Okay… It's a rut. There doesn't seem to be time or motivation to try new things, and even active resistance to change. From time to time, I've attempted to cook new dishes for dinner, some of which have not succeeded. On these occasions, he offers to make a list of the 20 dishes he would like to stick to for the rest of our lives. I try to mix it up by trying a new alfredo sauce and he wants chicken tacos every Wednesday until we die. Occasionally I'll scream, "WE'RE SO BORING!" then go sit on the couch and watch reruns of Blood Relatives on ID, where I've learned you can't get away with murdering anyone ever — so there goes that solution. Routine is good, complacency is not. Frankly, I like our rut. I like that we do the same things in the same way. It's like an old pair of sweats. What I don't like is that we seem to do things that the two people we were when we fell in love would have never done. And they're really not big things. Sometimes it's the tone we use to speak to one another, other times it's the attention we don't pay at the end of the day… small things that don't add up to love. It's not a big deal if you look at them one at a time. But when you compare them to what we're not doing, it's a little alarming. For this issue of Our Yucaipa, we devoted much of the magazine to rekindling that romance. Think of it as a spring awakening, Valentine's in May, better now than never. If you are married, in a relationship or think that one day in the future you may consider being in a relationship, ask yourself if you can do just a little better. I know I can. Now the trick it getting my husband to read this issue. I'll tell him it's about cars… "Marriage is hard," said Captain Obvious By Courtney Fox Taylor P.S. He wanted me to mention that he washes my car early in the morning every other Saturday. Thank you, honey.