Jul 6 2011

It’s Not Rocket Science, But It Is Hard to Do

Remember when the Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated in the Mars atmosphere because some part of the trajectory was calculated using English units instead of metric units?  We think this is the perfect analogy for what can happen in a relationship.  It takes a lot of arithmetic to make a successful flight, and being involved in an entrepreneurial endeavor can cause an enormous amount of external atmospheric pressure on a marriage.  Human errors and failures of communication can be fatal.

We’re hoping to create a community for people to share their own successes as well as tales of crashing and burning.

We want to say at the outset that by marriage we mean any committed relationship, and that we fully support the right of our LGBT friends to have the same legal benefits afforded by the marriage contract as we do, even though we’re not certain why the government confers any benefits at all.

We cared so little about the legal part of marriage that we didn’t actually get a marriage license until three years after we eloped to Alaska.  We didn’t claim any tax deductions, insurance benefits, or even free spousal rental car privileges during that time, but it didn’t change the essential nature of our connection to have a piece of paper from the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder’s Office.  We will discuss all of the nuances around the definition of marriage as we go along.

There are a lot of big juicy topics that we’re planning to cover, such as:

    • Work and Love (Hat tip to Dr. Freud)
    • Core Values, or What Compatibility Really Means
    • Communication
    • Gender
    • Identity and Intimacy
    • You Can Have It All, Just Not All at the Same Time; or “It’s easy for you because you don’t have children.”
    • Priorities – Actions Speak Louder Than Words
    • Talk About It, But Not Too Much
    • Cardinal Virtues (Patience, assuming good intent, benefit of the doubt)
    • Introvert / Extrovert
    • Early Bird / Night Owl
    • You Knew What You Were Getting Into; or How to Renegotiate Initial Expectations
    • Nice Guys Finish First / Try a Little Tenderness
    • How Public Do You Want to Be?
    • Health and Fitness: Moderate vs. Maniac
    • Cheerleader / Critic
    • Work / Play
    • Success / Failure
    • Happiness
    • Tales from the Edge:  Near Misses
    • Calling It Quits
And that should get us started.