On the Other Hand

To be fair, Sam has real­ly changed the way he lives a great deal since we first met five years ago. He has devel­oped many good habits to replace bad ones. Those things real­ly do far out­weigh the issue of the stuff on the floor. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that there have been so many oth­er changes, that would just have blend­ed in with “the old ways.”

He’s much more con­scious of how things are in gen­er­al, now. He pays more atten­tion. He’s come to like liv­ing in a clean place, and he does help to keep it that way by doing things like clean­ing the kitchen in the morn­ings if it was­n’t done the night before.

Yes, he still leaves his shoes out—but they’re usu­al­ly at the edge of a room, rather than in the mid­dle of the floor.

We’ve nev­er had the “toi­let seat con­flict” that’s so com­mon with oth­er cou­ples, because he nev­er, ever leaves it up.

With most mat­ters around the house, how­ev­er, I want to do things is fine by him. If I’m hap­py, he’s hap­py. He’s par­tic­u­lar about his kitchen, which is only fair since he’s the cook.

He’s nev­er fussed at me about how I hang up his shirts, as two oth­er hus­bands did—in fact, he’s always tick­led to find that the laun­dry fairy vis­it­ed and left clean clothes for him.

He pam­pers me con­stant­ly. Today he would­n’t let me get up to refill my water glass, because “you just look so good sit­ting there.”

Right now he’s installing a ceil­ing fan. He’s gained so many skills in the last five years, espe­cial­ly in the last year! I don’t know how to do that, but I can cer­tain­ly clean up around his chair.

So all in all, I have to say that I am very thank­ful for my man. And I real­ly did want to know if my expec­ta­tions were unrea­son­able or not—sometimes I need a real­i­ty check about such things. I know that I have OCD, even if it’s a pret­ty mild case of it in most ways. I don’t always know what is OCD and what is nor­mal cleanliness.