On a lighter note, it has come up almost every day since the Nancy Nix fundraiser on Friday, August 4th. Yes, it’s true; my wife and I have been married for 35 years. It was at that event because I was sitting right next to the stage where some excellent comedians were performing next to my wife where I was the set-up for a joke that personal details about my life would be discussed in public. I knew as I sat in a room full of people that I would be the subject of their comedy acts, but that was part of the fun. After all, I am shy and like to keep a low profile, which helps me come out of my shell a bit. So the comedian asked me how long my wife and I had been married, assuming we were much younger than we were. He was working on a joke that poked fun at our conservative nature. My wife is attractive, and it’s always an assumption that people make when they meet us in person that there must be some interesting story and that premarital sex would likely be involved. That’s where the comedian was going with the line of questioning. He asked how long we had been married. I told him 35 years. There was a bit of a gasp from the audience and in his face because it blew his set-up. People don’t think we are that old, but we are. And the following line of questioning was that we have kids in their 30s, which is also unusual. Because his joke required us to have children older than our marriage, and in our case, that just wasn’t possible. So to recover from this mild disappointment, he asked me if we ever argue, assuming that I would say the typical thing for a long-standing marriage, that we get along great and love each other emphatically. My response was that we argue daily, which drew a laugh because everyone assumes conflict is destructive for a marriage. But it’s the only way I can have a relationship with anybody, especially a wife.
Since that nice fundraiser, I have been asked about the length of our marriage and whether it was true that my wife and I argue daily or if it was all just a joke from many of the people there. No, it’s true; we have been married for 35 years and argue daily. People wrongly assume that getting along is how you have a good marriage, and spicy conversation is the key, at least for me. I like to fight; I will fight about anything, anywhere, about anything. Peace is boring to me. I would be mind numb if there was no conflict, so for me, conflict is a heavenly device, and the more conflict there is in my life, the happier I am. However, arguing with someone doesn’t mean that you don’t love them. It means you care for them; otherwise, you wouldn’t try to convince them of your opinion. If you didn’t love or care for them, you likely wouldn’t want to convince them over to your position. In the case of a marriage, through an argument. And I can say honestly that my wife and I have argued over something passionately nearly every day of those 35 years and likely will for another 30 years. The reason is that I am a very volatile personality. And she is a very cautious person. She gets what she doesn’t naturally have in me: a constant presence of danger and instability. In her, I get someone to argue with. It’s a recipe for a great relationship.
I could tell stories from now until the end of time on a few examples, but a few that come to mind for context is one recently where we were in the mountains of Idaho driving down into Utah from a very high elevation with our RV in tow. The wind was gusting so severely that there were cautions about going in it. So we had our RV blowing behind us like a giant sail that felt like it would drag us right off the mountain. We had much of our family in the car, four adults and a few children, and a dog, and there were very few guard rails. A wrong move, and we could have easily been swept over a thousand-foot drop to the river below. My wife was white-knuckling any handhold she could grab and was terrified with each wind gust. She wanted me to stop immediately and wait out the wind, which would not happen soon. We were in the middle of nowhere, and going backward was just as dangerous as going forward. So I did what I did in most of those situations: I went faster and more aggressively and enjoyed the whole thing immensely. We had another such incident just a year before, where we were outrunning an incoming snowstorm coming out of Colorado into New Mexico. And the roads were covered with snow and ice drifting across the desert. It was the same situation; we were hauling our RV at a high rate of speed, trying to outrun the storm after driving 13 straight hours to Roswell, New Mexico. She wanted me to stop because we were sliding all over the road, and I had to go fast to outrun the cumulous cloud above us that was gaining steam from the setting sun. It was night, and the lack of a sun fueled the storm into a monstrosity of more cold air, and it was moving across the desert at over 80 miles per hour. She was furious with me, and I had a giant smile. Those are what keep marriages together for 35 years.
I would be bored out of my mind without experiences like that, and truthfully, she loves having those experiences with me. I can only tell you how happy she was when we arrived in Roswell, New Mexico alive, or Vernal, Utah, with all our family safe after that scary trip on the mountain tops at over 6000 feet. Surviving those kinds of things make the microwave popcorn taste a lot better when you get to camp and enjoy the luxuries of home in some distant place, in a favorite foldout chair. And that’s also why we sat right next to the stage at that comedy event. Being safe is not fun for me. And if not for me, my wife would not push herself to expand her boundaries of comfort. She is rarely comfortable with how I do things, but if she didn’t grab on like she does, cursing at me and all, there are a lot of crazy stories she wouldn’t have in life that have made our life together very interesting. I could tell of one from Paris recently that is very funny, and it involved a bicycle and a few more of my kids as we were trying to catch a train. We still joke about it at Thanksgiving dinner, which makes for an exciting life. And while people make assumptions about safety being the root cause of happiness, I can report the opposite as accurate. Danger is the best thing for a long marriage; to maintain a long one, comfort zones must be pushed to have a healthy relationship. And zest is undoubtedly the key ingredient to frequent arguments. Docile compliance would be disastrous. Arguing is very beneficial in almost all circumstances in all parts of a life, marriages especially.
Rich Hoffman
The Overmanwarrior 