Marriage, workplace and related 100% nonsense!

Their hands remain locked in an intimate embrace throughout the get-together. Now and then, she smiles at a joke and leans casually towards him, gently touches his shoulder and shares a private joke with him-a small family secret just between them-and he smiles indulgently. When dinner is served, he stands in line for her, chivalrously balances two plates and hands one of his plates to her. She says something along the lines of “Thank you, dear” and he replies, a look of serious concern on his handsome face, “I took some extra salad for you, you do like cherry tomatoes, don’t you?” And he is right. How can he not be? They are the perfect couple. They are pleasant, charming, absolutely in love and totally faking it.

While it is nice to imagine rosy sequences like above, real life is more like this:

He drives over the speed-limit because they are late for the party. She holds on to dear life and promptly requests that her husband slow down, now! She cares for her dear life even if he doesn’t! His response does a good job of matching her sarcasm. And finally they arrive at the party. They immediately go separate ways as if the party has just relieved them of their almost unbearable prior company. They eat standing away from each other and they don’t know if their spouse has eaten yet, perhaps they don’t care. They sulk and prefer silence to social niceties like nodding and uh-uh-ing at appropriate intervals. They drive back in silence.

I guess, most of us fall somewhere in-between. We have some good days and some not-so-good ones. And for couples like us that work at the same office, there are several interesting ways to extend a fight. Summarized below are just a few examples:

1) We now have a set of virtual channels customized just to enable and further our arguments! Hey! I can ping him on chat, send him an email or walk over to his cube to tell him what I have already told him on the way to work – “You are wrong!” And surprise, he can respond back, again, with “No, You are not.”

See? Not only have we enriched our lives by spending more quality (fighting) time with each other, we have found meaningful ways to diversify the channels along which our arguments flow!

2) Then, there is the drive. The drive to work, the drive from work, the drive to lunch and back where we can further analyze and reiterate our points of view. Good food and good chemistry! Now, who can beat that?

3) Now, ask me how else we are contributing not only to our marital entertainment but to the good of everyone and I will tell you – we car pool! That means, we get up on time and go to work at the same time and leave at the same time. This seemingly innocuous activity has further strengthened our bonds. We can now have healthy arguments with each other like – “I need to be at work for a meeting at 8.30AM” and pat comes the reply, “It’s already 1 AM, I don’t think I can get up in time for your meeting.” See how we have so many more interesting riddles to solve? I mean, how boring is it to drive separate ways and come back in the evening to spend an hour describing the day’s activities to your spouse! Nah, we like to have healthy discussions about when we wake up, go to work and return, everyday! It’s like vitamin pills for a marriage!

4) And if you are an organized woman like most women are, who truly believes that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness", even though it's a cliche, maintains lists and classifies chores as his, hers and ours, firstly, you should rename your lists to be more specific like - his chores inside the house, his chores for the yard, miscellaneous cleaning activities, her kitchen chores...(getting carried away, focus now!), secondly, you can now ping him on chat once an hour and remind him to check his tada-list, how cool is that?! You have thus proven that you are a successful house-keeper (home-builder? Whatever the current catchy phrase is) while still being a career woman! Three cheers to you!

And in conclusion, I recommend that couples work together at the same office and marital stress will be a thing of the past!

And thus ends my essay (of course, it was fiction! What did you think? :p) titled: “Short-term and long-term effects of workplace on married folks!” or “Why couples should work together!”

Note: Until brain returns back to sanity and writing returns back to tolerable, do please put up with bits and pieces of nonsense such as the above. Thanks.

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