What Not To Care About
My wife and I are both accountants, among other things. I lived my life single, she had six kids before we met. Her desire to be in control of her life is intense; the four husbands she had were little or no help in bringing up her children, weren't particularly good bread winners, and failed miserably at accounting. There can be little surprise, then, that my wife wants very much to take care of our family finances, just by force of habit, if nothing else. 

Accountants are nit-picky sons of bitches, as most everyone knows. We like to get everything just right. And why not, when you're working with numbers there's no reason to settle for approximations (at least in accounting) because you should be able to balance everything out to the penny. So it is with no small degree of effort that I have managed to not want to take care of my own finances. 

But there is something much more important that I have learned to not want. Opinion. I have found myself forming opinions about the various things she does, which amounts to forming judgements based on my own perceived superiority. That's really it in a nutshell; it's my ego wanting her to live up to my image of her. Sounds stupid, doesn't it. Believe me, there is no greater stupidity than to waste your moments forming an opinion of your mate, when you could simply be loving her. I've tried both ways, and the love wins, hands down. It's been a hard thing not to want, this intense scrutiny of her behavior. But in order to have her back (always be there for her), I cannot care about this, not even a little. And guess what. Guess who gets to be happier as a result of giving something up?

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