Baby I like it

Marriage is hard. Being with someone for seven years is difficult. Raising a child with someone is exhausting, and for all these reasons you end up kind of hating your spouse most of the time.

Here's my theory on why: when you are young and going through adolescents and even young adulthood, you go through many fazes of hating yourself. Then one day you get older and you stop hating yourself because you think "Hey, I'm kinda cool, I like me, scratch that -I LOVE ME!" For me this happened at around age 27. What usually follows this discovery that you are indeed not only a worthy human being, but even perhaps quite lovable is that you suddenly meet someone who also thinks this about you. Which is exactly what happened to me with Husband. Within a month of saying out loud to myself "Wow I'm pretty great, I can be single forever, cause I know how awesome I am and won't settle for some lame ass guy that doesn't see that" that's when Husband appeared literally on my door step. But Let's face it, we all need someone to hate, that's why we have George Bush and the Ku Klux Klan: focal points that we can hate on-you've got to hate someone. Therefore after seven years instead of hating myself, since I am too old and smart for that now, all my hate has transferred onto Husband.

Like any transferred self hatred it comes and goes. I don't always hate Husband, in fact sometimes I think to myself "huh, I really like him-weird". There are days though, where I really hate him. I'm not too big a person to admit this, in fact I think its normal in any good marriage or union of two people after 7 years. Hate is kind of a safety net in marriage, it gives you a place to go when everything else in your life is running smoothly. Things wouldn't feel right in the world if I didn't most of the time hate Husband for something or other.

So that being said there are also days when I forget that Husband used to be 25 and that I used to be 27 and that we used to have the most fun anyone could ever have together. I forget this, especially during the week days when I am tired, and Husband is tired, and I would rather sit in the living room and watch The Vampire Diaries on the Big TV then listen to him tell me about his day, and then one day something changes....

In the New Year Husband and I implemented 'Date Night' every other weekend. We decided it didn't matter what we did-even if we just went to dinner- we would be guaranteed a babysitter for that night for at least a couple hours to go out and enjoy the awesomeness of being adults without a child in tow. This is new for us, usually Date Nights were few and far between and would get lost in the shuffle of life and never really happen that often, but not this year! This was scheduled, and on the calendar- come hell or high water there would be a date every other Saturday God Damn it!

Our first date night I figured we would just go to dinner, it would be mellow, our usual stand by for going out. However this time, Husband surprised me by planning a night at a piano bar with his work friends. At first I was hesitant "eh it'll be lame" then I became non committal "whatever, at least I'm going out". As the night got closer and closer I felt more and more like I didn't really feel like going. I just wanted to maybe go to a nice dinner, but to bar with people I didn't know? Yuck! It sounded exhausting.

The night arrived and Husband had a whole plan laid out: we would drive to his friends house (a couple I actually know and quite enjoy) then we would take a cab together to first have dinner and then meet the rest of the group at the bar. Alright, Husband gets points for the fact that its all planned and I get to just go along, maybe this could be alright after all. Nanny showed up at the appointed time Husband had requested, and then, we were off!

Husband was in a great mood, cheerful, pleasant- the work week safely behind him. I thought: Huh, this is kinda fun"...still hesitant, I wasn't going to count my chickens before they hatched and get excited. Then Husband pumped up the radio to this cheesy music station that plays all top 40- which is very unlike him and began singing along to all the songs. "I love this station!" he called over the music smiling at me. "You do?" I asked confused, this was shocking to me. Husband normally only likes indie rock and kind of stick closer to his favorite bands. I on the other hand not only love our indie music that we share in common, but have an almost obsessive love for crappy pop music too. So I was shocked to find out that Husband would even know to listen to this radio station. "yeah its great!" Husband exclaimed. Then without warning 'Baby I like it' by Enrique Iglesias came on. Even with my intense crappy pop obsession I am waaaaay too cool to like Enrique Iglesias, however this last summer he had come on to my morning show that I watch every day and I found myself dancing along to this stupid song. I had it stuck in my head for the rest of the day and found when I heard it again that I really liked it despite myself. Embarrassed about this discovery I kept my love to myself not even buying the song to work out to. To my great surprise, Husband turned the volume up and started singing along in a loud falsetto. I laughed shocked Husband seemed to know all the words and said sheepishly "I kind of like this song". "Are you kidding?" Husband exclaimed "This song is awesome!" and continues to sing all the words loudly as we pull into our friends driveway. He turns it up again and we both sing in high pitched whines "Baaaaaaby I liiiiike it!"

Its hard to explain the feeling when you rediscover that the person you are with at the moment is a kindred spirit, especially someone you spend most of time slogging through the difficult patches of life with. There is a certain point when you go through enough of the daily grind with someone that you wonder: is there any fun left to be had here? and then.... 'Baby I like it' comes on and you begin a whole new romance with the person you have spent the last year of your life changing diapers and chasing down a screaming toddler with.

Suffice it to say, we spent the rest of the evening drunk, happy and dancing with friends to all the music that we love, and love to hate. At the end of the night we went home, sent Nanny on her way and crept into our office where we shut the door and pumped up "Baby I like it" on the computer, where we danced wildly around the room one last time before crashing into bed.