How do you work together as husband and wife (and not kill each other!)

Thinking out loud by Ronel van Wyk

I have always seen myself as pretty independent.  I have endured many adventures in my young adult life to get to know myself and with that, what is important to me and what not. I remember my mom pleading with me to not smoke on my first date with Frans and I just refused to not be myself in full glory… bad habits and all.  If my smoking would discourage him from me as a person, then so be it.  Then it is not meant to be, is it? But, here we are, happily married today!

Our reality as a working couple started when we expected our first child.  

I just could not return to work and leave our beautiful baby girl in the care of somebody else.  We were fortunate enough to be able to generate income that was sufficient for us and enabled me to stay at home.  My “stay at home” became “stay at home and office”. And boy, it was very convenient that my skills came in handy! That was the beginning of teamwork for us.

So how do we work together? I can’t speak for him, but for me?

I have always felt comfortable to lift my opinion on what Frans has created.  
I am not a visual creator and find it difficult to see the picture as he does in his head.

I have never felt a sense of being less or inferior to Frans for not being able to see the picture.

I have always appreciated his creativeness and the biggest treat for me is to see what the picture in his head actually looks like in reality.

I do love beautiful things and can appreciate his wild ideas.  

For me it was never a sense of competing against Frans, in fact I see myself as his biggest fan.  

I find it easy to see something that is out of place and will tweak here or there, but will not try to change his creation.

I have my own strengths and build on that to learn and enhance my skills and knowledge as the left brainer.  

We have this silly saying that Frans is the right brain and I am the left brain.  To some extent, that is exactly what it is.  We balance each other.

It might sound like a natural and easy relationship, but working together does have it challenges. Being the “left and right brain”, comes with a lot of other opposites. 

There are many situations where we do not agree.  Hell, we do not always agree on how to treat certain situations with our children.  Again, we pull on opposites: he is a doer; I am a thinker.  I need to rationalize every situation while he just jumps in and gets it done.

I can write books on our differences and each of our strong suits on what we bring to the table, but the question was “How do you work together as husband and wife (and not kill each other!)?”

I believe that the short answer would be to respect each other’s individualism. We have one goal and that is to create a life of love and abundance for us and our children, but we both have a contribution to make in this partnership. 

The meaning of abundance has changed so much over the years for us. It is not limited to material and financial abundance, but rather the knowledge of life and how we experience it! We have fought and lost it to a point where you do not know how to get up again. We have faced the beauty of pure love and God together and held each other in awe.

The only way this can work as well as it does it to be grateful for the person you get to share this dream with and the blessing of building it together.