Go, Fight, Win!

The hubby and I are both very competitive people. Not in the cut throat kind of way. Last month when the A Man played t-ball we were not the parents yelling at the coaches. We have not tried to instill our competitive nature in our son.

Our competitiveness is just part of our personalities. Really we are only competitive with one another. Yeah, you are thinking how devastating that must be for our marriage. But it's quite healthy really. No, I'm not totally naive!

Okay, think of the hubs as the jock and me as the cheerleader.

Except he has really never been a jock.

Me on the other hand I really was a cheerleader. Now before you pass judgement I was more than the fifi, fufu, snotty high school cheerleader. I really took this stuff seriously. My senior year of high school I quite the squad with nearly 6 years experience after our sponsor let the squad elect a captain and co-captain who had never cheered before, ever! I didn't pout about it. I just told them it was something I took seriously and I choose not to make a mockery of it. Go me! It all worked out for me because I ended up cheering in college on a scholarship!! Yeppers, the collegiate level. We were in the gym 5 days a week, we had our body fat % checked every 14 days (ouch, those pinchers hurt!), and boys could hold me up in the air with one hand. Pretty amazing since these days it would take a fork lift to accomplish any of that!!

Enough about my glory days, back to my competitively energized marriage. I think we are competitive with ourselves more than we are with each other. But you see it's the spark in our relationship.

Last night for instance, we went to my in-laws to get some things out of storage to give to a family we know whose house burned down last weekend. One of the things in Granny's basement was a gun cabinet that I bought Hubs when we were dating. It has officially been in her basement 3 years, empty. A few months ago Hubs told uncle Dan he could just have it, but he was pretty sure he had accidentally thrown the key away. Now if Dan was going to use this cabinet he was going to have to saw the lock off of it and replace it. A hassle, but not the end of the world. So every time we have seen Dan the past few months Hubs gets the "You haven't run across the key for that gun cabinet have you?" No, because Hubs has no idea where it is. His rule is if he hasn't seen it in 3 or more weeks he must have accidentally thrown it away.

So we go downstairs to pull out some boxes of clothes and what not. The very first thing I do is pull up a dilapidated shirt box stuffed with all kinds of junk . . . playing cards, old pay stubs, receipts, some loose change, pocket lint, etc. I spy a gold colored key. I pulled it out and walked over to the gun cabinet. What am I thinking, even I'm not that good, this key was surely too small. I walked back to the box to put it back, but I just couldn't let go.

"Honey, is this key too big for the cabinet?"

He tried it, IT WORKED!

I got the ten-year-old-that-just-got-whooped-at-Asteroids reaction. Hubs could not believe that I walked down to the basement to get boxes of clothes, had not been there 20 seconds, reach into the disorganized chaos of yesteryear and pulled out the key he was sure he had accidentally thrown away!

Honestly, I couldn't believe it either, but it wasn't the time to admit it. He acted like he was aggravated that I just did something that he couldn't do or wasn't as good at. But I could see in his eyes and his heart that he was proud of me and his love for me had grown just a little bit more.

So that is an example of my Hubs and I always trying to do something the other one can't (whether accidentally or on purpose) makes use of our natural competitive spirit to make our marriage thrive!