My husband is gentle and kind. He is thoughtful, insightful and expressive. He is motivated and has an impressive work ethic. He dresses well. He appreciates my cooking and helps to clean up after dinner. He also likes to vacuum, and he enjoys grocery shopping with me.
He also steals the freakin' sheets.
This little "quirk" didn't how up until about two months into our marriage. Just as I was beginning to warm to the idea of sharing a bed with another human being for the rest of my life; just as I was beginning to love snuggling up to his ridiculously overheated body and freezing cold feet, he changed the rules of the game. It wasn't subtle either. He didn't employ the "sneak 'n' steal" technique - you know, when you tug the covers your way, inch by inch, over the course of an entire night, and your spouse wakes up to wonder where the comforter went. No, this was blatant. This was the "as-soon-as-you-get-comfortable-and-are-drifting-off-to-sleep-I-will-rip-the-covers-from-your-body-and-mercilessly-expose-you-to-the-bitter-cold-drafts-in-the-bedroom" technique.
While I believe that he doesn't do it on purpose, it's one of the things we're going to have to deal with - as adults - in our marriage. We're learning how to mesh two dramatically different sleep schedules as well. While we both work day shifts for our jobs, Ross is used to staying up until after midnight, reading or messing around on the computer. I, on the other hand, like to curl up in bed with a crossword puzzle at ten o'clock, beg Ross to come to bed, and fall asleep by a quarter after. Ross "rectifies" this by simply nudging me awake for a goodnight kiss, rolling over and falling asleep. THEN STEALING THE COVERS.
While his cover-stealing treachery was a shock to me, I had a few bombshells of my own to drop. Apparently, I am obsessed with reading and comparing nutrition labels. This is a relatively new phenomenon that I didn't even realize until I began cooking for Ross. Though I taught myself how to cook in college, I wasn't concerned in any way about the quality of the food I was eating. I was just happy that it didn't always come out of a can or a tray! A few years ago, when I began to become more conscious of my weight and health, I also grew more aware of what I was actually eating. Getting the best possible "bang" for my caloric "buck" became a game, an obsession. I often make my own homemade salsa or pasta sauce so I can slash carbs and salt. I'm hardly a health food nut, but I am always willing to spend a few cents more to buy a product with more fiber, less sodium, or a lower cholesterol content. But that means reading those labels and comparing them for everything! Poor Ross. He's been the recipient of many merciless lectures about how Ho-Hos will kill him, and how the spicy, sodium-laced deli meats he likes to pile high on white bread will rob his future children of their father. While I know these things are valid points, I also know I need to back off and let the man make his own choices. It's hard because both our fathers have diabetes, and high blood pressure runs in our family. Neither of us are as physically active as we need to be, but how will my nagging going to help encourage him?
It won't any more than his cover-stealing is going to encourage me to kiss him goodnight!
i can totally relate. Pat steals the covers all the time, and I end up waking up in the middle of the night curled up in a ball freezing. Getting used to sharing a bed with someone was enough of a challenge for both of us. We were both used to sleeping spread out over the whole bed. So combine that with the fact that my new husband steals covers...yeah, both of us slept terribly for the first few nights we were married, then we learned to share the bed, and the covers :)
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