Every morning I have to get on the highway at a very intense entrance ramp.  It has a short ramp and then a very short merging lane.  Less than 500 feet beyond the entrance the highway splits, the way I go dumps me on the new highway then I have to cross 4 lanes of traffic in short order to be in position for another left exit.

Every morning I like to crank some loud music, preferably in the rock genre to get pumped for my merging and rapid lane changing.  The key to successfully getting where I want to go is to be at the right speed.  Nothing ruins this whole process more than someone going too slow or too fast.  The people who go too slow cannot merge effectively, causing cars in the right lane to either swerve out of the way of cut off the timid driver.  The people who go too fast usually make too many lane changes and cannot get in the right place in time causing other cars to brake suddenly when speedy driver over shoots his/her move.  After the merging is complete and highway is changed we now have to perform our rapid sequence 4 to 5 lane change.  Being at the right speed here is paramount as well.  One has to pick the right moment for the lane change and quickly match the appropriate speed.  And then repeat.

This little dance I engage in every morning is a fitting metaphor for our marriages as well.  Being at the same speed as your partner can make everything go smoother.  Have you ever had a horrible day, get home see your spouse and before asking how their day was go off and how horrible yours was.  Then after 10 minutes of complaining about how the oil change guy is out to destroy you one air filter at a time, and how your boss is most certainly one step away from water boarding your whole department, and how some moron in a Prius with a Vegan bumper sticker cut you off on the way home and you plotted a plan to secretly follow them home and sneak ground beef into their tofu smoothie (or is that just me?), you realize your spouse was smiling when you go home, but now is not...  (That last sentence was 93 words long, which is way too many words for a proper sentence.)   The point of that incredibly long sentence is that you can bring your gloom with you home and put it on your spouse.  Your spouse could have had a great day and was all ready to tell you about how they just saved a bunch of money, or got a promotion, or learned how to play the Harp (that last one seems unlikely).  Instead you have brought them to your speed rather than matching theirs (see what I did there).

Things work best when you and your spouse have a matching speed.  It can be very tempting, after a bad day to come home and unload, but if you do, you might miss out some of the fun your spouse had to share.  Conversely, if you are in a great place and your spouse isn't, it is incumbent upon you to try to get them to a happy place.

You have to remember to step outside of yourself to make sure that you and your spouse are traveling at the same speed, it is not always easy, and sometimes it just won't work out.  But if you keep at I promise you will spend far more time riding together than trying to catch up...

-TheHusBlog