I always sort of scoffed at the idea that opposites attract… until I fell in love with Jake.

You see, Jake is literally the most outgoing person I’ve ever met. Just last week, he struck up a conversation with a woman at the grocery store, who was dressed in head-to-toe camouflage and wore a gun on her hip. They talked about hunting, one of the many sports that draws Jake, as witnessed by the letterman jacket he modeled for me the same day.

Jake: “You want to have sex with me right now, don’t you?”
Me: “You look like Uncle Rico.”

He’s not just outgoing and athletic, though. He’s outdoorsy.

I will readily admit that while I regularly test on the cusp of introverted/extroverted, by the end of a day at the library, where I’m paid to be an extrovert with my teens and every customer who walks up to me, I am worn out.  Whereas Jake is up for any last minute social gathering, I need to know, at least three days in advance, that I cannot come home and put on my comfy pants and read or crochet. I have to give myself pep talks that I will indeed have fun and be happy that I went to Taco Tuesday with my friends from work. If I get a text at 4:00, inviting me to join in on some 7:00 plans, there is an astronomically high chance that my answer will be no, because I don’t want to go and I’m not waiting until I’m in my fifties to start insisting I’m too old to do things I don’t want to do.

I have a picture of Jake doing a toe touch, on our wedding day, as his groomsmen look on in amazement, everyone decked out in their coats and ties. I don’t know why. Contrary to Jake’s natural athleticism, I once busted my head on the bathroom counter putting on a sock, which is only one of the many reasons I do not participate in sports. I don’t mind exercise, honestly. I quite enjoy using the elliptical while reading my Kindle or watching Netflix, in the air conditioned or nicely heated third bedroom. I am unabashedly an indoor girl, though. Even as a child, if the temperature was lower than 45 degrees, it was too cold. Higher than 75 degrees was too hot, especially for physical activity. In all their attempts to get me interested in softball or horseback riding or just playing outside, my parents never figured out that I wasn’t necessarily lazy; I just like to be comfortable and for a good portion of the year, outside is uncomfortable. That’s why I loved piano and dance… not because I was any good at them, but because they were indoors.

From the beginning of our relationship, I’ve made my Indoor Girl stance clear to Jake. He knows that, for me, camping is renting a cabin and spending the day outside and the night inside, in an air conditioned bedroom. Any sports I play will be done indoors, or within my designated 30 degree window… and I won’t win. I am a product of my generation and roughing it means going without a cell phone signal or the ability to download a new book to my Kindle. As far as I’m concerned, if I’m going to sleep on the ground, I may as well churn my own butter, stir a large pot of lye soap, or dye some denim with my own urine, because no.

As you can probably guess, when it comes to killing our own food, I am also out.

Me: ::suddenly covering my face in the passenger seat, crying::
Jake: “What’s wrong?!?”
Me: “Nothing… I saw a dead cat.”
Jake: “Oh. I thought it was something I said. I’m sorry.”
Me: “I’m glad Thackery Binx has no interest in ever going outside, just like his mama.”
Jake: “Are you sure you don’t want to go hunting with me?”

Now, don’t misunderstand. Jake and I have plenty in common. Our values are near identical, which is great, because we exhaust each other debating about the few that aren’t. Our political ideologies are very similar, with both of us identifying as libertarians, although Jake claims I lean left, because he leans right. We both like comic book and horror movies and have a handful of shows we enjoy together. We enjoy discussing current events and articles and blogs we’ve read. When we don’t have an interest in common, we’re perfectly content to sit on the couch together, while he plays his video games and I crochet, read, or watch Gilmore Girls. We really do compliment each other, but when Jake goes hunting, I get the weekend to myself and I’ve got to admit that the weekend before last, I was really looking forward to it.

Jake and I have been married for just over six months and, in short, I’d call it a wonderful adjustment period… because, although I adore my husband, I have to live with a boy.

Most experts will tell you that it’s better to wait until you’re a little older and better established to get married, and I totally agree with that. What they don’t tell you, though, is that it’s a lot harder to live with a person after living alone for six years. Y’all, when I lived alone, I could buy Easy Mac, not be in the mood for Easy Mac for a month, and still have Easy Mac. In my little single girl apartment, Miracle Whip and peanut butter lasted for months. If I bought the fancy pickles I like from Wal-Mart, not the cheap ones from Aldi, I knew that I would actually get to enjoy them. Then I apparently married a man with a tapeworm.

Me: “You already ate all the peanut butter?!?!? I haven’t even had any!”
Jake: “We’ve had that for like two weeks.”
Me: “I KNOW! THAT’S MY POINT!”

I swear that man drinks Miracle Whip through a fucking garden hose, because there is no other way he can consume that much, that quickly. Although I pride myself on my emotional control, one night, a few weeks ago, I hit my threshold, when Jake came out of the bathroom after some time. I hadn’t heard the faucet run, which in his defense, is not at all his routine. He’s not that disgusting.

Me: “Did you just come out of the bathroom without washing your hands??”
Jake: ::goes back to wash his hands, as I head into the kitchen to get a snack::
Me: “You ate all of my pickles?!?!”
Jake: “I left you three!”
Me: “Three?!? I bought those, because I like them! You don’t even know the difference between those and the ones from Aldi!”
Jake: “I’m sorry. I tried to leave you some.”
Me: ::crying in earnest::
Jake: “What’s wrong?”
Me: “You’re such a boy! You eat everything in sight and you leave your dirty clothes on the floor and you hang dead animals on my wall and you won’t let me have my pink Christmas tree and you hog all the covers and you don’t wash your hands when you poo!”

Jake: ::sincerely trying, yet failing, not to laugh:: “Oh, I do too. I forgot one time.”
Me: “I married The Beast!”
Jake: “What?”
Me: “The dog from The Sandlot. I married the dog from The Sandlot. You’re so hard to live with…”

Jake: “I know, baby. Aaron told me so all the time, in college. I’ll bet you guys will have some great stories for each other, about just how hard it is to live with me. I’m sorry I ate your pickles.”

I’m obviously nothing but a delight to live with, but did I mention that Jake is is super laid back and I am… well, not? That’s why, when Jake was going to stay on his family’s ranch for four days, I was looking forward to a Single Girl Weekend. I was going to read and watch all five Twilight movies and sew and crochet and feed the dog table scraps and dance to Taylor Swift and sleep starfish style. It was going to get cray up in here.

That it did, y’all. That it did. I crocheted two hats and spent two hours at Hobby Lobby, choosing the perfect fabric for his and hers Christmas stockings, which I immediately went home to start sewing, from scratch. With no time for “real food”, I ate snack foods for dinner and finished all five Twilight movies in one very productive night, only to wake up six hours later, in the middle of the bed, start where I left off with my sewing project, and watch Edward and Bella fall in love all over again, but as Christian and Anastasia this time. After work on Sunday, I hit Wal-Mart for more fabric and embarked on another evening of lots of crafts and five hours of sleep.

Niki came over on Monday night and we ate junk food and crocheted with Star Trek the Original Series playing in the background, while we talked about our lives. After she left, I read romance novels all night. On Tuesday, I watched This Is Us and went out for tacos with my work pals. It was entirely reminiscent of my off dating phases, when I was 26… and by the end of it, I was bored out of my mind… and exhausted, because apparently Jake is the only reason I ever go to bed at a reasonable hour.

When I met Jake, at 27, I was just getting to a point where I was tired of coming home every night to an empty house; where I’d eat sweet potato fries, a handful of marshmallows, and a small bowl of popcorn for dinner, with no one to complain that it wasn’t “real food.” Vampire Diaries and One Tree Hill marathons with the dog were only beginning to lose their appeal, as I imagined snuggling on the couch with a beau. Sleeping starfish style was still pretty awesome. Because I really did enjoy my single days, when Jake went away for the weekend, I thought it would take a lot longer to hit that threshold. By Monday, afternoon, I was sitting at work, thinking I couldn’t wait to go home to… oh, wait.

Everyone says the first year is the hardest, and granted, I cried because my husband forgot to wash his hands, one night, but overall, being married to Jake is pretty awesome. At one time, I thought my introverted side would suffer, from a lack of peace, but that hasn’t been the case. On the days when I walk through the door and declare that we aren’t having children, or worse, say nothing at all and maybe take a shot, Jake will usually leave me be for thirty minutes or so, while I read on the couch. On his tough days, he’s usually had time to calm his own nerves with a drink, since I get home an hour or two later. Once we’ve both had time to decompress though, it’s like having a nightly slumber party with my best friend. We watch Netflix and eat popcorn or play two person board games or he plays video games while I read. It’s surprising how quickly I’ve adjusted to having Jake in my space at all times and, despite how much I’ve always liked being alone, I feel lonely when Jake’s not in the house. Jake Only is my new solitary comfort level.

By the time Jake returned, I’d Single Girled myself out. I was ready to eat real food at the kitchen table and sleep with my husband my side, at a normal hour. They say we look at our past with rose colored glasses, but I disagree. I really did have a lot of fun as a single girl, reading in my little living room, with the patio door open and no political podcasts playing in the background… cleaning up my own, much smaller mess… eating my breakfast cereal and frozen yogurt for dinner. That time was great and no less valuable than my new domestic life. Marriage, though, has been so much more awesome than all the blogs and lifestyle articles have claimed. Having someone to come home to, to tell me about his day, to buy little surprises, to cuddle with on the couch, while we do our own things, to make weird jokes with, because he’s just my kind of weird, is a dream come true. It more than compensates for the fact that the man can’t seem to enter a room, in which I’m sleeping, in any way unlike that of the fucking Kool-Aid man…

… or that he’s constantly under threat of stepping on a straight pin or having to search for the shorts he left on the floor for me to passive aggressively hide. Admittedly, we’re still learning, but it sure is fun.