How Do I Survive my Mixed Marriage?

No, I’m not talking race, religion, or politics. But I am talking about a difference so pervasive, so challenging, so disturbing that at times we’ve wondered if our relationship could stand it.

Randy’s a pack rat. I’m a purger.

While my husband has never met a piece of junk mail he doesn’t like, I patrol our home like a mean prison guard, constantly on the lookout for any stray object that doesn’t have immediate significance in our lives.

Where my husband treats each envelope in our mailbox like some beloved, long-lost relative, I flick through each day’s pile like I’m standing before the summer sale’s rack at the discount store. (Of course, Randy would point out here that utility bills have ended in the garbage. I just don’t know what he’s talking about… *cough*).

We should have known we were in trouble long ago when we moved into our first apartment. As I dusted each corner and lined up the knick knacks just right, I noticed my husband bringing in eight or nine large, mysterious cardboard boxes. When I asked what they were, I came to find they housed his collections: baseball cards, albums, newspapers, coins, and political memorabilia.

I looked around our apartment that could barely contain our bed and sofa, knowing at that moment, I was in a mixed marriage.

And yet many decades have passed and somehow over time we’ve learned to strike an uneasy truce, both casting suspicious glances at the other from time to time. Even when I notice the mountain of papers around his desk starting to look ominous, I’ve learned to bite my tongue.

In the way he’s learned to pretend he believes me when I just don’t know what happened to the pile of catalogs that disappeared last week.

From talking to other couples, I’ve come to realize this is not an unusual phenomenon nor gender-based. Apparently there are female packrats and male purgers. When we’re together, purgers bond over that liberating feeling of throwing things out, making things orderly. Packrats bond over keeping everything close…and I mean everything.

Maybe our differences complement each other. Randy’s tolerant, flexible nature is balanced by my no-nonsense, bottom line, cut to the chase approach to life. Whatever the case, somehow it works.

Now if I could just get him to clean that desk.

Are you in a mixed marriage? Comments are always welcome and if you like, please share. Thank you!