Bakersfield.com

By: Heather Ijames

     The following is mainly for single individuals. However, even if you’re married, I’d surmise that the following test might help you understand your marriage better. I am, without doubt, convinced that this test will prove whether or not you make a good teammate with your love interest. And as all married people already know, once children are introduced into the picture, everything seems to take second fiddle to the dynamic of working together as a united front. 

     So, how can you learn in advance on whether you two can make a good team? Move furniture together. Just the two of you with no other help. The heavier the better; the pricier the furniture the better; the hotter the day the better; and the more stairs the better. Those who have already employed loved ones to help them move bulky furniture up to a second story apartment know where I’m going with this one. Let me set the example for those still trying to see the parallel. 

     Charles and I had moved furniture together once before we were married (an apartment to share after the wedding) and twice after we were married, but, all with the help of others. Thus, while he was moving the heavier items with his friends, I was folding linens and gossiping with the ladies. Moving seemed easy during those times. But then came our move to Bakersfield. We hired professionals to move all of our items from our old place to a Bakersfield storage unit while we looked for a house to buy. A few thousand dollars later, we decided that we would handle the second phase of our move, moving the items out of storage to our new house. How hard could it be to load up the truck? It was all tucked nicely into the storage unit by the professionals. 

     Welcome to the day I first said, “Who did I marry?” We had recently celebrated our third year anniversary and our first child was still an infant. It was a sweltering late August day in the Bakersfield heat and dust. I looked at my sweet husband with a smile, gave him a hug and said, “We can do this because we are so great together.” We offered up a little prayer to God for strength and safety and began to work on the heavier items first. 

     But, let me back up a bit here. When the professional movers put our things into storage, I specifically requested that they put all the heavier items in the front of the unit so that we could load those items first. I watched them do it, thanked them for their consideration and told Charles that they had made our job easier. So why was he standing on our dryer in that moment before we moved the first item into the truck? Because he didn’t believe me when I said all the heavy items were in the front. He stood on the dryer to get a bird’s eye view of the entire unit and shifted his weight back and forth on the top of the dryer. Trying to block the sun from my eyes, I told him I didn’t think it was such a good idea to be standing on the dryer because it wasn’t likely designed to withstand his 230 lb. frame. 

     “I know what I’m doing.” He offered as we could both hear the sound of metal crushing. His left foot began sinking into the dryer top and there was a magnificently large dent in our newly acquired dryer. I could feel the blood draining from my bottom lip as I bit the living heck out of it. 

     Our first task, thereafter, was to load the heavy appliances onto a dolly and roll them up into the truck. Suffice it to say, from the very first to the very last attempt to move our furniture, it was a battle of the wills. When I zigged, he zagged. When I lifted up, he pulled back. When I said I was turning clockwise, he turned counter-clockwise. The result? Even a thirty pound piece of furniture instantaneously became too heavy to lift. You had to add together the original 30 pounds of the item, the force of Charles’ muscular pull, and the force of my not-so-wimpy lift; making a 30 pound item weighing in at about 150 pounds. I’ve never had so many issues with an end table from Target before. It was unbearable. 

     And the frustration wasn’t solely because we weren’t listening to each other. It was simply the aftereffect of a dispensed nostalgia in a real marriage. While dating, and during the first couple years of marriage, we took pride in being able to know what the other was “thinking.” (This is the part where those who have been married in excess of seven years start laughing.) We didn’t need words, we were in love. (You experienced spouses are still laughing.)

     Now, I have a new tune and it goes something like this: Love doesn’t exist in a storage unit that is baking at 120 degrees. Love doesn’t exist when moving a queen sized sleeper sofa (mattress still in) into a truck that smelled of rat urine and wet dog. Love doesn’t exist when you are rolling a refrigerator up the ramp of the truck and one of the dolly’s wheels falls off. Love doesn’t exist when you think it’s a good idea to say, “Let’s wait to eat lunch until after we’re finished moving.” No, love doesn’t exist in these places. The only things that exist are the desire to survive without throwing a punch, and a desire to resist fashioning a prison shunt from a cardboard box piece and left over packing tape. 

     You want to know if you’ve found the right person? Move a household together. If the two of you can manage to work as a team in these circumstances, then it won’t become so daunting to work together to clean up your toddler’s mural of Vaseline, paint, and boogers on the living room wall. Because for those moments when no one feels loving, you’ll still be a team. And that’s the ultimate compatibility test!