Competition

Simple living. It has to encompass everything to work. It can’t be just about making your house nice and tidy. But there’s one aspect of life where we seem to make things anything but simple and that’s our relationships.

I seem to be surrounded by couples who constantly compete. They seem to be trying to prove who has the most miserable life. Who is suffering more, working harder, is more stressed. There’s no understanding, appreciation or empathy between the two people who should be working to make life easier for each other. The husband goes to work, the wife stays at home and takes care of the children. The husband thinks the wife spends all day having coffee and chatting with other mums at lovely playgroups. The wife thinks the husband spends all day sitting at a desk. The husband has no idea what it’s like to look after two pre-school children all day every day. The wife has no idea what the husband’s job actually is.

The husband would like the wife to spend all day cleaning, cooking, washing, keeping the house stocked with food, attending to bills and other household management AND playing meaningfully with the children. The wife would like the husband to spend all day in a mad frenzy of work, the equivalent of performing brain surgery whilst ordering the invasion of an army AND getting home in time for dinner. The husband thinks there’s no way on earth the wife could cope with five minutes of his day. The wife thinks the husband would wave a white flag after five minutes of her day. They are probably both right.

Where does it start? How do two people who are supposed to provide each other with more support and appreciation than anyone else come to this? The division of labour in relationships is so often like this. It’s a fact of nature that’s hard to overcome. None of my friends would swap places with their other half. So why can’t they be happy for each other? Why can’t they accept the differences in their roles and support each other?

Competition is something that doesn’t really happen in my house. Simon would love it if I spent the day messing about with the girls and drinking coffee with my friends. I love it when he has an easy day. Maybe we’re just not the competitive types. Maybe we’ve been together so long that we just don’t care about stuff like that any more. Maybe we just don’t take life that seriously. Whatever the reason, it helps us to keep life simple. Life can’t be simple when the leading characters are making everything so complicated.