Ball and Chain

The Old Ball and Chain...

My wife won’t let me get fat. Within limits. I am very grateful she won’t. I won’t let her be sedentary, though she says her ideal day would be to sit unmoving for 12–14 straight hours reading and petting the cats. We are both better off for it.

We wrote our own vows, and inscribed within are rules of behavior for the marriage. All of them are a little bit of a joke, and all of them are completely true, right down to what we said we would consider the thermostat limits before asking the other one for permission.

Some people would think that is rigid and crazy, and to be honest we don’t interpret them super strictly. They are guidelines, but we certainly quote them to each other as reminders. As years have gone by, we have developed other real rules about how we live, how we spend our money, and how we decide to spend our time. We both have veto power over the other, and we both exercise it, because over the course of being married for many, many years we have come to realize we are not doing it for our sake, we are doing it for the other person’s sake.

She won’t let me get fat because I was born with heart defects. I have enough stacked against me that I don’t need the complications of being extremely overweight added to the list for me to have a shot at even an average lifespan. I love her company, so I make sure she never has a sedentary day and she will be with me—but also because we both know health span is determined statistically by things like being active.

This is not meant to be a lesson in physicality. I simply chose simple outward things which are important to us, but there are other ones too. The lesson is to have a ball and chain in the best possible way: something which anchors you in place but gives you leeway to explore the space. You can move balls and chains. They are not bolting you to a wall. They just slow down your movement to make you think: Do I really want to go here?

We are... I almost said dampening influences on one another, but that is wrong. We are normalizing influences on one another, bringing the best of both our thoughts and ideas to each other about each other. And we all need that. Sometimes I lead, sometimes she does. It is a partnership where sometimes I am right, sometimes she is right, and we both acknowledge that.

You have to look for that in your relationships. If you walk through life assuming you are right, and saying that you are going to be the one in charge at all costs, even if you listen to the other person, you are still approaching the conversation as if you are 51% of the vote about what happens next. That won’t work in the long run in any partnership, and it won’t result in the best you. We managed to get to where we are now not just because of deliberate decisions within our marriage but because we approached it from near the start this way. You need to, too.

If you date with the assumption that the person in front of you needs to be fixed, not only will you possibly never find balance, that beautiful place where you can be improved by them and they can be improved by you because your guard is down, you will also possibly miss out on the people who could have improved you the most. We don’t want to feel like the person with us doesn’t respect us.

It’s a fine line, because we say, “Love people as they are,” but we all know at heart that isn’t true. We raise children up to become adults because they were most assuredly not okay the way they were. They needed to become adults to function and have the fulfillment that can come with striving in the world. That growth doesn’t stop when you are 18 or 22 or 26. The role for who helps you grow just shifts, with the focus moving away from your parents to your significant others and friends.

So find friends who challenge you and won’t let you stand still, but who ball-and-chain you down a bit to the good parts of yourself. You want to grow the right way? Then enter into every relationship with the possibility that this person might be the one you want to have as your proper ball and chain.