by Beth Hermes

Created on: August 07, 2008   Last Updated: August 20, 2008

"I'm a Friday kind of person in a Monday kind of world."

It was such an endearing testament to my now-husband's laid-back nature and it was the only such adornment in his college apartment. His mother had given it to him to show her appreciation for his relaxed spirit.

I should have known then that there would be times when his personality and mine would clash. I am a go-getter, and have been called everything from "Control Freak" to "Extremely Competent" to "Independent Spirit" all meant in the most complimentary manner possible, of course!

As opposites attract, we became a couple. He kept me grounded, and I kept him motivated. His meticulous nature makes him an outstanding cook. My perfectionism makes me extremely organized. He kept us fed creatively, on a college student budget and I made sure the bills were paid, the apartments were clean and we each had toilet paper.

His laid-back nature ensured that we dated for a good, long time "just to make sure." Seven years after we officially began dating, we said our "I do's" and our Type A-B marriage began.

Throughout the past 18 years, the differences in our personalities have provided for some interesting situations:

When we were expecting our second child, we decided to take on a bathroom remodeling project. The commode sat in our hallway, with the bathroom unusable, for several weeks, until I finally decided to spur him into action by attempting to do it myself. (My perfectionist nature, combined with a growing nesting instinct, found the unfinished bathroom abhorrent. His laid-back nature figured we'd get it done "someday.") To keep me from hurting myself or our unborn child, he completed the bathroom but he grumbled quite a bit. In his defense, it turned out to be a stunning project.

One of our first cars was a "project" car his Mazda RX-7. He considered it a labor of love to take apart the engine, clean it and rebuild it whenever it hesitated or coughed. I found it to be an annoyance to have a carburetor parts meticulously labeled - strewn across my kitchen table while he pored through the repair manual looking for ways to improve the car's performance.

He thinks things through, takes his time and ultimately everything he does is done well although I'm sure I could do things just as well in a lot less time.

One recent evening, my laptop began playing Japanese pop music each time I opened one of my Internet browsers. My daughter had recently used my computer and had apparently uploaded a program that she neglected to shut down. As I was working on deadline to prepare a print project, the music had me rattled. By the time my husband came in from work around 10 p.m., I was ready to pull my hair out.

In addition to being a restaurant manager, my husband is a self-taught and very talented IT troubleshooter (his first line of study in college was computer engineering. He graduated with a psychology degree). He took my laptop and began fiddling with various programs, trying this and that to turn the noise off, to no avail.

Did I mention I was working on deadline? Did I mention I am a severely Type-A personality?

After 20 minutes and twice that many heavy sighs, I asked him to please return the computer so I could finish my project and go to bed.

Project complete, computer off, kids in bed, I received a backrub with the attention span that could only come from a committed Type-B. I love my Friday kind of husband. He keeps me quite sane in my Monday kind of world!

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