by Tinoy Mama

Created on: August 08, 2008   Last Updated: August 20, 2008

My husband and I are proof that Type-A and Type-B personalities can live happily ever after. After fifteen years together, we mesh together so well that it is almost impossible to tell which one of us is Type-A and which one of us is Type-B. We call our relationship the "AB" and "BA" relationship. But it wasn't always like this.

When my husband and I first met, he was the typical Type-A personality. A law student, he was extremely organized (or so I thought), and very attached to his daily routine. There was no veering left or right, no gray areas to speak of. It was the straight path all the way, and everything was black or white (not so good for someone who wanted to be an attorney.) In fact, before he agreed to "consummate" our love, he had to go check the law books to make sure I wasn't too young (I was seventeen when we met).

I, on the other hand, was a happy-go-lucky teen, with a messy room and no routine to speak of. I didn't want to make plans until the last second possible, and "spontaneity" was one of my favorite words. Yet somehow, regardless of the age and personality differences, my husband and I fell in love, and several years later decided to move in together, and eventually got married.

It was living together that showed us that at least in our relationship, there really was not a straight Type-A or Type-B personality. At work, my husband was definitely the Type-A. He was organized and rigid in his daily routine. The way he researched his cases and worked the courtroom clearly showed his tendency to be a Type-A. At home, however, my husband was quickly sliding towards the "B end" of the personality scale. His clothes stayed on the floor until I either picked them up or yelled at him, his car received the nickname "the abyss" for its eternal mess and clutter, and dishes could stay in the sink for as long as we had clean dishes.

My husband was not the only one who was changing. Living on my own quickly taught me that if I wanted clean clothes and dishes, and if I wanted mice and roaches to stay away, I needed to roll up my sleeves and get things done. In time I had become nearly obsessive about the cleanliness of our house, and had a rigid routine to what got cleaned when. Knick-knacks on the shelves had to be placed at just the right angle, and shirts and underwear had to be folded MY way. Hangers had to face the same way in the closet, and woe-be to the person who tried to put my red shirts in the same pile as the blue.

Still, despite all my OCD tendencies, I craved, and still crave spontaneity in our free time, and my husband still needs his thirty minutes on the computer every morning and his sports section of the paper every single day as he is getting ready for work. After ten years of a wonderful marriage we have stopped analyzing ourselves, and have come to the realization that we change as we get older and more mature, and end up complementing one another as a couple. Yes, Type-As and Type-Bs can definitely get along; but the real relationship begins when we look beyond those labels and accept one another for who we really are.

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