The reality of being with a surfer

Some women in San Diego have a picture of what it's like to date a surfer. Yes, surfers are in shape. Yes, they are laid back and easygoing. Yes, they have impeccable taste in hoodies. In the beginning, all was as I imagined it would be. Before I had M locked up and had to pretend I was fun, he would take me out for surfing lessons and gently teach me, and I'd enjoy the novelty of a new adventure. We even went night surfing with the red tide. It was exciting to date a hardcore surfer, like I finally had the street cred to wear Volcom.

The flip side of the coin was that, as M and I became more serious, I had to learn not to make any plans more than 24 to 48 hours in advance, in case there was swell (and because having a pending obligation depresses him). This doesn't sound like a big deal, except when other people, like friends and family, want to get together at an agreed-upon time and place, or if other important things are happening simultaneously. When the waves were a rare head high in San Diego a couple summers ago, I let M off the hook as my date for a wedding (granted, it was a potluck wedding, but still). When we were picking out wedding bands, what should have been a sentimental occasion turned into our first real, tearful fight because Surfline and its spiking graphs would not go quietly into the night.

Further, since different surf spots are better at certain times of the year, if I want to plan something on a weekend in winter, I try to make it near Sunset Cliffs, and if we're planning a beach day in the summer, it's ideally near Swamis. I know that it's best to have food available at the end of a surf session. While M is paddling out, I'm often running errands or doing chores, taking care of the small burdens in life so that he won't have an immediate to-do list when he comes out of the water exhausted and happy. When I commit to plans with a group, I mentally prepare for the possibility of going alone, in case the surf is good.

My schedule is constantly in flux, my day always agile (see blog title: get it? It's also a software term, I...just nevermind).

Our wedding invitation, with my wedding veil and his Firewire, whatever that is.
(Invitation designed by Lauren Alisse Photogrpahy)

I don't say this to complain. I say this to underscore the reality of dating any "type," however positive; it takes true and dedicated love to want to make another person happy, all the time. We don't have the credibility of our parents--both sets happily married for decades--or even the credibility of two people married for six weeks, but we're trying to start out right. While I'm ignoring the giant plastic tub of wetsuits in our guest bathroom and the seven surfboards in the storage unit and our kitchen, M spends a lot of time at work, being the main breadwinner in our house, out-thinking the Android coding problems that plague him. He slow dances with me in the kitchen, listens quietly when I'm having a bad day, surprises me with tickets to country concerts, even though he prefers Glitch Mob. He tithes his money generously, lets me have the bigger piece of bread at dinner, books expensive horseback riding excursions on our honeymoon even though he has zero interest himself and there's downpouring rain in the Hawaiian countryside.

So, even though I've been married for, like, five minutes, I like to think the year or so of making compromises around the swell was as good premarital training as any. And reality can still have a happy ending.

And that is what we call Date Night

Last night was March Mingle 2013 (where were you?). If you're a part of San Diego's tech scene and don't know what this is, you're missing out. It is basically a giant watering hole event of engineers and technical people, as well as companies, consultants, and recruiters. If you're looking for candidates, this is the place to be. If you're looking for a company to work for, this is the place to be. If you're looking to drink beer and make super geeky jokes with other engineers, this is the (safe) place to be.

My boss had bought the whole team tickets long ago for this event, and M had gone a couple years ago and had a great time, so he bought himself a ticket for this year. The line at the venue (Scale Matrix's office building) was huge, like the line at Disneyland for Space Mountain. Right off the bat, we were saying hi to people we knew in line, including my brilliant social media teacher, Stacy Zapar of Tenfold Social Training and her husband Greg, COO of Tenfold and former VP at Digitaria. As the security guards herded, I mean ushered, the four hundred-some attendees into the sleek event space, I continued to run into developers I knew or had placed. A .NET developer with UI skills, a Javascript guru with node.js, coffeescript and MongoDB, a Java developer who came from a gaming background and had worked with every programming language known to man.

By the time M arrived from work, I was clutching my drink and standing in the thick of geeky conversation. When I turned away to talk to others, and turned back, M and some other developers were deep into some discussion about how to catapult things into space. I have no idea how these topics come up. I'm sure other, normal husbands talk about golf.

The rest of the night was spent descending on tables of computer programming user groups, asking if I could sponsor beer for their meetings and promising I'd stay quiet, asking really dumb questions about a company's web servers, and running into recruiters from other agencies, holding very careful, cagey conversations. M spent a lot of the night looking for the food table (with very limited success).

All in all, it was a fun night for me, talking to smart people and pretending to be smart (with very limited success). I imagine other couples enjoy the social scene in the setting of a gala, or an art exhibit opening. We, apparently, enjoy hob-nobbing with people who can explain exactly how Coffeescript distills Javascript into the essentials for a more elegant and readable syntax.

Happy

I think a lot of women I've come across have their ideas of what marriage should be like, and most of it can be captured in a Pinterest board labelled "Someday..." There are mason jar centerpieces filled with baby's breath, tied with burlap ribbon, wine barrels as gift tables, silhouettes of couples gazing at one another adoringly as dusk settles over them. A sleepover with your best friend everyday, someone in your corner at all times, someone's hand to hold when life gets overwhelming--this is marriage.

Pinterest-ready. (Photo courtesy of Lauren Alisse Photography)

Indeed, I'd say the first seven days or so were exactly as media and society had promised me. Maybe it had to do with the fact that we were staying here:

The Sheraton, Maui (Photo courtesy of me sticking my iPad out the hotel room balcony)

Our wedding took place on a beautiful, 80-degree day, and we were surrounded by loving and supportive family and friends. The honeymoon was a week of snorkeling, horseback riding, ziplining, amazing food, and enjoying each other's company. And then we came home, and in the course of a week, as M moved in his belongings, my beautiful contemporary townhouse took on signs that a surfer now lived here:

Surfboard in kitchen

Wetsuit and beach towel in shower

And worst of all, this:

The Couch.

The Couch. The Couch that M insisted was essential to his happiness in our new home together. My own sofa was a beautiful baby blue with a hint of turquoise, an expensive microfiber that maybe was somewhat uncomfortable, due to narrow seat cushions. The important thing, though, was that my sofa perfectly matched the livingroom accents I had set up as decor. M, however, enjoys using logic--almost as a weapon, I'd say-- listing the reasons that his couch was a necessary replacement: 1) My kitchen stools didn't have backs, and my chaise didn't have arms, so he had no place to comfortably sit in the entire downstairs of our townhouse, 2) his couch was long enough to fit his entire body so he could take post-surf naps, while his feet hung over my old sofa, 3) he'd enjoy snuggling with me more while watching TV on his couch, whereas my sofa would impede our quality time together, etc. etc. Usually, M will allow me to fight his logic with my emotional pleading, but this was one thing he wouldn't back down on. Since I'd never seen that before, I allowed the Salvation Army to adopt my precious microfiber baby and welcomed M's couch into our livingroom with all the warmth of someone unready to be a stepmother.

My immediate next step was to throw a couple of IKEA bedspreads on the thing and tuck in the corners, topped with a crochet blanket and two fancy pillows, but it was an obvious stop-gap solution. I was surprised by how much my new environment affected me. I always considered myself someone able to see the big picture, to appreciate the more important things, like a husband as loving and supportive as M. The old, single Joyce would slap the new, married Joyce with words like, "Three years ago, you were considering feral cat adoption to stave off loneliness! Be thankful it's just a couch!"

But the couch somehow felt more like a harbinger of a new, unsettling era: my life decisions are no longer my own. I can't just spend my time and money the way I want to...M's input actually matters. All my decisions have suddenly become mutually exclusive: selfless or self-centered. Coming home on time to help prepare dinner, spending our--not my--money on make-up vs. groceries, crossing things off a to-do list vs. spending quality time with my husband...all the things I used to manage without thinking now have an impact on someone else if I don't think through my choices. When consciously deciding what we're willing to give up, M and I find ourselves in a new economy of compromises, where the currency takes the form of requests and concessions, motivated (theoretically) by our love for one another.

What I'm trying to say is, Pinterest does not adequately prepare you for marriage.

Last night, M and I watched a documentary on happiness, aptly titled Happy. It investigated the principles of positive psychology, stating that 50% of our happiness is decided by our genetic makeup, 10% is decided by our circumstances (money, status, relationship, etc.), and 40% is decided by deliberate choices we make in order to achieve happiness. It followed the real life stories of people all over the world, in all kinds of societies. The things that really seem to make people happy are trying new things, or new ways to do old things, finding community with family, neighbors and friends, exploring their true selves by pursuing interests and passions (achieving "flow" while being in the zone), and finally, by giving back to the world. One volunteer at one of Mother Teresa's Missions explained, as he carried a man with missing limbs to his bed, that his life was just a loan from God, and he was paying back the loan with interest. He didn't want to just be happy, but to be meaningfully happy.

As M went to bed, and I stayed up, uploading wedding pictures to Facebook (obvi), I thought a lot about the documentary and how much one can do, deliberately, to be grateful, to be happy. Giving back to the world in the context of marriage, to me, meant giving to M selflessly--my time, my attention, my decision-making, and that we would, together, do the same for others. To be meaningfully happy.