I had underestimated one thing quite dramatically. The amount of time it takes to merge.

First, there was the mingling of finances, retirement plans, wills, prenups, insurance and all manners of legal, tax and accounting issues that had to go on.

Then, there was the combining of households. No small feat given I had a 2500 square foot, “completed” house of my own to merge with his 2000 square foot home.

And, let us not forget the coming together of friends, family and stepchildren.

Five years later, and much of this is still going on.

I have come to realize that I was pretty settled into my life, as a single person. And, upon getting married, I was agreeing to become wholly unsettled again. This is not a bad thing, it’s just what happens.

But, if you are like me, being unsettled is quite, well, unsettling. I like organization. I like having decisions made. I like being able to wake up in the morning and feel some basic things about life are determined and we are now just enjoying them and not just striving for them. I kinda like arriving. Goal reached. Objective obtained. Done. Next!

I imagine I’m not alone. If you are certain about your mate being “the one,” the desire is strong to get settled into married life quickly and efficiently. But to all LBBs out there, I warn you.

Merging – especially later in life — takes time. Lots of it.

If you are over 40, you’ve accumulated a lot of stuff, habits, behaviors and attitudes, people, and all manners of legal “situations and scenarios” that now have to be (or could be) joined with another. So, below are some things to consider doing to help make the merging process a little more organized. (I can’t promise things will speed up, however.)

1. Make a priority list. What is most important to combine right away? This includes:

• Living together (merging your day to day) or being married right away (creating a legal and/or spiritual union). So, if a wedding takes time to plan, do you want to wait until that happens before merging your life? Or do you want to wait until after?
• Your household. Where do you want to live and how? How soon do you want to get there? Do you want to update, fix, renovate? By when?
• Your legal and financial world. This includes, but is not limited to, wills, retirement, durable power of attorney, health directives, operating accounts, savings accounts, insurances (from car to home, from health to long-term care). How will these decisions be made? By when? Where do you join, where do you maintain separation?
• Your social life, friends and family (and pets). Who do you want in your life and how much? Who gets priority? Where and when do you spend time with them?
• Your careers. How do your work schedules jive? What are the expectations for overtime, working late, or travel?
• Your hobbies, passions and pursuits. How much time do you expect each other to devote to these, together or alone?

2.      Create a timeline for when decisions will be made and when things will get done.

3.      Assign tasks to each other.

4.      Set aside time to check in with one other. Husband and I have a regular night for a “family business” meeting.

5. Be kind when if one of you fails to keep the plan intact. Just regroup, recommit and move forward.

6. When a major milestone is reached, celebrate it. We tend to involve food at such moments, such as going out to dinner. But, do whatever makes you feel rewarded.

I know this sounds a bit business-like, but having a plan around the “coming together” process can be helpful. No matter where you are in your relationship, it’s still good to know where you’re going –and by when.

For the record, I’m still learning number five. I’m spectacular at number six. Just in case you were wondering.

Somewhere in my subconscious I equated my car insurance (which I had with one company for more than 20 years and of which I was an “elite member”) as the hallmark of freedom I received when I could first learn to drive. Insurance=mobility.

Transportation was a prized ability where I grew up. When you lived on a horse farm out in God’s country, like I did, you wanted to be able to leave it now and again. (And, taking a horse to meet friends wasn’t allowed.) Getting my driver’s license – and subsequent insurance, which I paid myself from the get-go (unlike so many kids now-a-days) – was my ticket to freedom.

I recall vividly when Husband asked two months after we were married, why don’t you just dump [[nameless insurance company]] and go on my policy? It’s cheaper. (And, it was waaay cheaper.) Rather, I had a visceral reaction, like he suggested I go to prison or something.  It took me 12 weeks to think about it before giving in.

I hardly ever think about my insurance now except when the annual payment comes up. But, to this day, it surprises me around the initial impact I experienced by giving up my elite insurance status to become a member of a family group – part of Husband’s program versus having one of my own.

What was hardest for you to give up when you got married?

But, then, you get married.

Giving up the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want, is supposed to be replaced with a level of deep companionship, love and other goodies that aren’t PG enough for me to dare to post here. So, that’s the trade off right?

But, as any LBB will tell you, knowing this and doing this are two different things.

I’ve blogged before about Just Being There. This means if you want to stay married you have to physically show up for one another. Sometimes this means sitting on the couch with Husband while he’s watching the news when you’d rather be doing, well, anything else.  But, you can’t be married and Be Away. (Ask any Hollywood couple who spend 95 percent of their time on movie sets away from their loved ones. They end up eventually Walking Alone Again.)

But, what about all the stuff you used to do, that you really like to do, and that you’d like to continue to do that doesn’t involve Husband?

For instance, I take Pilates class twice a week, dance classes twice a week, go to the gym, I dunno, four times a week, and attend volunteer board meetings and business networking events (fewer now than before but still regularly). Oh, and I run my own business, which involves going out of town a few days a month. And, of course there are lunches, occasional dinners, coffees and wine dates with friends to keep. Also, one-time events occur, such as office moves and car breakdowns necessitating buying a new one (as I did this month).

(I’m thinking about adding guitar lessons to the schedule. What do you think? Too much?)

With all this plus Husband’s stuff — his business, his volunteer work, his hobby of flying his own airplane — and you could say getting Husband’s and my schedules together is harder than getting the U.N. together.

And, to top it off, while the schedule might work out, the actual event that is scheduled may not be what you want.

The truth about any relationship is that no one wants to feel like they are giving anything up to be in it; they want to know they are gaining something better. It’s important to not just give up everything you love to do to adopt the other person’s version of fun activities. So, it’s important to have things you like to do together and not torture each other when you want to do things separately. But, I’d really, really, really like to know how to reconcile his interests with my interest with our interests.

Anyone got any ideas? Before I call the guitar teacher…

Let’s take insurance, for instance. When Husband and I first got together and decided we were going to stay together, the subject of “protection” came up.

When you are an LBB, you aren’t exactly bungee jumping off cliffs anymore. A more conservative lifestyle has (probably) settled in. And, protecting one’s body becomes a higher priority. But, I learned early that Husband’s idea of protecting one’s body and my idea of protecting the body aren’t exactly the same. My “protection” ideas don’t usually involve lots of attorneys. (I was just thinking no more trips to scary places in downtown to find cool new trendoid bars.)  

However, Husband, is smarter than me. So, right before we got married we had the Big Insurance Talk, as in, you better have some. And, not just medical insurance in case you have to go to the doctor, either. Since, we have at least 50 more years to go on the planet, according to our parental genes, apparently we have to plan now how we were gonna grow old.

First, there is life insurance. Then, there’s a will. And, then long-term care insurance. And, durable power of attorney. And, medical power of attorney. I was practically drowning in legal documents for about 30 days.

Also, since Husband has two sons – grown but in college – they had to be considered. Should he kick the bucket prematurely, the subject of who gets what, when, was apparently a matter of utmost importance involving many legal terms. Enter the pre-nup (which really deserves its own blog post).

And, should he or I not kick the bucket in one fell swoop and we’re hanging around hooked up to all kinds of machines, well, that deserves a whole other set of documents.  Of course, I made him swear in blood that I’ll never be placed in a nursing home, which gave him the perfect excuse to raise the idea of long term care insurance. I have a sneaking suspicion he doesn’t want to have to roll me over when I’m 90. Let the nurse do it. But, he’ll be over 100 then so I don’t blame him.

So, being the independent woman he married (we LBBs are like that), I have come up with an answer no attorney can plan for. We should just go the same night. Now, that’s some planning I can get behind.

Great.

The author, Amy Sohn, writes about how single and married friends sometimes have trouble adjusting to one another’s changing (or not changing) priorities.  Evidently, once married, you can be labeled anything from being merely “unavailable” to being a “social pariah” because nobody wants to hear your petty little foibles about husband snoring when they aren’t gettin’ any.

The truth for the non-invitations is probably closer to this:  everyone assumes you only want to hang with your spouse, so why bother asking you out?

Say “no” too many times and you could find yourself blacklisted on the social scene. Apparently, the frequency with which one goes out equals how much fun you are considered to be. And, it’s a hard reputation to shake.

As a single person, I had quite the social life. I mean, I used to live 15 minutes from Reagan National Airport and could (pre 9/11) grab the shuttle to NYC for dinner! And, those little spontaneous adventures only grew with added age. Let’s face it. Older singles have all the accoutrements for a rockin’ social life: Courage, a budget, no drama about what to wear, because you’re a big girl now and know exactly what to throw on.  But, just when I knew exactly what restaurants to go to and how to get those great concert tickets, I got married.

End of spontaneity as we know it.

At first, it was pretty nice, actually. An excuse to stay home when you want to, a ready-made date, someone to watch movies with at home, someone who actually cared that you got home at all. But, then after a while (after the couch developed a permanent indentation of my butt), I realized just how much I missed shooting over to the wine bar for an “after work” drink out of the blue. And, how much fun it used to be to stay out to whenever with no one to check in with. 

Once married, however, it becomes a negotiation with the spouse over what time you’ll be home, and whose car will be last in the driveway blocking the other, or what state you’ll arrive in when home (it was the tequila’s fault, really).

For me, it’s also an internal battle . Half of me wants to go swinging around town with the girls and the other half of me wants to stay home and snuggle with Husband and our remotes.

And, to top it off, there is the diverging interests of Husband and me. Husband doesn’t always want to do what I want to do. (What, you don’t want to do tequila shots on a Tuesday night?)

To top it off, he often doesn’t alert me to his plans (read: lack of desire to do anything) until that night. So, I’m left hunting for a companion – especially if it is a night where I am acutely aware of the butt imprint I’ve been leaving on my couch at home and I’m desperate for. something. different.

Of course, the fact that single gals aren’t used to compromising their social activities might be a big culprit. You mean I have to choose? Whhhhyyyyy?

Sigh. Who needs a drink?