Hi. I’m Jack. The “other half” guy.

The blog’s supposed to have been a two person kind of deal since we’re a married couple, but I haven’t been writing for a long time now (academic papers and such notwithstanding). Perhaps a big part of it was that writing was an emotional outlet at first, especially during 1st and 2nd year university where I’d oft go on random tangents. Coincidentally, I started going out with Andrea at the start of 3rd year university. Uncanny isn’t it?

In any case, I don’t even know what to write about right now, so we’ll just take a look back at the first four months of marriage and how it has matched up to expectations vs. realities.

Expectation: Marrying someone that would be into board games means that I’d get to play board games every day!

Reality: Nope.

Unfortunately, I think this expectation is ruined more by work than anything else. Andrea’s already written about this, but work is surprisingly draining. It doesn’t help that when we get home, there’s usually some sort of marking or lesson prepping involved for the next day. So past coming home, doing more work, making dinner, doing the dishes, and whatever else, we’re both quite knackered and a little too tired to be gaming. Despite gaming being a fantastic past time, it does require a bit more brainpower than we’d have after everything else. It’s a matter of priorities.

Expectation: Our relationship would ‘level-up’ with the marriage!

Reality: Nope

I don’t really know what to expect when the marriage comes around, but I’m guessing that it would’ve been different? But in reality, other than the fact that we can live under the same roof and that she technically has the same last name as me now (although it’s not legal-ish yet), there’s not much change. Every now and then, I’m still surprised at the idea that I am married, and that I’m supposed to refer to her as ‘wife’ instead of ‘girlfriend’ (or for a short while: fiance). If anything, the only thing that has leveled up is our responsibilities. There’s more budgeting, keeping track of spending, cleaning up around the house, cooking, etc. than there was before (although the latter parts came about from me living at home prior to marriage).

Expectation: We’d be going out a whole lot more and ‘doing things’

Reality: Also nope

I think this expectation came from some weird perspective or notion that newly weds suddenly take up a bunch of hobbies together like dancing or competitive basket-weaving and plan out all their free time together (until babies throw a wrench in these plans). But if I consider how both Andrea and I are quite introverted and lazy, this reality isn’t really surprising at all. We’re bad at socialising, making conversation, introducing ourselves to new people, and getting out of the house. On the flip-side though, the ‘not going out’ bit might be attributed to the whole ‘being tired from work’ thing going on. Of course, we do go out with our co-workers (mostly the science department) and we do a bit of London exploring every other week, but we’re often quite tired from the week that the idea of staying home and not doing much is often too appealing to pass up.

Well. I’m all out of things to write about. I’ll mull over what other things I’d like to contribute to this blog thing.

Cheers.