Two Makes It True

Two Makes It True 🛹

jen casano
June 19, 2023

About a month into being married in 2021, our friends kept asking us “How’s married life?”… “What changed?”…

Our response back then was always, “nothing much has changed…”

Neithan and I lived together before getting married. So we had the chance to *pre-test* a married life.

Two years married today and we’d say, many things remain the same.
But, there has been some significant changes.

Allow us to share our realizations… 🙂

1 Being married to each other has changed our priorities in life, both individually and as a team.

Again, we lived together before getting married and during our pre-test period, we’ve always been big on designing the kind of life we want to live. This desire has been heightened 100000x when we got married. This vivid picture of how each day should look like should come to life. A hunger within to realize this has grown so big we cannot ignore it.

Fr. Harvey, our officiating priest, gave us a list of questions prior to our wedding to help him prepare his homily. One question was “How do you envision yourselves growing old with each other?”.

Here’s Jen’s answer:

I always try to envision how one day would look like when I get asked this question. Generally, this is how I picture an ideal day with him:

7am-8am: We wake up, prepare breakfast and our morning cups of coffee. Enjoy a good conversation about life over breakfast and coffee.

830a-12noon: Spend time on work. I might still be in the academe. He might be doing some consultancy work or maybe still teaching, too. In 5 to 10 years, perhaps we have a small business, and we’re back in the province.
12noon-1pm: lunch + Midday rest
1pm-5pm: work again (whatever this might be)
5pm-6pm: workout or any physical activity
6pm-7pm: dinner
7pm-9pm: “Me” time. We try to give each other time to do things we like. We respect each other’s spaces so we could each do things we enjoy individually. May mga hobbies po kami that are the same pero madami din pong hindi pareho. And we value giving each other the time to enjoy yung mga hindi pareho, yung mga bagay na mas na-eenjoy naming gawin kapag mag-isa kami.
9pm: Sleep

I envision designing a life that we love living. I see that we will keep the same principle of journeying through life one day at a time and paying more attention to the now. Of course, we will plan for the future but we will make sure we don’t lose sight of the present. We both understand the kind of life that we would like to live but at the same time, we will keep the same “no pressure” attitude. Again, great focus on the now. The goal is to build a home we love going home to.

And here’s Neithan’s answer:

Kung swertehin po Fr., Jen and I hope that we can build a super small business around our hobbies.

We both love calligraphy (https://www.instagram.com/n3ith4n/, https://www.instagram.com/t4nj3nt/) and are currently exploring what the community might need where this type of skill may be of value.
We also love books and are thinking perhaps we can start a small library here in our small City.

If paladin po Fr., I hope a day in our old married life would look something like:

8AM-2PM oversee our small business
2PM-6PM take care of the house and make time for the kids
6PM onwards (free time): hobbies, watch DOTA competitions, calligraphy, play DOTA, bake bread (Jen would like to learn bread making daw po).

How are we doing so far? I think we’re going in the right direction…

(We are finding out just now as we are writing this that both our answers were around how we picture a day would look like. :-))

2 The systems in place seem to discourage spending time with the people you love.

We took a hard close look at the systems in place and realized they are not supportive/encouraging of spending time with the people you love. We are encouraged to keep ourselves busy with the promise of a future that you can afford so you can finally spend uninterrupted time with your husband/wife/family. A *little* sacrifice now will pay bigtime in the future. But what if that future never comes, like what happened with Neith’s mom? We were not able to buy enough time. The money your client promised they’d pay you but was just pending due to bureaucratic delays may come *soon*, but *soon* could be *too late*. Lesson? Find more ways to make more money. Money is not as evil as society sometimes purport it to be.

3 We have to fight for the important days of our life.

In relation to 2, we have to fight for the important days of our life. Lucky if the birthday, or anniversary, or whatever falls on a weekend. But when it’s on a workday weekday? You have to *request to take the day off*. For some, even the weekends or the *approved time offs* do not guarantee completely being spared from work shenanigans. Christmas? Well, yes it’s Christmas but we have work to do. It’s your anniversary? Well yes, but this is *urgent*. It’s just how the system works, they say. But does it have to be? We don’t think so.

4 Our non-negotiables guide our life decisions.

We have to live together, above all else.
Rest is important. Listen to what your body is telling you.
Our living space is important to us. We do not compromise the quality of where we stay in. This includes accommodations when we travel. We have to have a good place to rest.
We will gladly exchange money for time and freedom, always. This coupon grants you 70% discount but you have to jump through a lot of hoops so you can have the discount applied. No thanks. We’ll gladly pay the undiscounted price if that means we can keep 30 minutes of our time.
Don’t play Status Games. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. One of the biggest mistakes we made in the last 7 years was playing a lot of “Status Games”. We involved ourselves in endeavors that wanted to “change the world”, “build the next unicorn”, “get featured on XYZ list”, “get the highest valuation”, “collaborate with the rockstars” etc. all just to end up tired, frustrated and broke. We now make a conscious effort to just look at the neighborhood and ask people where our skills might overlap what they need. Forget the world, we just want to help 1 other person and we’ll just keep on doing that forever. — Neithan
No skeletons in our closet. We try our best to live an integrated life. What we say and do is what we really are. How everyone sees us on social media is how they’ll see in real life. Our social media accounts have always been public. We do not like pretending because we do not like pretentious people.
Never use the unsend feature. Unsend is not real life. You cannot unsend in a real conversation. Said something you did not mean to say? Then have the balls to retract it using your own words instead of a long press. (I did this once and I’m never doing it again. :-)) -jen)
The world does not need to suffer our issues. So, we fix them before seeking help.

I heard the phrase “two makes it true” the first time I went to the Naga City Civic Center Skate park. I was learning the ollie and landed it once. I shouted in amazement, “Fvck, I did it!”. The skaters and onlookers retorted in friendly unison, “Not yet! Do it again or it was just a fluke… Two makes it true!”

Celebrating 2 years with Jen. Landed the same trick twice in a row <3 — Neithan

Two Makes It True 🛹

1

Being married to each other has changed our priorities in life, both individually and as a team.

2

The systems in place seem to discourage spending time with the people you love.

3

We have to fight for the important days of our life.

4

Our non-negotiables guide our life decisions.

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