This married life is keeping me wonderfully busy: Alhamdulillah!

I don’t know if I mentioned this before or not, but for a week or so, I wondered why life got so much busier after marriage. After all, there are two people around to do the chores, go for groceries, and etc., and so shouldn’t there be overall less to do? Or, rather, there should be roughly twice as much to do, but two people to do it, for—at best—no increase in overall time required to complete chores (and other obligations, including all the fun stuff). This assumes an equation like this:

James + Hana = James & Hana

or

James’s chores + Hana’s chores = James & Hana’s chores*

or

(1 + 1)/2 = 2/2 = 1

Seems obvious, right?

But something occurred to me… As of 6 weeks ago, there was James, and there was Hana. Now, though, while there is still James and still Hana, there is also James & Hana… So the equation above completely ignores the relationship, the combined James + Hana entity, and in reality the equation looks more like:

James + Hana = James and Hana and James & Hana

or

James’s chores + Hana’s chores = James’s chores, Hana’s chores, and James & Hana’s chores

or

1 + 1 = 1 + 1 + 1

Which seems both counterintuitive and completely obvious. After all, this new entity, the married couple, has its own chores and obligations that neither individual had before, and we still both have our own chores. True, we can combine some things (trips to the grocery, cooking meals, washing clothes, packing lunch, etc.), but all of these things is at least double what it was when we were single.

Take groceries, for example. As a single person, I was able to limit my diet to such an extent that my grocery bill was something like $60/month. But Hana doesn’t want to eat the same 3 meals every single week day, and she’s pretty good about remembering to eat on the weekends (as is most every other sensible person), and so there are more groceries to buy, and more cooking to do, more dishes to wash, etc. While we can take turns doing the shopping, cooking, and cleaning, it all takes twice as long (maybe a bit less), for no net gain. And the same applies for other domestic activities: our apartment is twice as big and so takes twice as long to clean; there are two cars to fill with fuel instead of just one; two showers to take; etc.

In addition, while Hana had some invitations to dinner or other events, and some family activities to attend to, and while James had far fewer, but still some such events, James & Hana have all of those and more.

I still don’t quite know how 1 + 1 = 3 (or even 2.625), but it seems clear that it does.

Have other married couples experienced this?

Anyway.

So I didn’t make much time to shoot this week, and don’t expect to have huge amounts of time to ponder themes and go out shooting in the foreseeable future, but I don’t mind. In fact, I’m incredibly happy and blessed and fortunate to be in such a state: Alhamdulillah (All praise and thanks to God)! SubhanAllah (Glory be to God)! MashAllah (by the will of God)!

Everything was shot with the D7000 and Nikkor 24mm f/2.8 ai, and most got very minimal adjustments in Lightroom 5. EXIF available in the lightbox, if you care.

*I’m not implying that married life is a chore. Indeed, it’s the opposite, or, if it is a chore, it’s one that I look forward to and constantly thank God for, and so consequently is not something that we would ordinarily call a ‘chore.’ Ahh, semantics.