I am not a morning person – never have been and never will be. Sure I can wake up early, be present, and probably even make some coherent sounding decisions – but there is a good chance I will remember none of it, or blather on about nonsense. I thrive in the evenings – honestly after 9pm is when my best thinking occurs.

My husband on the other hand is a morning person – he is up and ready to attack the world at 0-dark-thirty (really 5am). He does his best thinking first thing in the morning, and thrives on accomplishments he gets done before breakfast. He is usually asleep by 8pm, or if he has somehow managed to stay awake with me – barely coherent and in need of a caffeine boost.

People tell me that I will grow out of it, and become a morning person, especially as I get older (but weirdly never tell my husband that he will morph into a night owl). They say “I used to be a night owl too – but as I got older, I changed.” I call hogwash – either they never really were night owls or they succumbed to society’s pressures to be early birds, and that’s why our society is so addicted to coffee.

Due to work, school (mine), the kids schedules (their schools) and really just society in general, I have to adjust my waking hours and miss out on my best time for thinking, motivation and working – and honestly why do we do this? We miss out on half of society’s great ideas, because society has built a construct that everyone must obey and there is no deviating from that path. Office hours will be from 0800 – 1700 with only 1 hour for lunch, and shops will close by 1900 (if you are lucky they are still open), so be sure to get all your shopping done immediately after work or miss your lunch, and shop then. There have been some improvements to recognizing not everyone operates on the same schedule – but not on a large enough scale across the country.

My husband and I being on opposite schedules also used to mean a lot of fights – he would get frustrated with me for sleeping in, and I would get frustrated at him for going to bed early. One day, when he called me lazy for sleeping in (note this was a long time ago), I snapped. We sat down and counted up our individual hours of sleep, what we each did for chores and taking care of the kids and house, work hours, and how much we accomplished while the other was sleeping. You might have guessed, I won the argument, as I was doing a lot more family prep, chores and tasks when he went to bed, then he was accomplishing in the morning before I woke up. Since then, we still have little tiffs here and there (mostly out of jealousy now – he hates that I can sleep in – I hate he can fall asleep easily), but we have come to a better understanding of both our schedules. We also agree that it would be nice if more of society was accommodating for both early birds and night owls.

What is your opposites attract story?