Most of the articles I read about Jim and Pam from the Office are written by people who have never been married. They say it in their article, 'not that I've ever been married' or 'I'm not married, so I don't know' yet they pretend to know how Jim and Pam, 2 likeable people, seem to morph into monsters after they get together. 'Lazy writing', they say. Somehow, the writers have twisted the characters into unrecognizable monsters to fit their weird narrative. I've even read one claiming Jim is cheating on Pam because that's what everyone on the show does and the film crew wanted to tell a specific narrative, which is why he's unaccounted for most of the time.
They must do yoga because they're really good at stretching. I'm married. I know a little bit about the realities after 'kiss the bride' and the truth is that Jim and Pam are not perfect and they're not supposed to be.
Being married is hard. It's really really hard. Beforehand, you're expected to love fun and goofing off and have all these hobbies to make yourself interesting. Laundry? Yeah, single-person style. Do you do your roommate's laundry? No, you do yours and they do theirs. Although there's a shaky balance and some people want to group things up (you wash everyone's dishes tonight and I'll do it tomorrow) there's still the unspoken rule of 'every man for himself'.
All that changes after the ceremony; not after living together, after the ceremony. Why? There's suddenly a HUGE pressure to make things work. You probably didn't throw a catered party to announce that you were moving in together, you just did it. Things flowed naturally and you acted like roommates who have sex. After the ceremony, there's suddenly an audience to your relationship. All the people you care about watched you formally induct this person into their lives, marking your territory and saying, 'I am now in a package deal with this person'. If you divorce, it's going to be messy because you just involved all these people in your lives. They are now a part of your relationship. That kind of pressure changes people.
Being married is not about maintaining independence because if you wanted to be truly independent, you wouldn't have gotten married. Marriage is not about independence, it is about meshing your life with someone else's and realizing you are no longer a 'you' but an 'us'. It's hard to divide your lives down the middle and a lot of marriages fail because the couple does not seem to realize they are no longer roommates who have to put their names on everything. You compromise in marriage, you give things up, you do things you don't want to do, you go through rough patches where you wonder why you're with this person, you do the hard things because THAT is what a couple does. You are both in this together and sometimes you have to accept that 100% is not always what will be received or given. We, as humans, are not capable of 100%. As a couple, your output will only occasionally be 100%, especially to each other.
Guess what else changes people? Kids. That's right; Cici and Phillip changed Jim and Pam. How? Speaking from experience, being married and having a child, it's really hard on a relationship. People complain that Jim didn't miss his wife and kids when he went to Tallahassee, or that he liked living in a bachelor pad too much. I would LOVE an excuse to be away from my family for a few days a week, to spend selfish quality me-time and NOT feel guilty about it. As it is, I have to lock my kid out of the bathroom to take a shower and laugh all you want, but that is absolutely horrifying to come into as a previously independent person who worked in a factory and provided for herself. I had a life plan that did not involve a husband and children and now I have a child who screams if he is not within a few feet of me. If I'm gone, do I miss my family? Absolutely. Do I relish my alone time? Absolutely.
Kids change your personalities because you are no longer solely in charge of keeping yourself alive, but another human being. And dogs are not kids. 'Fur baby' is not a thing. You have an animal you keep for companionship. Just because you spoil your animal and treat it like a human does not make it one. Your dog obeys your commands because it is genetically programmed to be a pack animal and respond to leadership. A child has no such inclinations. A dog will not be emotionally scarred if it sees you and your spouse having sex. A dog will never grow up. You will never be judged because your lab-pit mix did not grow into a German Shepherd. Most people allow their dogs to defecate in public and do not clean it up. There is no pressure to name a dog or force it to socialize. Your dog's future does not rely on the obedience school you send it to. Your dog will not leave the house to pursue a future and you will not be judged if your dog has an off day. Your dog cannot become an alcoholic or druggie in spite of your training. You can control whether or not your dog reproduces. If your puppy starts whining, people will not start complaining about how you shouldn't bring animals into public places.
More pressure. Most of those scenarios involved the judgement of others, which is emotionally draining. Not only does it involve you, it involves your child, which people use as a mirror to your character. If you have a bad kid, you must be a bad parent. This is true with animals, but not with children. Adam had Cain, who was bad. You'd think that makes him a bad parent, but hand on, he also had Abel. So either his actions were interpreted differently by these two siblings or children just happen to have their own personalities that parents can only vaguely shape. My sister has never enjoyed physical contact, even when she was an infant. She only nursed to eat, never for comfort, and slept by herself from day 1. She did not use physical affection to comfort herself and was never touchy. She is still like this. Our Mom is very cuddly, especially with children, and it hurt her to have one of her children so opposed to the idea. I was the complete opposite, constantly wanting to be with her and in her presence. This might be because I was the oldest, but fast-forward to my youngest sister who was soothed by rubbing the arms of my Mom and Dad, specifically those two. So it's not a parent thing, it's a child thing.
Tangent over, point is, Jim and Pam are judged for the actions of their children and neither one of them feels fulfilled in their lives. Pam wanted to be an artist, but gave it up for her relationship with Jim. People sacrifice, it's what they do. Jim gave up on moving to Philly to be more involved with Athlead for his relationship with Pam. The difference is that Jim is the primary bread winner in the family and he was working to make his passion a viable financial opportunity for his family, not find an outlet to express himself.
People change when they get married. You have to. You're taking 2 people and making 1 couple. Sacrifices have to be made. Sometimes he has to watch you play Skyrim and sometimes you have to listen to him ramble about politics in the Middle East (ok, all the time). That's what married people do. If someone bored you before, you could just stop hanging out with them, but you can't do that in a marriage. Sometimes you have to crawl on your hands and knees and chase your baby around, or take him for a walk when all you want to do is sleep. Sometimes you have to change a dirty diaper, or listen to them screaming at the top of their lungs because you're not looking at them while you chop an onion. That's what parents do.
I'm not a perfect person and it's easy to look at what I am now as a failure. This isn't what I wanted for my life. I didn't want to be married, I didn't want to have kids, I didn't want to NOT have a job and follow my husband around with no real goals or aspirations on my own because that might interfere with what my husband needed to do for his career. If I compare my past and my present, I'm a failure.
I have to change. I had to change. I'm not who I was back then and if I had been prepared for my spouse, I wouldn't have had the same past. I wouldn't have been the same person. It's hard not to compare because that's how I've been gauging my success, but my life hasn't found a balance yet. I write infrequently because my son naps infrequently and when he does, there are a lot more important things to do than writing, such as taking a much-needed nap myself, or doing the dishes, or catching up on the library books I swear I'm going to return on time this week.
Jim couldn't be who he was. Pam couldn't stay the same way. They went to marriage counseling, which is awesome news. How many dysfunctional couples on TV go to counseling? How many of them actually try to solve their problems? How many of them turn to weird hijinks and distrusting each other until they come to blows? Why not go to a counselor, why not get professional help?
Even as I write this, I don't have to convince you Jim and Pam don't belong together because nobody does. Nobody belongs to anybody because we are perfectly capable of a single life, sans romantic relationship. We spend our single lives attempting to fulfill ourselves with hobbies, then are expected to transition to finding fulfillment in a relationship with a single person. Of course we have hobbies and interests, but those must take a back seat, or even trunk, to our primary relationship with our spouse. A relationship is not satisfying in the same way that creating a work of art, or getting to the next mission in Halo is. They are 2 separate experiences.
All this culminates in the resounding nugget of truth that Jim and Pam were written by people who were likely married and likely had kids, allowing them to present 2 flawed people struggling to experience life and find happiness while compromising their dreams.
They must do yoga because they're really good at stretching. I'm married. I know a little bit about the realities after 'kiss the bride' and the truth is that Jim and Pam are not perfect and they're not supposed to be.
Being married is hard. It's really really hard. Beforehand, you're expected to love fun and goofing off and have all these hobbies to make yourself interesting. Laundry? Yeah, single-person style. Do you do your roommate's laundry? No, you do yours and they do theirs. Although there's a shaky balance and some people want to group things up (you wash everyone's dishes tonight and I'll do it tomorrow) there's still the unspoken rule of 'every man for himself'.
All that changes after the ceremony; not after living together, after the ceremony. Why? There's suddenly a HUGE pressure to make things work. You probably didn't throw a catered party to announce that you were moving in together, you just did it. Things flowed naturally and you acted like roommates who have sex. After the ceremony, there's suddenly an audience to your relationship. All the people you care about watched you formally induct this person into their lives, marking your territory and saying, 'I am now in a package deal with this person'. If you divorce, it's going to be messy because you just involved all these people in your lives. They are now a part of your relationship. That kind of pressure changes people.
Being married is not about maintaining independence because if you wanted to be truly independent, you wouldn't have gotten married. Marriage is not about independence, it is about meshing your life with someone else's and realizing you are no longer a 'you' but an 'us'. It's hard to divide your lives down the middle and a lot of marriages fail because the couple does not seem to realize they are no longer roommates who have to put their names on everything. You compromise in marriage, you give things up, you do things you don't want to do, you go through rough patches where you wonder why you're with this person, you do the hard things because THAT is what a couple does. You are both in this together and sometimes you have to accept that 100% is not always what will be received or given. We, as humans, are not capable of 100%. As a couple, your output will only occasionally be 100%, especially to each other.
Guess what else changes people? Kids. That's right; Cici and Phillip changed Jim and Pam. How? Speaking from experience, being married and having a child, it's really hard on a relationship. People complain that Jim didn't miss his wife and kids when he went to Tallahassee, or that he liked living in a bachelor pad too much. I would LOVE an excuse to be away from my family for a few days a week, to spend selfish quality me-time and NOT feel guilty about it. As it is, I have to lock my kid out of the bathroom to take a shower and laugh all you want, but that is absolutely horrifying to come into as a previously independent person who worked in a factory and provided for herself. I had a life plan that did not involve a husband and children and now I have a child who screams if he is not within a few feet of me. If I'm gone, do I miss my family? Absolutely. Do I relish my alone time? Absolutely.
Kids change your personalities because you are no longer solely in charge of keeping yourself alive, but another human being. And dogs are not kids. 'Fur baby' is not a thing. You have an animal you keep for companionship. Just because you spoil your animal and treat it like a human does not make it one. Your dog obeys your commands because it is genetically programmed to be a pack animal and respond to leadership. A child has no such inclinations. A dog will not be emotionally scarred if it sees you and your spouse having sex. A dog will never grow up. You will never be judged because your lab-pit mix did not grow into a German Shepherd. Most people allow their dogs to defecate in public and do not clean it up. There is no pressure to name a dog or force it to socialize. Your dog's future does not rely on the obedience school you send it to. Your dog will not leave the house to pursue a future and you will not be judged if your dog has an off day. Your dog cannot become an alcoholic or druggie in spite of your training. You can control whether or not your dog reproduces. If your puppy starts whining, people will not start complaining about how you shouldn't bring animals into public places.
More pressure. Most of those scenarios involved the judgement of others, which is emotionally draining. Not only does it involve you, it involves your child, which people use as a mirror to your character. If you have a bad kid, you must be a bad parent. This is true with animals, but not with children. Adam had Cain, who was bad. You'd think that makes him a bad parent, but hand on, he also had Abel. So either his actions were interpreted differently by these two siblings or children just happen to have their own personalities that parents can only vaguely shape. My sister has never enjoyed physical contact, even when she was an infant. She only nursed to eat, never for comfort, and slept by herself from day 1. She did not use physical affection to comfort herself and was never touchy. She is still like this. Our Mom is very cuddly, especially with children, and it hurt her to have one of her children so opposed to the idea. I was the complete opposite, constantly wanting to be with her and in her presence. This might be because I was the oldest, but fast-forward to my youngest sister who was soothed by rubbing the arms of my Mom and Dad, specifically those two. So it's not a parent thing, it's a child thing.
Tangent over, point is, Jim and Pam are judged for the actions of their children and neither one of them feels fulfilled in their lives. Pam wanted to be an artist, but gave it up for her relationship with Jim. People sacrifice, it's what they do. Jim gave up on moving to Philly to be more involved with Athlead for his relationship with Pam. The difference is that Jim is the primary bread winner in the family and he was working to make his passion a viable financial opportunity for his family, not find an outlet to express himself.
People change when they get married. You have to. You're taking 2 people and making 1 couple. Sacrifices have to be made. Sometimes he has to watch you play Skyrim and sometimes you have to listen to him ramble about politics in the Middle East (ok, all the time). That's what married people do. If someone bored you before, you could just stop hanging out with them, but you can't do that in a marriage. Sometimes you have to crawl on your hands and knees and chase your baby around, or take him for a walk when all you want to do is sleep. Sometimes you have to change a dirty diaper, or listen to them screaming at the top of their lungs because you're not looking at them while you chop an onion. That's what parents do.
I'm not a perfect person and it's easy to look at what I am now as a failure. This isn't what I wanted for my life. I didn't want to be married, I didn't want to have kids, I didn't want to NOT have a job and follow my husband around with no real goals or aspirations on my own because that might interfere with what my husband needed to do for his career. If I compare my past and my present, I'm a failure.
I have to change. I had to change. I'm not who I was back then and if I had been prepared for my spouse, I wouldn't have had the same past. I wouldn't have been the same person. It's hard not to compare because that's how I've been gauging my success, but my life hasn't found a balance yet. I write infrequently because my son naps infrequently and when he does, there are a lot more important things to do than writing, such as taking a much-needed nap myself, or doing the dishes, or catching up on the library books I swear I'm going to return on time this week.
Jim couldn't be who he was. Pam couldn't stay the same way. They went to marriage counseling, which is awesome news. How many dysfunctional couples on TV go to counseling? How many of them actually try to solve their problems? How many of them turn to weird hijinks and distrusting each other until they come to blows? Why not go to a counselor, why not get professional help?
Even as I write this, I don't have to convince you Jim and Pam don't belong together because nobody does. Nobody belongs to anybody because we are perfectly capable of a single life, sans romantic relationship. We spend our single lives attempting to fulfill ourselves with hobbies, then are expected to transition to finding fulfillment in a relationship with a single person. Of course we have hobbies and interests, but those must take a back seat, or even trunk, to our primary relationship with our spouse. A relationship is not satisfying in the same way that creating a work of art, or getting to the next mission in Halo is. They are 2 separate experiences.
All this culminates in the resounding nugget of truth that Jim and Pam were written by people who were likely married and likely had kids, allowing them to present 2 flawed people struggling to experience life and find happiness while compromising their dreams.
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