Today James got an email from the Journal’s Apple guy saying he had a great deal on an iMac. James starts drooling.

I tell him there is no way we can afford the computer, even with the discount. Has he seen our bills lately? Is he nuts?

James, of course, doesn’t take this well and a fight brews.

My mind jumps to the worst possible conclusion: We’re going to break up over a computer. A friend of mine, in her young marriage, is currently having a very similar argument with her husband and things are very rocky for them right now. I immediately conclude that we’re headed to the exact same place.

But I mention the fight to another friend, who points out that we should really go with the best machine we can afford, considering how much freelance business James does. It’s worthwhile to make the investment.

And I realize she’s right. James spends an awful lot of time on the computer, and lately, a good chunk of that has been fiddling with things that break. Maybe it does make sense to get a new computer.

So I go back to James and tell him that if he really really needs it, we’ll find a way to make it work. He’s thought about it some and realized that the Mac (a 17-inch) won’t work with the new monitor he has (a 22-inch widescreen) and he loves his monitor. He’s been looking around online and thinks he can get a machine that will do what he needs it to do for a little more than half the price of the Mac.

We decide to do that.

After this resolution, I was absolutely beaming. We had a fight about finances, both compromised and came to a solution we were both happy with. Maybe we aren’t doomed, after all!

Now if we could just get more of our fights to end up this well.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 2:59 pm and is filed under engagement, home life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.