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[quote=Anonymous]We are both naturally pretty go with the flow, but I've had to become much more routine since we had a kid. Initially this caused a lot of conflict. It took two forms.

One, he was just resisting the idea that a child would change our lives in any meaningful way. So he'd get annoyed at having to be home by a certain time in order to do dinner and bath, or when DC was young, for naps. He'd resent getting ready routines that I created to help us remember to bring things the baby/kid needed because he likes being unencumbered by stuff and being able to leave whenever we wanted. This was really stressful for me because these routines didn't come naturally to me -- I'm like DH. But at least some level of routine is absolutely mandatory for children. We are pretty laid back as parents and not super strict about stuff like food or bedtimes, but you have to have some structure or your kid is just a mess. So I'd wind up desperately trying to enforce these routines while DH consistently undermined them. It put me in the middle in a way I hated and required several serious conversations about our joint responsibility as parents and how much it sucked being the designated planner/organizer/scheduler while he pretty much lives as he did pre-kids. He got it, and has gotten much better recently. But the first two years, when those schedules are most restrictive and we were very new to parent, were really rough.

The second form was alluded to by a PP, and it's the thing where the less routine person thinks you're being ridiculous and rigid for no reason. And the frustrating this is that sometimes that person is totally wrong -- you aren't being rigid, you are being realistic, and there is nothing wrong with the routine you are trying to follow and in fact it's beneficial. But sometimes they are right and your anxiety has gotten the best of you and you are trying to impose something rigid on the family for no good reason and it's actually making everyone miserable. That's so hard -- you have to be willing to admit that sometimes you, as the routine person, are wrong and need to just chill about something. I've found that once again, the solution to this one is communication, and both of you being willing to admit you're wrong (my DH is decent at it).

So yes, it can work, but you need all the other stuff that makes a relationship work -- good communication, being forgiving, being flexible (and you BOTH need to be flexible, which means the routine person needs to be willing to relax a routine sometimes, and the go-with-the-flow person needs to be willing to schedule certain things and fall into routine when it makes sense). And as with all long-term relationships, you need to stay on the look out for building resentment and deal with it sooner rather than later. I'd rather have a small argument once a month about the routine/go-with-the-flow issue than a blowout argument once a year. Trust me on that. As long as the small argument is productive and gets resolved peacefully, that's honestly not particularly bad conflict in a relationship. All relationships require some amount of compromise and adjustment.

Two routine people could actually be a mess because they like different routines and not be able to negotiate them, by the way. Something to consider.[/quote]

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