My wife and I are finally getting along with our divisive indoor climate preferences

It wasn’t until two years into our relationship that my wife and I actually started living with each other.

• We had already fallen deeply in love and I had gone as far as proposing to her with success.

At that point it made sense for two fiances to move in with each other, although many of my friends urged me to reconsider. I had an uncle trying to tell me that I should wait until we’re married, otherwise small disagreements could cause us to break up. Their presupposition is the idea that a marriage contract suddenly bonds two people together so that any trivial conflict is easier to set aside. Because you’re married, they say it’s easier to work through issues that would otherwise cause two fiances to split, but I think this idea is ridiculous. With that said, things weren’t perfect for us after we started living together. We had issues like any people who live together, just like I did with roommates in college. However, there was one issue that seemed to constantly recur more than any other. We simply did not share each other’s indoor temperature preferences. My wife always likes warmer temperatures whereas I am the opposite. I would start sweating indoors if my wife controlled the thermostat, while she would shiver if I controlled it. This went back and forth for years—before, during, and after our wedding. In the time since, we started to meet halfway. We took our two temperature preferences and found the number halfway in between the two. Whenever we set the central thermostat, that’s the temperature we choose.
air conditioning