YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER

SUMMARY

 

Let the pranks begin (3 months before the wedding) as Naomi and Nicholas try to get the other to admit how they truly feel.

 

Naomi:

 

• Cuts herself bangs (which she used to have when they first started dating, but has heard Nicholas complaining of that hairstyle on other girls since)

 

• Wears her ex-boyfriend’s Steelers hoodie and “unseemly” makeup

 

• Ties the laces of Nicholas’s favorite dress shoes together and super-glues the knot

 

• Begins calling Nicholas “Nicky” (even though he doesn’t like anyone other than his mom to call him nicknames)

 

• Sabotages wedding decisions that Nicholas’s mom made (such as by changing the flower type to magnolias, which is the name of Nicholas’s dad’s ex-wife)

 

• Tells Nicholas’s mom that she wants her children to have her last name (Westfield) instead of Nicholas’s last name (Rose, which Nicholas’s mom is proud of)

 

Nicholas:

 

• Posts an unflattering picture of Naomi on social media

 

• Hides all of Naomi’s shoes so that she has to wear slippers outside

 

• Intentionally runs over the Charlie Brown tree in their front yard (which Naomi loved and cared after)

 

• Asks for advice of what to get the hottest/smartest girl at his dentistry practice for a Secret Santa gift (such as the same lotion that Naomi uses or expensive diamond jewelry), even though there is no Secret Santa (and he just wants to see if Naomi would have a jealous reaction to show that she still cares)

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LESSONS

 

Looks can be deceiving.

 

“We’re not the yin-and-yang lovebirds I’ve been pretending we are in my Instagram stories. In a way, it’s convenient that Nicholas avoids my friends and doesn’t stray close enough for them to inspect. Knowing that our relationship looks enviable from the outside is the only thing we’ve got going for us, since in reality what we have isn’t enviable at all” (14).

 

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How can you quantify love?

 

Sometimes, Naomi thinks that she loves Nicholas “80%”.

 

Other times, such as when they’re having a passive-aggressive fight, she thinks that number shrinks to single-digits, sounding an alarm in her head.

 

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Communication is key. Don’t bottle things up, letting them stew inside you.

 

“I think about how ‘actress’ is another way of saying ‘professional liar’” (20).

 

“You can’t tell men about your unfixable problems, because they’ll want to fix them and not being able to do so fries their wiring” (21).

 

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Only through the sabotage were Naomi and Nicholas finally open to each other about their aspirations and their grudges.

 

• Naomi has always been jealous of how Nicholas seemed to prioritize his mother over her. He regularly gives his mother flowers, but never gives her them (even for Valentine’s Day or their anniversary). From Nicholas’s perspective, this is because his mom pesters him for flowers, and Naomi once said that she doesn’t need flowers (even though she secretly wants them), and Nicholas never thought of going out of his way to get Naomi flowers anyways since they seem impractical (considering how they die in a couple weeks).

 

• During family get-togethers, Nicholas tended to side with his mother over Naomi (since it seemed easier to not make his crazy mother upset than to not make Naomi upset). This made Naomi feel alone as she was under-attack.

 

• Nicholas would not have minded going against his mother’s constant demands, but he wanted him and Naomi to be a unified team so that he would be in on the joke too.

 

• Nicholas regretted not going for the dream job opportunity in a big city all because Naomi didn’t want to move away from her Junk Yard job and friends.

 

• Naomi feels insecure about having been rejected from all the colleges she applied to and for having been rejected from all jobs that she applied to after the Junk Yard closes down. She tries to play it off as not caring too much (since who wants student debt anyways, and why spend too much time searching for jobs), but she secretly cares a lot and hides the list of all the places she applied to. She feels like Nicholas and his family view her as an underachiever or a slacker, and she worries that they don’t understand what it’s like to not be able to get what you want. 

 

• Nicholas doesn’t like the house that they live in (due to its limited street parking, slanted floors, and far distance from nature). He didn’t admit this at first since he wasn’t sure what Naomi wanted, and he didn’t want her to not take him seriously if he told her that he wanted to live in the wilderness somewhere. It turns out that they both actually preferred the new house that was in the woods, had no neighbors, and had epic views.

 

• Nicholas always felt like an outsider in Naomi’s friend group, and he kept the straw-wrapper bracelet that Naomi made him the one time he actually felt included.

 

• Nicholas assumed that Naomi might be cheating on him with her friend Zach (since Naomi always laughs loudly at his texts and he hates Nicholas). Naomi was over-protective about not letting Nicholas view her phone (since she didn’t want him to see all the job rejections she got), and this fed into his suspicion. However, Naomi has no feelings for Zach (who’s even dating a dude at the moment).

 

• Naomi and Nicholas have both hated it when the other feels emotionally distant and not present in the moment. Sometimes Naomi even took off her engagement ring for a period of time (without thinking much about what this gesture might look like to Nicholas) since even though she loved it, she thought it might look too gaudy.

 

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There’s a difference between doing something because you feel obligated to do it and doing something because you want to do it. 

 

For example, Naomi doesn’t feel pleasure in the flowers that Nicholas gave her because she pressured him to get them for her.

 

“I can see his frown. A shake of the head. Impractical. He knows exactly how much he could have put in his tank for the cost of that jasmine. He knows its conversion rate for groceries or our cell phone bill. // I never should have brought up the whole jag about not getting flowers from him. I’m not at all gratified by the jasmine, because I had to nag to get it, it out of love. He sent it because he felt obligated, just like he does for his mother. But where Deborah can somehow still derive satisfaction from that, I can’t. // It’s an empty gesture, a dark condemnation. In all the places it’s supposed to please, it stings instead” (96).

 

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One complication of being in a couple is that you’re not free to do whatever you want. You have to consider what your partner wants as well.

 

“Something that sucks about being part of a couple: Your partner has veto power and you don’t get to flow wherever the wind takes you. You’re not allowed to have kids or pets unless both of you are on board. You can want a dog more than anything in the world, but if your partner says no, you’re out of luck” (168).

 

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It’s important to set boundaries.

 

Nicholas and Naomi had let Nicholas’s mom control all the wedding decisions to satisfy her vision, not theirs.

 

Later on, Nicholas and Naomi don’t want to invite Nicholas’s critical mom into their new cherished home. From the outside, his mom already wants to hire a landscaper to cut down the surrounding trees, hire someone to build a fence around the pond (since it’s dangerous for children), and thinks that she wasn’t invited there before since he must be “ashamed” of the house.

 

“If we let Deborah and Harold darken our doorway, all the peace we’ve established here is going to go up in smoke. They’ll taint it with their pessimism and judgment. When they leave, they’ll take the magic with them, and it won’t feel like our enchanted sanctuary in the wilderness anymore” (282).

 

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It’s the little things that can break up a relationship. 

 

Or it’s the little things that can make a relationship strong.

 

• Nicholas sleeps on the couch when he’s sick so that his coughing wouldn’t wake Naomi up.

 

• Nicholas finally defends Naomi’s honor to her frenemy and to his mom. When his mom deprives Naomi of a slice of cake for dessert and admits that she told the seamstress to downsize Naomi’s wedding dress to a size 0 after her last fitting (without Naomi’s consent) to encourage her to have a smaller waistline for her big day, Nicholas demands for his mother to apologize and even threatens to uninvite her.

 

• Nicholas opens up to Naomi about an adventure video game he’s obsessed with. Naomi never questioned what he was doing on his computer at night, but now she can play with him and share excitement over victories. 

 

• Naomi begins leaving notes in Nicholas’s lunch box to show that she loves him and is thinking about him.

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Look at things with a glass-half-full perspective.

 

It takes time for Naomi to realize that it’s not a bad thing that Nicholas is caring and financially stable.

 

“I think about what Nicholas is up to today. His devotion to family, being the rock they all depend on. Being the man they call to fix whatever’s gone wrong, to smooth it out and make it better. I think of what these qualities will be like when transferred to a wife and children. I think how there’s no way he’ll ever miss a school play, a parent-teacher conference, a soccer game. How he’ll want his wife to know he’s capable of supporting her financially and she can work if she wants but doesn’t have to, because that’s how he shows his love -- by providing stability. // It’s a gesture I’ve completely misinterpreted, since it’s loving but not necessarily romantic. You look at a love letter and it’s clear as day -- you think, ‘This is a love letter.’ But when your significant other says, ‘You don’t need to work. You don’t need a job,’ you might hear, ‘I don’t think you’ll find meaningful employment without a college education. I don’t believe in you.’ // In my head, I’ve been assuming that when Nicholas says I don’t need to work, what he means is that any job I’d qualify for is so beneath his notice that I might as well not work at all. In Nicholas’s head, all he’s done is say, ‘Here I am, here I am. Be anything! It doesn’t matter if you don’t make much money, because I’ll take care of you. I’ll let you need me. I’ll be your rock, whatever happens. Spread your wings, you can always fall back on me’” (307).

 

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Marriage is worth the trouble only if you find someone you genuinely love and can be open with.

 

“I tried to keep him at a safe distance where he could only see the decent parts of me and it made us both miserable. I inadvertently let him in to see the ugly parts but instead of running away like I’d counted on him to do, he wrapped his arms around all of that ugliness and didn’t let go” (293).

 

“We already know each other’s worst. We’ve battled right through it and come out the other side unbreakable. There will inevitably be arguments, concessions, and peace treaties drawn up in spilled blood, sweat, and tears. We’re going to have to choose each other, over and over, and be each other’s champion, never letting ourselves forget the good whenever we’re stuck in a patch of bad. It’s going to be work. But let me tell you something about Nicholas Benjamin Rosefield: He’s worth it” (353).