I Married My Polar Opposite. Here's Why it Works

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Garry and I are as opposite as onions and Oreos, Lucy and Ricky, The Odd Couple, Oscar and Felix. But with love, resolve, and our bathrooms, we’ve embraced our 180-degree oppositeness and stayed married for more than 33 years.

Garry is a laid-back California-bred trippy-hippie manana man. I’m a hyper-talkative, native New Yorker, proactive, do-it-yesterday career journalist.

I’m specific; Garry is “whatever.”

But my husband is no slouch. He has two challenging careers: Hollywood screenwriter and certified teacher of the blind. Because of our polar-opposite makeup and habits, Garry often drives me up a wall. And I can take him to that same frustrating place.

A hint of that showed up two weeks before our wedding. I was assigned to cover a fancy event honoring top women in TV comedy.

First, there would be a reception, where the press could mingle freely with the stars. Men were asked to wear tuxedos.

“I’m not wearing any monkey suit!” was Garry’s quick reaction to the dress code. I was floored.

Garry relented and rented a tux. It turned out he had a memorable night because, as he has reminded me ever since, at the reception, Marlo Thomas gave him a “come-hither” smile.

Before we married, Garry admired my tidiness. That was part of our “opposites attract” because neatness certainly isn’t his thing.

But now he’s bothered when, for instance, I place food that he leaves in open boxes on the kitchen counter into plastic bags secured tightly with twist ties.

According to clinical psychologist and couple's therapist Dr. Alden Cass, “When couples are opposites, they’re more attracted to each other at the beginning of the relationship. Over time, that oppositeness loses its attractive quality and becomes annoying.”

Garry charges that I’m an obsessive-compulsive micromanager. That’s mainly because I stick with: “There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place.” Garry’s way: Nothing has a place, and so what if everything’s a mess?

True, I’m assertive and sometimes confrontational. I get whatever it is off my chest, which needn’t be about Garry and me, but I typically argue with him anyway because he doesn’t deliver enough empathy. I quickly get over it, though.

When he’s steamed, he usually doesn’t vent until a few days later, which means that by then, he has misdirected his angst my way. Despite our flashpoints, a couple's therapist told us that as opposites, we were “magic.”

Garry and I met 63 years ago in Los Angeles at American International Pictures, a movie studio his family owned. He had just graduated from high school and was toiling in the mail room. I was in publicity.

A year earlier, his father, screenwriter and producer Lou Rusoff, hired an 18-year-old me as his production assistant in the New York office before my transfer to L.A. headquarters.

Nearly 30 years later, and by then, a veteran New York-based journalist, I again relocated to L.A., on the hunt for interviews with stars. Garry and I hadn’t been in touch all that time. But I looked him up for a chat about writing: Some years before, I caught a TV movie, Marian Rose White, of which I noted he was the screenwriter. We met for lunch and the following week, charged over to see the movie, Barton Fink.

Nine weeks after that, we eloped. On November 9, 1991, we said our vows at the Adventure Inn in Reno, Nevada. And this leads me to two of our biggest three ongoing issues: money and sex.

Garry and I each brought financial and intellectual capital to our marriage, but our relationships to money are diametrically opposed.

He grew up in a glam Hollywood Hills home with a swimming pool, while I, a latch-key kid of financially struggling parents, grew up in a three-room apartment in Queens, New York.

As an adult, I became quite a frugal saver. Garry’s more the got-it-spend-it type. So I became the Chief Financial Officer of our marriage. That is, for everything except Garry’s online horse race betting. He makes little bets, but to me, gambling is a money-waster.

As for the bedroom, there have definitely been patches when our libidos have been out of sync.

During one, to spice things up, I donned harem girl and parlor maid costumes complete with masks. But instead of a turn-on, it was so ridiculous that we ended up howling with laughter.

Once we tried a fake whip made of wispy feathers and also a vibrating hairbrush. We bought these from my gynecologist’s nurse, who had embarked on a sideline selling sex toys.

Our third major area of conflict is cannabis. Garry has been a devotee from age 16 and authored one of the first contemporary books about it, The Gourmet Guide to Grass.

I indulged briefly in the early 1970s but never touched weed again.

Another one of our opposites: Garry is a divorced father of two daughters. This is my first marriage, and I’d chosen not to be a single mother. Since we were middle-aged when we wed, Garry and I opted to forego trying to have our own children.

Here’s a “don’t” to avoid wrangling with your opposite: Don’t raise your voice or attack during a mere difference of opinion, which can make a molehill into a mountain-sized argument.

Dr. Cass advises, “Don’t belittle the other person and invalidate them for being the way they are. Being opposite can make you a more well-rounded version of yourself.”

For us, an important decision looms: Garry wants to leave high-risk Manhattan and move to the suburbs. We’ve lived in New York for 14 years after almost 20 in L.A.

I’m a city gal and have zero desire for suburban living.

So I won’t be following the advice of actor James Garner, who told me in an interview that the secret to his and his wife Lois’s long marriage was: “Yes, dear.”

But here’s what Garry and I do share: a deep devotion and lasting love. It has weathered emergency hospitalizations, sudden surgeries, chronic illness and street assaults.

We may be polar opposites in many ways, but at such painful times, Garry and I are tender, nurturing caregivers to each other.

In that way, we’re exactly alike.

Are you and your spouse always in sync or are you all polar opposites? Let us know in the comments below.