I wonder how many couples are like my wife and I. We often battle over the thermostat settings in our house. I’m sometimes amazed we’ve made it through nineteen years of marriage, even though we have what I call, “Hot and Cold Incompatibility.”
Hot and cold incompatibility is when one person would love to live in the searing heat and endless sands of the Sahara Desert, and the other’s life-long dream is to bask in the gentle breezes, and comfortable temperatures of Antarctica. If you were wondering; I love vacationing at the peak of Mount Everest, and my wife prefers trekking through Death Valley in a sweater and ski hat. I live in an area, where summertime temperature can rise to over a hundred degrees, and dip to near zero during the winter. I’m always miserable in the summer, and happy during frigid winters. My wife says it’s better to prefer heat over cold. I say, “If it’s too cold, I can always put on another layer of clothing. If it’s too hot, you can only get so naked!”
I’ve often wondered if dating sites like Match.com and eHarmony understand the importance of hot and cold compatibility. Do you think their standard questionnaires have things on them like, “Would you prefer to be baked in a four-hundred degree pizza oven, or dipped in liquid nitrogen, to be cryogenically frozen to an internal temperature of two-hundred and seventy-three degrees below zero? I think if more people realized how important it is to have a partner whose temperature comfort zone is within ten degrees of your own, there would be less divorces, and more marital harmony. I’m amazed my wife and I managed to get together long enough to have a son. Usually at night, I’m lying in bed blanketless, in my underwear, and sweating as a fan blows on me. My wife, on the other hand huddles on the other side of the bed wearing flannel pajamas and gloves, and is covered in two blankets and a quilt. I better get going now. I think my wife must have changed our thermostats setting again. I’m starting to sweat, a Bedouin family just went down the hall, leading a caravan of camels, my wife is vacuuming up sand, and I was just bitten by what looked like a scorpion.
I’m totally with you on this one. I prefer cold to heat, hands down! And it’s tough when your partner is on the opposite end of the temperature preference scale. My guy and are are compatible in every way but this one. Our thermostat gets more action than we do!
Cold lovers unit! Lorna, I’m glad there’s another person who prefers the cold. My wife is probably like your guy. They drive us nuts with the temperature thing, but their other great qualities more than make up for it.
Very true… sigh…
I so identify with this. Why, I ask you with tears dripping from the end of my nose, is it necessary to put the aircon to levels where one has to huddle under a duvet instead of sleeping happily covered by a sheet …?
I love airconditioning turned way up, but with electricity rates rising, I don’t use it as much. This past summer I did a lot of sweating. it’s winter here now, so i try to keep the oil furnace off to save money.. My thermostat is set at 66, my wife is wearing sweaters, and I’m happily wearing shorts and a tee-shirt.
Good solution!