<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"It&amp;#039;s 6 p.m., and the guests arrive at 7. My husband and I are in the kitchen, prepping the five-course meal. He&amp;#039;s mid-stir; I&amp;#039;m mid-chop. I reach for the salt, and his spoon goes flying. We bump hips while carrying pots to the counter. I look at his sauce and tell him I think it needs more butter. He doesn&amp;#039;t add butter. Sauce splashes on my shirt. He tells me to go change; he&amp;#039;ll take care of everything. If I do, I know he&amp;#039;ll add sherry to my shrimp dish.  Our guests arrive. We pour wine and head to the living room to sit around the fire. I put my hand on my husband&amp;#039;s thigh, and he covers my hand with his own. We just survived two hours of madness, and we&amp;#039;re back where we belong. Side by side. We even joke about it with our friends \u2014 He&amp;#039;s stubborn and cranky in the kitchen! She&amp;#039;s bossy and sloppy in the kitchen! \u2014 but they don&amp;#039;t care. We throw a mean party. A few of the friends are his (from law school) and a few are mine (writer friends and holdovers from my first marriage). Everything has fit together so easily in our new relationship; we both have that remarkable sense of belonging together. He loves my daughters and, miracle of miracles, they love him. Man, our friends even like one another. It&amp;#039;s as easy as breathing. Except in the kitchen. I&amp;#039;ve always been the cook in my house. He&amp;#039;s always been the cook in his. Two chefs spoil the marriage?  During dinner that night, I notice something alarming. Neal&amp;#039;s sauce is perfect. My shrimp dish needs sherry. We&amp;#039;ve been together now for almost 11 years. Something surprising happened on the way to a long-term relationship: I learned how to become a sous-chef. I remember a comment my therapist made when I told her about Neal. She had seen me through a divorce and into the beginning of a new relationship. She said, &amp;quot;I wonder what it will be like for you to be with someone who is as competent as you.&amp;quot; I mulled over that one. My ex-husband was certainly competent, a lawyer who started a software company he took public. But he didn&amp;#039;t cook, he didn&amp;#039;t fix things around the house, and come to think of it, he didn&amp;#039;t help raise the kids. He ran his company. I ran my career, our family life, and our home \u2014 especially the kitchen. We were king and queen of our separate fiefdoms, but somehow I had gotten shortchanged in this new version of modern love. When Neal and I met, he was living in a 100-year-old Victorian house that he had renovated (a man who fixes things!). He&amp;#039;d been a tax lawyer (a man who pays bills on time!) and had quit to design and build furniture (passion!). I had joint custody of my then 9- and 11-year-old girls.  &amp;quot;OK,&amp;quot; Neal said in a heartbeat. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll move to the Bay area.&amp;quot;  This guy was going to move for me? So what if we bumped up against each other in the kitchen?  Neal told me early on that if he was going to live with my girls, then he was going to play a part in raising them. Instead of bristling (wasn&amp;#039;t it easier to make all those decisions myself?), I found it a relief to share responsibility. I learned what it meant to have a partner in parenting \u2014 a remarkable concept. If we disagreed, we grappled our way to a solution. On anything important, I never suspected him of &amp;quot;adding sherry&amp;quot; when I was out of the room. Jump ahead a few years. I ask him what else he needs. Parsley. Got it, I say. You want tomatoes in this? I ask. No tomatoes, he tells me. Garlic, half an onion, some wild mushrooms. Got it, I say. I chop, he stirs.  I&amp;#039;m the sous-chef. He&amp;#039;s the chef. After enough years of poking around in his sauces, I figured out that he&amp;#039;s the intuitive cook; I&amp;#039;m the recipe follower. He invents. Toasted baguette with smoked trout, cr\u00E8me fra\u00EEche, sage in brown butter: Voil\u00E0. I love my kitchen job, and oftentimes it&amp;#039;s more &amp;quot;work&amp;quot; than his \u2014 I do all the prep work. He tosses things in a pan and the audience cheers.  We figured out the kitchen dance. And we&amp;#039;re rocking. Which gets me to thinking: What does it take to share a life? When I think back to my old life \u2014 when I was Queen of All Things Domestic \u2014 I remember the intense loneliness of the throne. Sure, everything got done my way. But I had no one to ask: Is that really the right way?  This marriage doesn&amp;#039;t look a lot like that marriage. The sous-chef thing might sound like a hierarchy, but it&amp;#039;s got more to do with figuring out how two people work best together. Side by side. Just as long as I don&amp;#039;t mess with his sauce.  Ellen Sussman is the author of the novel On a Night Like This and editor of two literary anthologies. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/advice/a17914/lessons-in-marriage/?src=shelter_footer>