Sometimes One of You Has to Be the 100
Three times in 34 years, one of us carried the other. Twice it was literal. Once it had no handles at all.
In the last post, we talked a lot about 100/100 in a relationship. The idea that real partnership is not 50/50, not a tidy split down the middle, but two people each giving everything they have.
Most days, 100/100 means both of you showing up fully at the same time. Both hands on deck. Both people pulling.
But there is another version nobody puts on a wedding invitation. The version where life does not ask both of you for 100 at once. It asks one of you to carry almost all of it, while the other one cannot carry anything at all.
In 34 years, that has happened to us three times that really count. Two of those times, the carrying was literal. Dead weight, up ladders and into cars. And one of those times, there was nothing to physically pick up. Just a person who could not lift himself, and a wife who carried him anyway.
Here are all three.
When One Spouse Carries the Other Emotionally
The anvil that fell the day after I retired
The first time, there was no body to lift. Which, it turns out, is the harder kind.
Only those who have served a congregation for a long time and then left can really know what this is like. There is a weight you carry as the leader of a church, and the strange thing is you do not feel it day to day. It is always there, but it becomes normal while you are in it. You stop noticing the thing that is slowly crushing you.
The day after I retired, it hit me like an anvil falling out of the sky.
Thanks, Wile E. Coyote.
I genuinely thought the weight would lift. I thought I would feel lighter, brighter, free. Nope. I had been bracing against that weight for so long that when it finally lifted, there was no energy left to hold me up. My whole body just gave out. I would call it failure. I did not want to do anything. All I wanted to do was sit by the koi pond I had built and stare at the fish and the frogs and quietly beg somebody to rescue me from the fog.
It was almost like being one of those movie zombies, shuffling around with no energy to lift my arms or walk straight. And it lasted a long while.
Linda was the 100.
She was understanding in a way I did not deserve and could not have repaid at the time. She made sure I had the basics of being alive. Food. Drink. Love. A bathroom. She took care of me, the kids, and the whole house until I was ready to come back to the land of the living. There was nothing to physically carry. She just carried all of it. Me included.
That is the kind of 100 nobody sees. No dramatic photo. No story that fits in a caption. Just a person quietly holding up everything, including you, for as long as it takes.
When One Spouse Literally Carries the Other
Half a lung and a wife who would not take no for an answer
The second time, the carrying was as literal as it gets.
I caught COVID and went down hard. I laid in bed for almost a month, barely conscious most of the time. And at some point Linda decided she was done waiting to see if it would turn around on its own.
She dragged my 200-pound self out of the bed, dressed me, got me into the car, drove me to the VA hospital, and would not take no for an answer until I got real treatment from real doctors.
Turns out COVID pneumonia had taken half of one of my lungs. If she had not gotten me there when she did, I might not be here to write any of this.
Linda was the 100. Again. This time with her back and her stubbornness and 200 pounds of barely-conscious husband. All muscle, by the way. Literally heavy lifting.
So that is twice she carried me. Once through a fog with no handles, and once up and out of a bed I might not have left otherwise. Keep that in mind for what comes next, because partnership is not a one-way street, and life was about to ask me for my turn.
Then It Was My Turn
When the strongest woman I know called my name and could not stand up
When Linda called my name from the bedroom on the boat, I knew something was wrong. We did not know what. But this was wrong.
You have to understand who I am talking about. By then we were in boat shape. That is a shape where you can stand out on the bow in torrential rain and tropical storm winds with lightning all around you and still get the anchor exactly where it needs to be. We had conquered hurricanes. We had spent our blood, sweat, and tears in a boatyard rebuilding the bottom of Slow Ride, never relenting, never quitting. That is the Linda I know. Unstoppable.
And now she was calling out to me, not even able to stand.
I tried to diagnose something I had never seen before. Nope. This was a job for a professional, a real doctor, a real hospital. The only question was how on earth to get her there. Up three narrow steps. Up three more to the stern. Down a six-foot ladder built for one. Into a dinghy. Across the harbor. Onto the dock. A long walk to the car. Into the car. To the emergency room.
Almost nothing was said the whole time. It was not a moment for talking. It was only time to act and react, maybe a few quick instructions about how I was going to get her down the ladder.
I had to set her right at the opening of the ladder so I could pull her close and let her lean on me. I left her sitting at the top, crawled over her and onto the ladder facing her, then pulled her onto it facing away from me, pressing her into the rungs so she could not slide left or right and fall into the water. I got into the dinghy, pulled her down to me and in, and had her lie down.
That is when our neighbors saw the struggle and jumped into their own dinghy to help. They met us at the dock as I was rolling Linda out onto it, flat on her back. They helped me start the long walk to the car, but we did not make it. She was swirling too hard to keep going. We stopped at a bench and laid her down, and I ran ahead to bring the car closer.
And while I was getting the car, I watched her roll off the bench and onto the ground.
I have to tell you, I have never been so scared and so helpless about anything in my life. And I have been in some precarious spots. All my life I have been the one with the answers. The one you call when there is a need. And there I was. No answers. Not much help. Just a man watching the love of his life on the ground, unable to fix it.
We got her into the car, and I do not think I have ever been more relieved than when that part was over. I drove her to the emergency room and sat by her side for two days until we, not she, we, were released.
What Real Partnership Actually Promises
The vow nobody reads out loud
Three times. Twice I was carried. Once I did the carrying. Two of those carries you could measure in pounds. One of them you could only measure in weeks of someone refusing to let you disappear.
Here is what most people miss at the altar, starry-eyed and sure it will always be 50/50.
Every marriage, if it lasts long enough, gets a day like one of these. Maybe a diagnosis. A layoff. A collapse you cannot see from the outside. A season where one of you simply cannot carry your half, through no fault of your own, and the other one picks up the whole thing and walks.
That is not the marriage breaking down. That is the marriage doing exactly what it promised.
We have always tried to give each other 100 percent whenever we are able. And we have learned that sometimes being able is the entire gift. Sometimes the most romantic thing in the world is simply being the one who can stand up today, so you can lift the one who cannot.
Why This Matters Even If You Never Set Foot on a Boat
Life Design Takeaway: build the kind of love that can carry
This is the part that matters whether you live on the water or have never left your zip code.
You do not get to choose whether the hard day comes. You only get to choose, long before it arrives, what kind of partnership you have been building. Because the day one of you goes down is not the day you build it. It is the day you find out what you built.
A 50/50 marriage has a problem in that moment. The person on the ground cannot do their half, and a partnership built on halves does not know what to do when one half disappears.
A 100/100 marriage already knows. One of you becomes the 100. You carry the whole thing, down the ladder or through the fog, and you do not call it unfair, because fair was never the point. Showing up was the point.
So if you are building a life with someone, build the kind of love that can carry. Not because you expect the worst, but because the best gift you can hand your future self is a marriage that already knows how to be the 100 when it has to. The kind where, whether the weight has handles or not, somebody is going to pick it up.
That is the kind of thing you decide on purpose. Long before the day you need it.
Hell yeah. We’re doing that.
With love and laughter,
Matt & Linda
No 2 The Quo
Before We Had the Framework, We Had the Stories
We didn’t start No 2 The Quo with a tidy little life design model and a color-coded spreadsheet.
Shocking, I know.
We started with a few lived decisions. Big ones. Messy ones. The kind where you say, “This is probably fine,” while quietly wondering if you have lost your entire mind.
These three stories explain how we got here before we had the words Declaration of Intendependence™ to describe what we were doing.
These are the origin stories behind No 2 The Quo.
👉 Why We Said No 2 The Quo After the Kids Left Home
👉 It Took Two Years to “Suddenly” Change Our Lives
👉 Yes, We Really Did Pack Our Whole Life Into a Car and Leave
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