LGBTQIA and the United Methodist Church

So, in the case you don't know this about me, I have a habit of addressing the elephant in the room by taking its hand, pulling it out of the corner to the group present, and giving it a name.  I can't say that I do this with every elephant (because who has the emotional energy to do that all the time), but I do prefer just to approach some pieces head on rather than talk about things obliquely.  Our taboo on discussing death, religion, racism, sex, and politics has developed generations of people who don't know how to intelligently discuss any of those topics.

This specific elephant deals with both religion and sexuality.

For those that are not aware, the United Methodist Church held/is holding General Conference this weekend, basically a big meeting where certain decisions are made for the whole of the denomination.  As of writing this, I'm not sure what the result will be from those discussions, but here are the big things that the church is discussing:

1. Should "self-avowed, practicing" LGBTQIA persons be allowed into ordination (i.e. become pastors)?
2. Should United Methodist churches be allowed to perform weddings of LGBTQIA individuals that at least don't appear to be heteronormative?  
3. If both of these are officially declined, how should churches be punished for breaking these rules?

There's so much to unpack here.  I was more than a little shocked myself to learn that there was some specific verbiage put into the Discipline (the rules book of the UMC) prohibiting points one and two in the 70s and 80s.  While some places have been enforcing those rules, there are definitely pockets where they're ignored, civil disobedience style.  There was a provision that if, for example, a gay man agreed not to "practice a homosexual lifestyle" that they could be ordained, though more and more places seem to be dropping that verbiage.  

I'm livid that this is such a point of debate.  I tend to describe the UMC as a more liberal, progressive church community, knowing that there are pockets that always lean more one way or the other, though I suppose that "more" is more relative than I had realized.  I don't give a fuck who anyone is sleeping with, provided that consent is present.  It's none of my damn business.  If a heterosexual couple was told that they could be ordained provided they promised to never have sex again, does that properly highlight how ludicrous that restrict stands?  

IF I agreed with the concept that homosexuality is a sin and we don't want unapologetic sinners leading the church, I demand to know why this particular line in the sand is drawn, given that pastors are, well, human.  When we keep statements in the Discipline like this, we accept the "othering" of these persons, which ultimately translates into aggression against these persons, always easier when you see an individual as less than human.  Chapters from Leviticus are thrown around, about how these persons are abominations, but I don't see the same kind of fervency picketing Red Lobster and their Shrimp Fest (Leviticus 11: 10,12).  Similarly, Jesus had a few things to say about divorce that don't have the same cultural relevance that they used to either.  I have a term for individuals who seem to be selective in what to enforce in the Bible:  Buffet Christians.  It seems like they've gone through the buffet line loading up on mashed potatoes and ice cream and skipping out on the asparagus, brussel sprouts, sirloin, whathaveyou.  Again, assuming the argument momentarily that homosexuality is a sin, looking at the Bible in context I see a lot more of Jesus including the "undesirables" rather than rebuking them for their lifestyle.  

Here's the truth:  I believe that pearl-clutching around homosexuality is eventually going to die down, as more and more of my generation and Gen Z'ers simply don't have the same degree of prejudice that previous generations did.  This is not to say that it homophobia will magically not be a problem anymore--far from it--but Millennials and Gen Z'ers tend to lean more toward agreement that being an asshole to gay people (being an asshole defined here as behaviors such as supporting gay conversion therapy, physically or emotionally bullying someone based on their sexual orientation, discriminating against gay couples for adoption, insisting that gay relationships are not valid, etc) is firmly putting oneself on the wrong side of history.  It's still important for those that can to use our privilege to insist upon equality for all LGBTQIA persons.  I think about the LGBTQIA persons in my life, and how I love them, how I want them to have all of the rights and protections and tax benefits and recognition and respect that I wish every person had.  They are not less than a married heterosexual couple compliantly riding the relationship escalator.  I have talked to so many people in my life that have been hurt by their church, where a place that preached love made it clear that love excluded them.  We, the United Methodist Church, used to exclude black people and black pastors and recognized the need to update those pieces of the Discipline; we used to bar women from ordination and similarly updated those pieces of the Discipline; this is the next line of things that needs to be corrected into a more just, inclusive, and Wesleyan picture, bringing in ALL of the Body of Christ.  We who know that God loves everybody are called to act like it.

My ideal version of events from General Conference would be to strip this verbage clear out of the Discipline, permitting unequivocally points 1 and 2 above.  Regardless of what happens, presuming a decision is made and is tabled for another conference, churches and individuals will leave.  Some of the plans for how these decisions might happen allows for individual churches to decide.  If our individual church were to go the "Traditionalist Route," Andy and I are gone without a second thought; I strongly doubt ours would, which is why we're relatively active persons in it.  Hell, if the whole denomination goes traditionalist, I'm not sure if I'd want to say.  If we go toward a progressive and more loving and inclusive stance, those not ready to do that will leave.  They would always be welcome back, but we're back to the not tolerating intolerance component of things.  The individual is welcome; being an asshole to other people based on their sexual orientation is not.  

Again, as of writing this, the results are not available.  The General Conference includes people from around the world and their own cultural biases with them.  I would want us to make a clear, inclusive stance, to even help guide change in those communities, too.  Easy for me to say here, in the relative safety of free speech, sure, but refusing to "other" a group of persons is a powerful statement for a community to make, even if just to start that conversation that perhaps one's biases and societal training on this matter were not wholly correct.  

John Wesley set these guidelines:  "Do no harm.  Do all the good you can.  Stay in love with Christ."  That "Do no harm" piece, that includes not not doing something that needs to be done, like a lie by omission still counts as lying.  Allowing this discrimination to continue is harmful.  People are being hurt in the time being.  Not addressing it is harmful, as that resentment continues to fester.  

This is where I am stuck on the personal level:  I don't want to be labeled intolerant/intransigent/inflexible/ungracious for refusing to broker intolerant people.  I want to make homophobia a lonely hobby.  I want to make racism, sexism, ableism, etc. lonely hobbies.  I delight in taking someone's racist joke and politely playing dumb, asking them to explain it to me as they make an ass of themselves trying to explain that that's what this group of persons is just like, you know?  Otherwise, by accepting the behavior, I nonverbally accept the feelings behind it, just as when I was teaching, failing to stop a student's teasing is nonverbally granting its permission to continue.  I won't exclude persons that choose to embody these ideals, but I won't support that particular behavior.

This is some tough love, tough to give and tough to take.  I accept the LGBTQIA persons in my life as they are how they were made--whole and beautiful--and as they love who they love.  It's none of my damn business what any of them do in the bedroom.  

I hope to have some good news on this soon.

-------
Notes after the above was written, between Monday night and Tuesday morning:
Seems like that the "Traditional Plan" has been passed in some capacity, meaning that LGBTQIA persons are not allowed to be ordained nor married in the United Methodist Church AND churches not enforcing that are likely to receive disciplinary action.  What the fuck, United Methodist Church?  I know that the General Conference includes countries and cultures that still murder LGBTQIA individuals, but that seems like a bullshit excuse to me--Christianity is illegal in some countries, too, and those persons practicing it there don't use it as an excuse to give up.  Hiding Jews in the holocaust was illegal as was sheltering persecuted indigenous persons, but that didn't stop some congregations.  to exclude these persons is bigotry--it might seem okay because they can still come to church but low-key bigotry is still bigotry.  I had hoped better of the General Conference, setting an example of love and inclusivity.  This decision does not reflect the church I know nor the Jesus I know.  

In keeping with the sentiment above, that not condemning a situation is a kind of acceptance, I say the following, more restrained version toward the General Conference:  Shame on you.  You are on the wrong side of history, and I will not passively accept that information.  

For those rejoicing in this moment, this is a temporary "win."  The civil disobedience and calls for justice will only grow louder and stronger.  We're not done yet.  Not by a long shot.

Also, it is possible yet that this plan will be called unconstitutional and will yet be thrown out on those grounds--I'm not fully sure what this means yet, but it is mentioned as a potential ray of hope as of now, Tuesday morning on the 27th of February.  There are more pieces yet to fall, waiting to see what schisms form and how our particular conference and individual church will respond.  For the time being, though, I exercise my right to be angry, to feel heartsore, to feel disgusted, to mourn, and shed a few more tears.

Some additional reading:  Article A Article B

Adventures in House Hunting

Through a lot of discussions, arguments, and spreadsheets, Andy and I have come around to the decision that we could start looking for our first house.

This started with a literal bombardment of Zillow pages from Andy, with "What do you think about this?" and "Look at the kitchen on this one!" and a number of other things.  I felt overwhelmed almost immediately, to say the least and we had a discussion about the right way to approach the process that would meet both of our needs.  Eventually, we came around to a thorough conversation of identifying what features we really wanted in a house, what were our dealbreakers and what were our "it'd be nice if it had X, but it's not necessary" features.  This was all compiled into a mean spreadsheet that gave each possible house a point value.  Then another round of math came, sorting out what our budget might be to best meet our goals.

I had two main rules--the move must lower our monthly bills by a reasonable amount and we had to purge the house before moving.  I absolutely refused to unpack something and have us both question why we even brought it with.

Well, with so far six bags of items donated and a lot of paper recycled, we're working through that purging goal, and with a couple of meetings with some loan officers we had an idea of what our budget should tap out at to meet our monthly goals.

And then a fresh bombardment of Zillow links, but this time the search could be more focused, changing the question from "what do you think of this one?" to "should we include this on our list of things to see?"

Our realtor had taken care of other members of our family before, and it was good to have that trust pre-established, meeting her on a wintery day to start off with five houses up for contention, including three that we had sent her and two that she had found.  We've seen a few more since then with her.  Here are some of those stories.  Names have been omitted to protect the innocent.

• House 9.812, aka "The one with the murder closet," two story home that had a nice fenced in porch and a couple of bathrooms.  Main area upon entry and kitchen had been recently updated and seemed true to the photographs.  We began to realize immediately, though, that all photographs are set in such a way to make the room seem larger than it is.  Upstairs was comparatively tiny.  Then we went to the basement.  A radon pipe was placed in front of a cabinet, so that it would only open a couple of inches.  There were nails visible from the floorboards when you looked up.  To the right, there was an oddly shaped door.  A door with questionable stains and age.  A door that would not open.  This door was promptly dubbed "The Murder Closet."  I do not want to live in a house with a Murder Closet, where surely something would crawl out of it and possess us in our sleep.

  

  Walking around with my internal Vincent Price monologuing...

• House 10.432, aka "They tried their best" two story, connects to a busy street, which could be less than fun at certain times of day.  There was a lovely skylight in the kitchen and cool bar piece with stonework in the basement.  The rest was done in earnestness but no expertise.  They tried.  By golly, they tried to update things.  But, well, there were a lot of obvious flaws, such as windows that didn't actually fit, sloppily cut holes around ducts, carpet that wasn't fit properly, the list goes on.  Even the closets were consistently put on backwards.

  

  Not a picture from the exact house, but this kind of stuff, yo

• House 3.666, aka "Doom basement" was a ranch style with a good size backyard.  Definitely a "grandparent" home, in the sense that it needed some updating in a few places, as though someone had lived here for years and years and changed nothing in that time.  It was billed as having two bathrooms, but the one in the basement, well, it was not what I would have called a full bath--it was a cinderblock shower, like what you'd see at camp, with a single light bulb and a sad, isolated toilet in the corner, and a giant washtub sink.  The rest of the basement had a rocking chair with--I shit you not--a framed 8x10 of a clown just outside of a basement door that had a chain lock on the inside, like a front door chain lock.  The only think in that room was a rusty pole.  Vincent Price started setting the stage again in my head, that someone was tied to that pole and then the attacker went out to clean off in the cinderblock shower while evil grandma rocked in front of the room while holding the clown picture, and I was ready to leave very quickly.

  

  Something like this, but my memory might be exaggerating a bit

  Maybe.

• House 7.219 aka "House of the sun worshipers" was a split level with a beautiful backyard, with a screened in porch that had skylights and a fan, a brick patio, lights, and a pool.  The previous owners must have loved their backyard and probably practically lived in their backyard.  The inside of the house, though, had been...neglected.  It was a weird floor plan, particularly in the basement where the ceiling took an awkward angle near one of the walls and the tiny hallway to go through to the bathroom, and just a solid meh from us.  The garage had a side door attached to it where there was an unfinished but heated and airconditioned side room.  We could not figure out the purpose of this room at all.
• House 9.230, aka "It's a relief to see something plausible" was a ranch with charming white brickwork at the fireplace.  The cabinets were older, but painted a very fun green that matched the right level of quirky for me.  A LOT of built in shelving.  Basement was vast but finished.  Wish it had one more half-bath or an ensuite bathroom, given my particular needs.
• House 4.320 aka "Andy's first love" was a two story that had a wide, open communal space, spanning both levels.  Andy made the mistake of falling in love with this one, since it apparently went the day after we came to see it.  The basement was awkward as hell, with a random, wide bar making the space feel tiny.  It did have an ensuite bathroom at least but I had a hard time seeing what we would place where.  Was I secretly relieved that it was off the market?  Yeah, a little.  We also invoked a new rule--don't fall in love with anything.
• House 8.723 "Scentsory overload" was an L split level.  The siding was new and a fun color so it looked very sharp outside.  Going into the garage, it was clear they were smokers.  Upstairs was not so bad, but entering the basement, the air freshener was completely overwhelming.  I'm not sure if they were trying to cover something or if the smoking had dulled their sense of smell where they couldn't tell how much they were using.  Either way, a quick scan of the basement later, Andy and I knew it would need some serious updating and popping our head into the furnace room smelled like gas, and I was feeling lightheaded and wanted to leave immediately because my body was certain it was being poisoned.  That basement invoked a fight-or-flight response for me, and it took about twenty minutes to calm down.  Hard pass.

There were a couple in there that were unremarkable, in the sense of "it's a nice little home, but not for us" or we weren't willing to do the necessary work of updating that particular space.  Yet for all that adventure, we did end last weekend with this:

Assuming all goes according to plan, we're home owners, ya'll.  :)

Old Acquaintances

I worked in the mall at Bath & Body Works for a few years on-and-off (health permitting) before I started at Skyward.  Given that I am part of the boomerang generation (Millennials, with a mortgage-payment-size of student loan payments a month and no equity to show for it while still needing to pay for a place to live have understandably had a propensity to return home after college, saving money before jumping into a job that hopefully pays a living wage) and that this is a fairly popular stop for people in town to congregate, I ran into people I knew with some frequency.  Some recognized me.  Some did not.  With the individuals where I was certain we'd been in the same class somewhere, if the conversation didn't start immediately with a particular flavor of "well, hi!  How are you doing?" or some variant that indicated recognition, it was always a huge moment of indecision for me:  do I mention that previous relationship or not?  It was like a game of chicken, as to who was going to confirm whether we went to the same high school or even if it was worth bringing up.

Now, almost all of these were people in this weird recognition zone were people that I had gone to high school with, understanding that this job was during and after college.  These were often people I knew by that continual familiarity, people I might have talked to in class but never outside of it.  Once we were no longer forced into the same space, there was no relationship, just a memory of a face and name, with maybe a couple of small stories.

I saw someone recently that I went to high school with, now fourteen-ish years after graduation, waiting at Bromenn in the same waiting area as myself, waiting for their name to be called at the door to the lab.  This particular individual, we had gone to some of the same gatherings in high school, and we had always been friendly, but I cannot claim that we had been close.  We'd both been closer to other people that were at the party than to each other.  So, I didn't try to catch their eye, chose not to initiate conversation--I was content to read the book I had downloaded on my phone.

Relevant Meme is Relevant

I have mixed feelings about this, just as I did when I was working in the mall.  Having had a past connection doesn't mean that I'm obligated to discuss it.  When I was working, that was actually not a bad cover, because we could have the awkward "what's going on in your life?" discussion with an easy out if necessary, where I could shift it to "well, what brings you in today?" and then help them find what they're needing.  Ideally, that smooth transition kept elements from getting too awkward and otherwise removed any need for censure from my manager.  I could break out of an uncomfortable conversation or I could continue it while helping them find what they needed, depending on the situation.

But out in the wild, I don't have that safety net.  Are we, individuals with a thin connection, obliged to address it?  If so, how?  Do we have to have a conversation or maybe just a polite nod?  Now for individuals that I was closer to, a conversation is where I tend to land, feeling firmer in catching up with a stronger base to go off of.  But there are still those days where I just want to be done with my errands and recognize that it might be the same for them.  And what if I felt more of a connection to that individual than they did to me?  I mean, there's all kinds of good overthinking fodder in that three second interaction.

It's one of those weird social situations that I don't think I've ever seen the rules for.  With high school, we had a forced association, brought together by address and age.  In college, though, I chose what individuals I wanted to spend time with, which makes running into these individuals a bit easier to answer.  But maybe there were some people in college that the relationship meant more to me than it did to them or just the opposite--hard to say where that invisible line of knowing someone well enough constitutes a re-greeting.

There are people in my life that I want to reach out to again.  There are people that I'm content to let go, appreciating that they were very important in a certain part of my life but maybe aren't as prominent now, that I am content with the memory of them.  I wish I could define where this magic line is.  Hell, I'd love a graph of the relationship between how much quality time I spent with an individual vs the distance without regular communication just to have an idea of the roadmap, followed, of course, with a thorough methods section that elaborates on what counts as "quality" time.

It's messy.  It's an overthinking minefield.  I try to watch for social cues from the other individual while also making myself either open or distracted by something else as necessary.

Why Andy and I Argue Less about Money

I know that I have been told more times that I can count that one of the biggest things that couples fight about is money.  This is an adage that I agree with both from my own experience and for the sheer logic of it.  We worry about our resources, that there will be enough to cover all of the essential, biological needs as well as the emotional needs--this process takes a lot of balancing and no small amount of self-reflection to see things to the most healthful and helpful place.  Add another person's opinion into that mix that doesn't view all purchases with the same weight/urgency that you do, and, well, we can see where some of those arguments can go from zero to sixty very quickly.

Early in our marriage, Andy was the only one working.  My health was in a very bad way, which meant that firstly I was not able to work and secondly that I was going to inevitably be a drain on our resources in different ways--yes, insurance can help cover prescriptions, but there are still a great number of over-the-counter elements that were required to keep me going that were not covered in our deductible.  Eventually, I was able to start working part-time again, but this was not an amount we could necessarily depend on, since hours vary and in a couple periods I was just biding time until the next surgery.  We racked up a good chunk of debt, not to mention the debt still from our wedding (truly, not as bad as they could have been--we had a lot of generous help and weren't keen to drop an enormous amount in the first place) and all of our combined student debt.  We were getting by on minimum payments and a fair share of anxiety.

At some point, when I was slowly coming back in to helping out in some ways or another in the household, I eventually became the person in charge of the budget--mostly because I tend to have a better memory for dates.  Eventually, I had all of the bank/credit card usernames and passwords memorized, and Andy was checking in with me to see if we had enough money to pay for something this week or wait until the next payday.  We really like using a program called Mint which we have all of our bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and even our 401Ks tied to.  This gives us one place where we can see EVERYTHING.  We can set up when bill are scheduled to go up, create a budget which automatically updates where we've spent parts of it as our purchases refresh, see trends in our spending, and also set goals for whatever you're paying off or saving money for.  I check it daily, at the least, which makes buying surprises for me very difficult for Andy.

And we've slowly but surely made a LOT of progress, even saving enough to fund our Norway trip that still came in under budget.

Not shown are paying off a $6,500 credit card and paying off our car loan

because when I tried to change something I made them go away. :(

A few other smaller debts were also eliminated prior to us starting Mint.

As DINKs (Dual Income, No Kids), we're able to make quite a bit more progress than we were before, and we've snowballed our debt well to have the right kind of momentum.  We're working on paying off my 42K of student debt--since we've been knuckling down on this, it's gone down to 32K.  I still feel discouraged looking at that number, but I am trying to remind myself that where I am at now is what I desperately wished for three years ago.

All this progress aside, of COURSE we still argue about money.  There is one reoccurring argument that Andy and I have had about money, though, that I want to share our solution to.  Particularly when Andy was the only one bringing in money, he would occasionally buy a new game or something as a "I've been working hard; I deserve a treat."  I agree on the whole that retail therapy is a viable thing and that it's good to feel the reward of your labor.  Simultaneously, I had been denying myself a coffee or a new top because it wasn't really in the budget.  When I saw Andy's new purchase hit our accounts or when he came home excited about the new whatever, I was already running the math and annoyed that we weren't going to be making as much of a dent in our debt that month as we could have.  But it was Andy's money, too.  But I was the one watching the numbers.  He was bringing in the money.  I profoundly wanted to be contributing and it wasn't my fault my health didn't allow it.  And round and round we'd go.

Our first solution was asking Andy to check in with me if a purchase was over X amount.  But a few $20 purchases affect the budget, too, and going out to eat when we didn't really have the money for it soured the experience for me.  I cannot say exactly which iteration of the same argument we were on--I was feeling guilty for saying no and being a financial burden, and Andy was feeling unappreciated for his work and guilty for making me feel guilty--but we stumbled upon an idea that has saved us a lot of grief.

I present the idea of the Fun Money Ledger (naturally, abbreviated FML).  It follows these rules:

• Purchases that are designated as Fun Money purchases are purchases that one party can buy without judgement, no matter how frivolous/stupid the other party privately thinks the purchase is
• Both parties, regardless of how much income they are making individually, get the same amount of Fun Money per paycheck, as they are both contributing to the best of the household in whatever way possible they can at the time
• Fun Money is kept on a shared spreadsheet that both have access to
• Fun Money can be stored up for one large purchase or used in smaller doses
• Purchases larger than X should still be cleared for timing with the budget as a courtesy but also to keep communication with the other party
• One can only go negative in their Fun Money at the agreement of the other--an understood leeway of negative the per paycheck amount is usually acceptable for week-to-week operations, but anything further (e.g. taking advantage of a Black Friday deal that goes more toward -$100 or more) should be discussed with the other party
• Severe negative amounts must be resolved before adding more purchases, unless the other party grants an exception
• Some purchases can be part budget and part Fun Money, per agreement of the parties (e.g. buying a new top can be part clothing budget but the expense/type of top could lend part of it toward Fun Money if it either exceeds the budget line or seems clearly on the less "necessary" side of the spectrum than the budget line was designed for)
• Money received for birthdays and other holidays is considered Fun Money; bonus money allows a certain, agreed-upon percentage as Fun Money while the rest goes to furthering goals or another agreed-upon designation

So as for how this plays out in our lives, all of our purchases that subtract out of Fun Money are listed in the Fun Money Ledger, transparency as an important factor in the whole thing.  That in and of itself has been interesting to see where we choose to spend our personal purchases, as a microcosm of preferences.  Right now, Andy and I get $20 per paycheck, which means $10 a week.  One of us will see this added every pay period and otherwise go in to the spreadsheet to record a purchase.  The amount per paycheck has fluctuated from time to time, depending on circumstances.  For example, it used to be $30, but then we agreed to both put half of our paycheck allotment toward our Norway Fund, which is now just the "What's Next" Fund, where we can agree to have a nice date or shared experience (concert, mini-vacation, larger vacation) that would normally be outside of the budget.  So we were at $15 per paycheck for a while, with $30 per paycheck going to the shared fund.  Once we paid off Andy's loans, we went to $20 per paycheck individually but also bumped up the amount into this other fund to $40 per week, planning for more adventures together in the future and in the meanwhile helping to offset some of those larger Fun Money purchases more cleanly (as far as how they were actually paid for).  But all of these changes were a conversation between us, an agreement to see that our resources were used wisely and that we were meeting all of the emotional needs we could be.  

This has lead to a significant decrease of the degree of our money discussions.  There are shared and clearly defined expectations for where we spend money on ourselves, and we've agreed on the rules as we've developed them, making minor changes as we went on.  Even storing them on a shared spreadsheet location was a breakthrough that was added later, originally just agreeing that we could spend Fun Money per month and then trying to parse out who did what later.  The development and practice of this system has meant that Andy can reward himself intermittedly or plan for a larger purchase to feel rewarded for his hard work as he emotionally needs to, since he has access to his own money.  This means that I don't have to feel like I am always telling Andy no and absolves me of the guilt whenever I was buying something for myself.  We'll still have some disagreements on how much can be eaten by the budget vs how much is Fun Money or how much of a percent should we get from bonus money, but a lot of the hurt and guilt and deeper frustrations are, in my opinion, much better than they were.  

In all arguments around money, though, it's important to remember that it's not you against the other--it's both of you against the problem.  Tackling tough problems is an opportunity to grow together, if you can approach the problem as a shared concern rather than the other person as the problem.  I could see this strategy successfully applied in larger situations, too, anywhere finances and resources are pooled, but more importantly anywhere the varying sides choose to work together and talk about it.  If either Andy or I ignored the rules, that's breaking the verbal contract and violating the other's trust--these are components that we agreed upon together to preempt hurt feelings and resentment, bettering our relationship.  For Andy and I, there were unmet needs, partially because they were not being verbalized and partially because they weren't being listened to, weirdly enough.  We started developing a working system, tweaking it as necessary, to better help "I," "you," and the sometimes forgotten "we."  Whether you've had the same argument in your household or are working with your individual budget, this system has been an immense help to us, and I hope it might be of use elsewhere, too.