“The brain is designed to make patterns, to use them and to stick to them,” says Edward de Bono. This is very true but the question here is, what are your patterns? Everyone seems to have their own idiosyncratic ways of doing things- this is probably why so many friends fight if they end up living together. Another reason marriage without cohabitation first may shine your partner in a whole new light; it leaves you thinking, “why the hell is she color coordinating those socks? They’re all white…” “IT’S MOTHER OF PEARL.” But really come on, they’re just socks. 

Here are some examples of idiosyncrasies to make you feel normal in comparison or because you understand. Also, let’s elaborate so that it’s clear what I mean when I say “idiosyncrasy”:

• Flipping slippers/shoes: this is due to training by my dad. He always used to tell me to “i2ilbiya” (flip) the slipper whose sole happens to be facing the sky rather than the ground. I believe this is related to the stigma of the shoe in Arab culture; I never asked, it’s Pavlovian now. 
• Twisting the stem off of an apple while reciting the alphabet: this one’s mom’s fault. She made the mistake of telling me, when I was four, that if you recite the alphabet while twisting off the stem of an apple, the letter you’re at when the stem snaps off is the first initial of your husband’s name. I have been marrying the entire first half of the alphabet ever since.
• Eating cereal with teaspoons: at the risk of being the butt of many jokes, tablespoons are just too big. I’m not going to continue the sentence, you know where it’s going.
• Assorting m&m’s, Skittles, and Mike & Ikes into color groups and eating the most populated first because minorities should be protected…until they’re the majority. 
• Drinking water out of clear glass cups, not that poser pet-proof baby-proof acrylic stuff. Coffee is preferred in paper cups. I don’t know why. 
• While cruising through channels on TV, I will not watch a movie that hasn’t just started if I have not seen it before. If it’s already past the intro credits, it’s not meant to be.
• Preferring half frozen ice cubes to fully frozen: the kind that are thin-walled fragile cubes with cold liquid water in them – that need to be transferred to your cup carefully. In my head, it’s with tongs like dry-ice covered test tubes in sci-fi movies. In reality, they just break. NUCLEAR MELTDOWN.

Embrace your inner OCD. Chances are, there is someone else who shares your phobia of garden gnomes or there is someone who will protect you from them (we all know that the only thing that can repel evil creatures is country music, that was the hidden message in Mars Attacks). 

You may live alone* now and forever; you may like soaking in all your own weirdness without having to explain yourself to anyone or worse, put up with weirder. BUT, you may not live alone forever so when you see your roommate/lover/couch surfer use up all your wooden skewers to light the stove even though it has an automatic lighter because she saw that Final Destinationy video where the stove blows everyone up like a C4 piñata, remember this: you’re weird too – just in different ways.

*Alone can mean completely on your own or with your parents. God knows, they are aware of how weird you are and are required to love you anyway. The only difference in these cases is that you may be more liberal with your idiosyncrasies if living solo. Liberal as in more nakedness.

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