Mike and I are about to celebrate our 48th wedding anniversary. My goodness, but that seems like a really long time to be married — and I guess that means that we are really old, too!

Last week I was thinking about marriages that last and those that don’t, and in our case I think the phrase “opposites attract” possibly defines one of the reasons we’ve been together for so long.

In so many ways, we are complete opposites. He isn’t intimidated with confrontational issues, requires little sleep, is confident during medical emergencies and is an extrovert; while I will avoid conflict at any cost, love to sleep in, get queasy during medical emergencies and am definitely not outgoing.

• Every two years or so, when our TV internet bundle contract is due to expire and they inform us our rates are going up, I can count on Mike to get on the phone and spend quite a bit of time renegotiating. The service representative will explain to Mike that the contract we signed up for (with a really good rate) was only “guaranteed” for two years and the advertisements we were seeing now for really good deals were only good for “new customers.”

After talking with the customer service rep for quite a while, I’ll usually hear Mike say, “Well that’s all well and good, but that just isn’t going to work for me. How about if you check again and see what you have to do to make sure we continue at the same rate we’re paying now.” And if that doesn’t work, I’ve heard Mike say, “Obviously, you and I are not getting any closer to resolving this problem, so I’d like to speak to your supervisor.”

Eventually they come to a mutual agreement — and so far he’s been able to keep our bundle at a reasonable rate.

Mike is an awesome negotiator. He has no problem letting people know he isn’t happy with the service he’s getting, and he doesn’t give up.

I, on the other hand, after calling and asking once for a better rate, would simply cancel our service and sign up with another company that’s offering new customers a great deal.

• Then there’s this whole circadian rhythm thing.

Ever since we’ve been married (and apparently since he was a little kid), Mike has been an early riser. He’s usually up by 6 a.m. and often stays up ’til 11 p.m.

Weekdays, I set the alarm for 7:15 so I can be at work by 8; in the evening I’m lucky if my eyes are still open at 9 p.m. And on weekends I really look forward to sleeping in ’til 9. How he gets by on seven hours of sleep or less, when I snooze away for 10 or more, I’ll never understand — but that’s the way it is.

• Mike was a Special Forces medic in the Army and served in Vietnam. And to this day, his medical experience comes in handy — in interpreting all the medical jargon that totally confuses me, in calming me down when the doctor recommends procedures that I’m not sure of, and in changing the dressings on my post-surgery sutures.

He’s always the first to jump into situations where his long-ago medical training might come in handy — like not long ago when we witnessed a car veer off Highway 12, break through the barrier and come to rest in the median, or just last month when the chef at the restaurant we were eating at sliced his hand open.

And then there’s me, who heads the other direction anytime there’s an injury. Mike loves to tell the story of the time he woke up in the middle of the night, went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, didn’t turn on any lights and ran barefoot into the hearth, displacing his little toe. He came to the bedroom, showed me that his baby toe was facing west instead of north and said, “Just pull on it real quick and it will snap back into joint.”

“Oh my goodness. Yuck, ” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. “You’ll have to do it yourself.” And he did.

• Mike is definitely an extrovert, and I am almost 100 percent introverted. He enjoys talking to people he knows or ones he’s just met. He’s rarely uncomfortable in a group setting and is pretty darned good at remembering names.

I, on the other hand, would be quite happy going to work and then going home. I’m not a joiner, I’m uncomfortable around crowds and have a difficult time carrying on conversations with people I don’t know well. In fact, I recently saw a mug that would be perfect for me: “I like to stay home. It’s too peoplely out there.”

Our kids like to tease their dad that he’s never known a stranger.

Last month all of our kids, their spouses and children got together to go to the Paramount in downtown Seattle to see “The Lion King.” Rather than fight the traffic and parking, we decided to leave our cars at a park-and-ride and take two Ubers to the theater. About 15 minutes into the trip, my youngest daughter (who was riding with her husband, two children and Mike in a minivan) texted the rest of us (who were riding in a Suburban) and said, “Dad’s sitting in the front passenger seat and we already know where the driver grew up, how many children he has, how many hours he works a day, what his favorite football team is and what he likes to do on his day off.”

Then there was me: The only words I said to our driver were “Thank you.”

I’m guessing these differences in our personalities are some of the reasons we have been married so long —and why most of the time we don’t drive each other too crazy. Yin and yang, salt and pepper, sugar and spice — it’s been working for us for almost five decades.

Happy anniversary, honey — even if I can’t remember if it’s on Jan. 23 or 26!

Karen Barkstrom, The Daily World’s editorial assistant, can be reached at 360-537-3925 or kbarkstrom@thedailyworld.com.