GPS is bad for your marriage.

I am not exaggerating to say that my husband and I have a harmonious relationship. We rarely get to the point of raising our voices with one another or driving each other insane. We are pretty laid back and get along great.

However, there is a formula that we’ve discovered in our thirteen years of marriage that sets us up for spousal frustration. It’s not complicated. But it is somewhat dangerous.

 Kraig driving + Christy using iPhone GPS = Uh oh.

And I’m telling you, it’s not all my fault. Sometimes I think the GPS lady and Kraig have schemed against me to set us all up for failure, but no one else is buying it.

I will admit, that I am directionally challenged. When receiving directions from someone I don’t like to hear terms such as; “head east,” or “It’s on the southwest corner,” or “go north on the highway,” etc. These terms are confusing to me. If instead the GPS lady would say things like, “Turn right when you are beside Wal-Mart,” or “Do you see that Applebee’s up there? Great! You’re going to want to slow down and make a left there,” I’d be all over it. But the GPS lady never uses landmarks.

What’s her deal?

But anyway, I want to help Kraig out, and more importantly, I want to live and not have him get us all killed while looking at his iPhone while driving. So I take it from him and then I pass on to him what the GPS lady tells me.

And somewhere in this step of the process is where things begin to break down. Sometimes that thing is me. But most the time I don’t cry. I just get us lost.

For example, we recently drove to visit my cousin who lives out of state. We had never been to her home before and so I put her address into the phone and we happily followed the little voice until it told us we had arrived at our destination. However, since my cousin doesn’t live in a tanning bed called, Sun Your Buns we were actually not at our destination.

The GPS people are out to get me.

Kraig says that I didn’t put the correct address into the phone, but I think I did.

Maybe you’re beginning to see our problem.

The Sun Your Buns debacle is unfortunately not the only time my skin’s gotten hot with embarrassment and frustration. In fact, it was in the beautiful, sunny state of Florida where our Spousal Frustration Formula was really in full swing while on a family vacation.

We were headed from Orlando to Daytona Beach. It was a nice day. Kraig could sit back, relax and just drive. I had the phone in my hand and I had the address of our destination correctly entered into the phone. All was well.

I began to tell Kraig each and every turn he was to make on our 90-minute trip to Daytona Beach.

And we made a lot of turns.

We turned into a mall parking lot and followed it around the perimeter of the mall where we came out and then entered a subdivision. We made several turns in the subdivision before entering another parking lot… and another subdivision.

Kraig was beginning to sweat.

He was trying not to rip the phone out of my hand because I kept telling him that I was watching the GPS and this was EXACTLY what the lady was telling us to do. AND I had the address inputted correctly. SO JUST FOLLOW MY DIRECTIONS!

Kraig was really getting antsy now and telling me that he understood I was following the directions, but when did we get on the highway that connected Orlando and Daytona Beach? “There is a highway!” he stated. “I can see the highway over there!!” “When do we get on it?!” “Pleeeeeassse tell me we get on the highway!!!!”

So I checked the phone.

“Nope. We never get on the highway.”

“WHAT??!! How can we not get on the highway?! This is going to take us forever to get there on back roads! Why is it taking us on back roads? How long does it say this is going to take?!”

This is when I knew we might have a problem.

I looked at the estimated time of arrival and it said we’d be in Daytona Beach in a mere 2 days and 14 hours.

Maybe we should get on the highway.

Suddenly I realized the GPS was giving me walking directions from Orlando to Daytona Beach. Therefore, the GPS lady with the monotone voice was apparently kindly keeping us far away from dangerous highways to walk beside and busy roads where we could get hit and instead was directing us around mall parking lot perimeters where we’d have a nice cozy sidewalk.

Uh oh.

And so I switched it over to driving directions and told Kraig to get on the highway.

I hate GPS.

But, I love my husband, and he loves me and he even still lets me ride shotgun in the car. And sometimes he even lets me hold the iPhone.

We have a pretty harmonious relationship, Kraig and me.

If only the GPS lady would stay out of it.