EPISODE 10 EPISODE 10One busy night after the kids had gone to bed, I settled into my well-worn spot on the sofa for some mind-numbing television.
“Can you believe this guy?” I asked Francis, gesturing at whoever was blathering away on TV. Francis, seated in his favorite recliner beside me, didn’t answer. I glanced over to witness an all-too-familiar scene: Deeply embedded in the recliner’s cushions, my husband slept soundly.
Normally, I would giggle, turn the lights out around him and go to bed—a sort of revenge for being “abandoned” for the umpteenth time. Francis would eventually wake up alone in the dark and trudge upstairs to find me tee-heeing under the covers of our bed.
But on this particular night, I gawked at my dreaming husband as if I were seeing this for the first time. Is this the man I married?
Panic gripped my soul as I realized: We’re tired, boring, predictable. We’re doomed.
I remember one evening in 1992, my fiancé, Francis, and I were at an Italian café in Pittsburgh, sipping wine and falling in love.
“I really want to travel,” I said. “Me too,” he said. “I want to live near the ocean,” he said. “Me too,” I said. “I don’t care about money, I just want happiness,” he said. “Me too!” I said. It was a match made in heaven and our future was destined to be perfect.
But maybe if we had understood the reality of marriage our conversation would have been different.
Me: “I might have a lot of stretch marks.”
Him: “That’s okay, we’ll just dim the lights.”
Him: “I’m going to go bald, but ironically, hair will sprout out of my ears and nose.”
Me: “I’m good with tweezers.”
Him: “I have no mechanical ability whatsoever and will feel no embarrassment if my wife handles all the home repairs.”
Me: “I won’t have a problem with that for the first ten years or so, but then I’ll get fed up.”
But back then, we weren’t thinking about annoying habits, taxes, and clogged drains. We were too busy planning our perfect life.
Our unrealistic expectations persisted after we were engaged. “Oh, pardon me!” Francis yelped after accidentally belching. Although he insisted he would never expel any kind of gas in front of me, it didn’t take long for his steely resolve to erode. Expelling gas is commonplace. It happens mid-sentence, under the covers, in the recliner.
Before marriage, I preened and pampered Francis like a primate, manicuring nails and plucking stray hairs to maintain his ruggedly handsome good looks. I thought this giddy nurturing stage would last forever; I had no idea those stray hairs would later multiply so profusely that our grooming sessions would eventually take place in the garage and involve the leaf blower. The pedicures became completely intolerable after my husband’s left piggy toe grew to resemble a tiny hoof. One of the kids asked him if it was made out of wood.
I had to draw the line somewhere.
Are we doomed because we haven’t met our premarital expectations?
That night as I watched Francis dozing, I realized something very important: We did not meet our original expectations, we exceeded them. Back when we were dreaming of a life of romance uninhibited by responsibility, stress, and aging, we couldn’t fully comprehend the complexity and depth of the marital relationship.
We didn’t understand that romance is more than candlelight dinners and adventurous travel. The foundation of long-term romance is commitment, companionship, and comfort.
My initial annoyance at the sight of my sleeping husband turned to a sort of sweet adoration. As I turned the lights out and sneaked upstairs to wait for him to wake up alone in the dark, I felt happy our marriage turned out to be better than I’d ever imagined.