Matrimonial Maths

Poor Brutus, with himself at war,
Forgets the shows of love to other men. (Julius Caesar 1.2.46)

“At the same time, I wanna hug you
I wanna wrap my hands around your neck
You´re an asshole but I love you
And you make me so mad I ask myself
Why I´m still here…
But I hate you, I really hate you
So much I think it must be true love…” (Pink, True Love)

Trying to have a conversation with my husband is like trying to exfoliate with a cheese grater. Like backscratching with a bear claw, picking your teeth with an electric eel. Monosyllabic, vituperative, sullen in turns with the occasional transient flash of humor and affection, there is never any guarantee of his mood, response, reaction. You therefore spend 100% of your time being anxious and fearful that his reaction to any given attempt at conversation will be brutal and being correct 90% of the time, leaving you pathetically and disproportionally thrilled 10% of the time. A simple cheerful grunt lifts the spirits and inspires an idiotic grin. On his good days, if I happen to be in the vicinity when he emerges from bed he MIGHT flap his hand in my general direction by way of greeting.

Did you ever have one of those boyfriends at school who would break up with you on Friday afternoon and make up with you on Monday morning? Come on, you know the ones I mean. It usually happened the very weekend there was a party or some other social event that he clearly calculated would be more fun if he were single. Well I married one of them.

Oh no, don´t get me wrong, he doesn´t want to go out and party like a young stud. Noooo, it is far more subtle and cunning than that. For him, family life during the week is fairly legitimately limited to coming home from work late bearing the occasional pizza and relaxing on the couch while hearing about the children´s exploits from me.  Our weekday live-out nanny and I take care of the rest. But on weekends, when no domestic assistance is available and neither of us are at work, it is a bit more difficult to justify doing fuck-all around the house for two whole days. So what better way to avoid domestic duties than to manufacture a Friday offence, get offended and retire in high dudgeon to the couch in front of the TV until late Sunday night?

No, I am NOT exaggerating. My husband is capable of sustaining a snit for longer than the Queen of England has been on the throne. He once retired to his bed and refused to speak to anyone for two weeks, getting up only at night when everyone was asleep in order to prowl the kitchen for sustenance. He sails through two days of the sulks like Usain Bolt cruising across the 100 metre finishing line.

And he is a perfectionist. I am not talking about some half-assed monosyllabic-replies-only hissy fit. No, nada de eso. He is a full-on Easter Island statue.

On one occasion, alone in the house, he refused to even get up and answer the door, leaving his family banging futilely outside and asking the wachiman to climb through the window to let us in. The couch is only about eight feet from the door.

When he does speak you really wish he hadn´t. His normally irresistible three year old son skipped up to him asking “Papi, papi can we…” “No jodas” came the instant reply.

Meanwhile, life must go on and those kids won´t raise themselves, so I rush around dispensing asthma medicine every three hours, chauffeuring them to and from weekend activities, baking low-carb snacks for the week ahead, grocery shopping, listening to endless complaints of “papi won´t let me watch TV!!!”, building and rebuilding lego mini-figures, playing football in the corridor and endlessly debating issues of appropriate attire and the acceptable age to get a tattoo.

And there he sits, like a resentful granite boulder in the middle of the familial stream, interrupting the smooth flow of family life, making the waters eddy and ripple, adjusting to find a way around him and continue forward as best they can. Six-foot-three-inches of pure seething disgruntlement. And then (usually on Sunday evening), just when he is almost left behind, forgotten, the river of life having moved on and regained its former placidity, some subtle seismic tremor in the highlands of his brain will suddenly dislodge him and he will come rumbling and rushing downstream, eager to catch up and play, causing shrieks of delighted laughter from the children as we once again take off on surprise family weekend getaways and impromptu shopping trips to Wong…until the next time.

So why stay? Well for one thing, over time the percentages seem to be evening up. It ain´t 50:50 by a long shot when it comes to domestic duties but the 90:10 grumpiness to charm ratio has gradually been reversed to somewhere in the 30:70 range. He is now more llama than guanaco. His macho latino disdain for the minutiae of child-rearing has gradually dwindled and he has been known to prepare meals and change clothes. His marathon sulks have become short sprints. Yes, he is still an infuriating Easter Island statue but he is our infuriating Easter Island statue. There are not many like him so we think we should keep him – one day he might become a collector´s item and be worth a lot of money.

As any pop-psychologist will tell you, marriage is give and take, up and down, never perfect, blah, blah, blah and the reasons you choose to stay in one don´t always add up.

And anyway, I was always crap at maths.