Marriage on the Opposite Ends of the Couch
By: Lindsay Brown
Tags: Life, Quarantine, Relationships, Marriage, Love

Marriage on the Opposite Ends of the Couch

Photo by Trần Toàn on Unsplash

We sit on opposite ends of the couch. Not even our feet touch — it’s as though we are both the north poles of magnets and repelling away from one another. He is storyboarding in a ratty old notebook, and I am writing this in the notes app on my phone. We haven’t spoken in hours. There is this heavy tension between us that isn’t quite approachable, not yet at least.

The kids are quarantined and glued to their school zoom meetings in the basement. Lars, our son, has been noted as a close contact of a Covid positive school mate. Sophie has developed a cough. They both go for covid testing this afternoon at 3:30. I’m worried that they will test positive, and we will all be trapped together in the house for an additional two weeks, maybe longer if we continue to catch the virus from one another.

I should be concerned about our health. I should put aside this superficial relationship bullshit and worry about the real problems like what a potential household quarantine will do to our financial situation. All I can think about is living together with this terrible feeling of inadequacy that continues to build inside me.

James and I met at KFC 15 years ago.

We worked together there as teenagers. After a year of friendship, walking home together and smoking joints in the rain, we acknowledged that we loved each other. It wasn’t a gradual thing but more of a wake up one morning and realize that I love this guy who has morphed into my best friend.

James, or Jamie as I and most everyone calls him, is beautiful on every count. He’s smart and funny and has great facial structure. From the moment we got together, I knew he was too good for me. And that’s where the problems started, right from the very beginning.

I allowed these insecurities to consume me, and after a year of many almost break-ups, we ended up splitting for good — or at least I thought it was for good. I ran away, out of the province, as far away as I could get. I thought I could outrun my obsession with him. That’s really what it was, still is, actually. I’m utterly obsessed with this man. It’s sick, really. I know that I’m only pushing him away by being like this, but rational thought no longer runs my thought process.

I lived in Victoria, BC, for a year before the dreams started. One night after coming down off a cocaine-fueled weekend, I dreamt that Jamie and I were walking hand in hand through a botanical garden. I had never even been to any botanical garden. I hadn’t thought of Jamie in months. However, none of this mattered because the dreams persisted for over two weeks after the initial garden foray.

Sometimes we’d be in a spaceship travelling the universe like Doctor Who. Other nights we’d adventure abandoned mines in surprisingly romantic rock-tunnel lighting. I knew that the dreams meant something, and I had to dissect them to discover their purpose. Back then, everything had meaning. Everything was a sign sent from some mysterious godly entity which surely knew better than me about these sorts of things.

I am the sort of woman who will slyly go to great lengths to get what I want.

I call it the power of intention, but it’s probably just me being manipulative. I booked a trip home to Alberta for my birthday in January. Our town is a small one, and because we had many joint acquaintances, I was sure I’d likely run into him.

A few of my girlfriends had decided they would take me out for my birthday at the only club in town. After four pre-bar beers, I told the girls I was going to call a cab. Instead, I locked myself in the bathroom and dialled Jamie’s number. He answered tentatively. I put on my most casual voice and told him who it was. I said we were going down to the club for my birthday if he wanted to meet up for a drink.

He muttered something about having plans. I sucked up my disappointment and told him that was cool, maybe another time. Internally I was screaming. There wouldn’t be “another time” because I was due back to my Victoria life the following week.

The club was packed, and an old friend, I’ll call him Jerald, was hanging off of me the entire night. There were no feelings on my end, but I did need the attention, so I allowed it to happen. It made me feel less desperate after having been so readily dismissed by the love of my life hours before. This is what people like me do — we seek attention to make ourselves feel validated. Textbook.

Just as Jerald was crossing the line from attention giving to touchy-feely, I asked if he wanted to go outside for a smoke. That would parry the circumstances for a while. It would give me some time to think about what I was doing.

January in central Alberta is cold. Like below 30 degrees Celsius cold. Jerald sweetly draped his jacket over my shoulders as we made our way to the sidewalk, and he lit my smoke for me while making corny jokes. I laughed politely. He asked what my plans were once the bar announced the last call. And that was when the polite conversation, on my end, stopped.

As I looked up, there stood Jamie on the opposite end of the sidewalk.

He was ten feet away from me, staring into me, not unabashedly but with this intensity that he still, sometimes, employs when needing to grab my attention. Jerald’s voice was now distant, like a small chirping bird that is vaguely annoying but easily ignored. I shrugged off the jacket that moments ago was draped so carefully over my goosepimpled shoulders and began walking towards Jamie.

Hi. It was all I had to say. Hi. Once I said this one tiny word to the boy I had loved so for long, our future could begin. We might talk about all of the past arguments and incompatibilities — open up a meaningful conversation about why things didn’t work out the first time around. There would no longer be this awful cosmic feeling that we were meant to be together yet never would. All I had to do was say hi.

I didn’t say hi, though. Instead, just as I was at arm’s length, he reached for my hand, and I took it. He pulled me to him and kissed me hard. Poor Jerald, standing there behind us, staring on in bewilderment.

Maybe I thought that all of the challenges my and Jamie’s relationship faced would be easier if we shoved them away. At that moment, as we kissed on a sidewalk full of drunken cigarette smokers, I knew that it would all be alright. We would be okay. We didn’t have to say hi, we didn’t have to communicate at all, because our love for each other was strong enough to conquer anything.

Nine months later, I gave birth to our son, Lars.

Two years after that, Sophie came into the world. A year down the road, we were married in Mexico. 6 years from then, we sold our home and moved to a new city to start up a sandwich/bakery shop. After three years of working side by side, we closed our business’s doors. And then, one year later, a global pandemic hit, and it seems that this event was the one that made all of the others seem so much heavier.

After two layoffs, financial stress, worries about the kids and living on top of one another for the past eight months, we had grown this odd, angry resentment between us.

We tried to talk. We tried to “work it out” but seemingly to no avail. Well, maybe that’s rash, perhaps there is avail — and I just haven’t seen it yet. I’ve been drinking too much lately. It’s like the wine bottle calls to me as soon as I pass that midday hump. Usually, I don’t give in. I get working on some project or distract myself with the kids because I can’t turn into an alcoholic right now. We can’t afford it. I don’t want to become my father. There are so many reasons not to turn to the drink. The biggest being, whenever I do pour myself that third, fourth, fifth glass of red, I become mean. I poke at Jamie and tell him all of the things that he is doing wrong. It feels like the sort of relationship crutch that doesn’t seem fixable.

Maybe that’s not right either. Because we have made efforts. We have tried so desperately to work this out because the memory of what it was like to love each other in such a personal way still holds strong in our brains. We have this undying faith that we can revive it somehow.

So we are talking now. Sitting across from one another on our respective couch ends, the volume on the TV turned down, our voices calm in a vain hope that the kids won’t notice our arguing, and we talk about our marriage.

We try to sift through what it was that went wrong.

Maybe it was quarantine, or perhaps quarantine gave us the insight that it was never perfect all along. But who the fuck needs perfect anyway? Our talking turns to crying and pouring and cracking another wine bottle open. Our talking leads to unearthing ancient resentments that neither of us knew the other held. Our talking leads to accusatory statements and then some more crying and angrily making up but wondering when everything will explode again.

Our talking doesn’t seem to be solving anything on the surface. However, each day when I wake up, I feel a little lighter. Like our last night’s argument has enlightened me in some new way. The talking is shit. It hurts, and it’s wholly uncomfortable. It makes me feel all the feelings, and feeling feelings is sometimes the hardest thing in the world.

I know that the sort of talking that we are doing — that deep down, this is the real deal type of talking — loosens us. It’s teaching me that feeling those buried hurts isn’t the worst thing in the world.

But mostly, all this talking we’ve done in these past few weeks has shown me that maybe, we should have said hi to one another on that smokey sidewalk all those years ago.