Today is Divorce Monday I tell my husband.
‘What does that mean?’ he asks, eyeing me warily.
I explain that the first working Monday following the Christmas break is when most parting couples begin divorce proceedings. He needn’t worry. I have no hidden agenda. It’s just an article in the paper that’s caught my eye.
But it obviously gets him thinking. ‘Why do you suppose we’ve stayed together all these years?’
My answer slips out all too quickly. ‘Because I can’t be arsed looking for someone else.’
Even to my ears, it sounds a bit harsh but, in fairness, I was trying to read my paper at the time and he was badgering me with questions. He is momentarily stunned. Then he laughs.
‘No, but seriously,’ (why does he assume I’m joking?), ‘what is the secret to a long relationship?’
I consider our domestic set up. Separate bathrooms. Separate work spaces. Separate workouts. (He once mooted that he could join my Pilates class. The prospect horrified me.) Basically separate lives, now that I come to think of it.
We do come together at mealtimes. He cooks and I clean up afterwards. He then disappears to ‘work’ on something or other. I really don’t know what because I never ask. What I do know is that it’s not DIY related or anything remotely to do with maintaining the house.
I hope I’m not tempting fate here as none of this sounds like the recipe for a perfect marriage. Then again, our relationship has never been based on a saccharine idyll. We’re much more pragmatic and have discovered a beautiful balance of mutual exclusion that works for us.
Or at least it has done for the last thirty years.