Reflections on Marriage and Ikea Furniture

My Mum and I just spent a blissful week together.
Now, I really don't want this to come across as a veiled criticism of FH - or men in general - but, my goodness, it was just so easy. I mean, easy in a way that marriage, so often, is not.
Mum and I looked after the kids, did what needed to be done domestically, had a laugh, a few serious chats, a couple of lunches out, a glass of wine and a handful of Maltezers of an evening...
It was marriage as it should be: teamwork & good humour.

My Mum has the good grace to point out that she was only required to play the role of perfect spouse for one week, and that cracks would undoubtedly have started to appear had the experiment been pursued.
Sure, I know you can't really compare one week of domestic harmony with seven years of marriage, but it makes me wonder...

And when we actually managed to put together a complex double bed from Ikea (the instruction manual for which actually included FORTY separate steps and more illustrations than a National Geographic), WITHOUT A SINGLE ARGUMENT, I thought, rather disconcertingly: we have over-turned one of man's last remaining bastions of power. We are rendering them obsolete!

Well, all good things must come to an end, and yesterday I had to say goodbye to my perfect partner. As I lay in the Ikea bed I had made, musing on the superiority of women in general, I decided it was unfair to compare the un-comparable. I reached out and squeezed FH's hand affectionately.
I may be the one who builds the Ikea furniture, but he's the one who drags himself up night after night to return LB's beloved dummy to his mouth, so in the end, maybe we're not so much taking over each other's bastions of power as exchanging them?