The Quirks of Long-Term Love

AFTER 25 YEARS OF marriage, a relationship problem in my home typically plays out like this.

- Patricia Pearson

I go to the kitchen to make dinner and see my husband’s walking stick leaning against the drawers that contain my pots. (Ambrose has been nursing a bad knee.)

I move the stick a couple of feet over and rest it against the door frame. The next day, it is back leaning on the drawers. I move it again. This can go on for weeks. Neither of us mentions it to the other. It’s just a silent tug-of-war about where things belong in the house.

I mentioned this to him the other day, about how hilariously low-stakes the romantic drama has become in our lives, and he countered that, actually, he hadn’t noticed that I kept moving his stick. “You’ve been doing that every day for two months?” Then he added, defensively, “Well, you keep leaving a spoon in the dog-food can.”

“No I don’t. Not every day.”

“Yes you do. Every time you feed the dog, you put the spoon back in the can instead of in the dishwasher.”

“How would you know it’s every day if you didn’t even notice me moving your stick?”

Then we both laughed because if these are the crisis points in our marriage after a quarter of a century, I’d call that a win—and also a long, slow-motion surrender.