Couplehood Read Online Free PDF

Sort of making sure the appliance works.
    Then you open the refrigerator, stare at the shelves. Smell milk, put it back. Eat half a banana, read six words in a magazine, look out the window for two minutes.… No sense of purpose. Just lost in your own home. But no one sees, so no one knows.
    However, when you live with another person, you become self-conscious. I find I do the same things, but I
announce
them. Gives the impression I’ve thought this through.
    “I’m going to watch TV for a while.”
    “How long?”
    “Fifteen seconds. Then I have to be at the window; I’m going to stare at the house across the street for a little while.”
    “How long?”
    “Not more than ten seconds, because I have to eat half a banana and stare at a chair. And I’m already running late.”
    W hen two people live in one place, their individual habits get amplified.
    For example: I’m not lazy. But I don’t like to
move
a whole lot. I mean, if I’m doing something, I’ll do it. I’m as active as the next guy. But if I’m sitting, I don’t like to get up. Even if I’m facing the wrong way.
    If I’m talking to someone whose chair isn’t quite facing me, I’ll talk to the side of their head. If I sit down and realize the TV is angled wrong, I won’t get up to adjust. I’ll watch it like that. I’ll sit there and wait till someone walks by and ask
them
to move the TV.
    S ometimes I may notice I’m sitting on something uncomfortable. I don’t care. Like a stack of mail or something? It doesn’t bother me. Certainly not enough to move.
    I’m a big fan of Sitting.
    I’ll watch a show I’m not enjoying for 30, 40 minutes because I don’t feel like looking for the remote control. Forget about getting up to actually, physically change the channel on the TV itself—that stopped years ago.
    Once, we were watching TV and couldn’t find the remote control. (I should preface this by saying I was really, really tired.)
    Now, I sensed I was sitting on something hard that may very well have
been
the remote control, but I didn’t have the energy to get up and confirm. (How sad is
that
? I didn’t even have the drive to lean to one side. Even ifjust to dislodge an irritating piece of hardware from my person. Couldn’t do it.)
    Finally, my wife forcibly shoves me to one side and we find not only the remote control, but a pair of scissors, a glove she was looking all over for, and a tangerine.
    I realized I am either (A) really, really, remarkably lazy, or (B) I have no sensory receptors in my left buttock. Either way, it might be a problem.
    A nd once again, this kind of behavior is perfectly fine—
unless
you live with another human being. By yourself, who are you bothering? No one. In fact, it could even be an attribute. Nothing bothers you. You’re a guy who’s just okay with everything the way it is. But put someone else into the picture—now you’re bothering
them.
    “Have you seen the new
People
magazine?”
    “No.”
    “You didn’t see it? It was right there, on the couch.”
    “I didn’t see it.”
    “Are you sitting on it?”
    “No.”
    “Get up.”
    “Really?”
    “For one second.”
    I get up.
    “Ha, I told you you were sitting on it.”
    “Well, look at that.… Hey, when did we buy tangerines?”
    S ee, when someone else is involved, laziness doesn’t look like Laziness. It looks like Indifference, Presumption, Insensitivity, Hostility—a whole rainbow of things that all sound worse than what it really is—Sitting There Minding Your Own Business.
    Like dishes.
    If I leave dishes in the sink, my wife
assumes
that
I
assume I can just leave them there for
her.
Not true. I assume nothing. I’ll clean them—as soon as I notice them. Or as soon as they bother me.
    Unfortunately, as I’ve mentioned, some things don’t bother me right away. My wife gets bothered
sooner.
It’s all a matter of timing. Learning each other’s Lag Time; how long you have between Event and Annoyance of Said Event.
    For