Ikea shelves so hard to assemble your marriage could fall apart
ITS furniture has long been cited as a source of domestic disharmony.
That’s not just because trying to agree what you want to buy from Ikea is likely to provoke a martial spat.
For, as many couples will confirm, when you get home and try to assemble the flatpacks, it could be your relationship that is in the biggest danger of falling apart.
Now, after years of Ikea being parodied for the complexity of its instructions and units that can take hours to put together properly, one item from its catalogue has been singled out as a major threat to a happy marriage. The Liatorp wall unit is such a nightmare to assemble that a leading psychologist has branded it ‘the divorce maker’.
Professor Ramani Durvasula of California State University in Los Angeles says Liatorp’s 32-page instruction manual is a frequent cause of arguments and frustration. The 9ft wide and 7ft high unit, which sells for £820 in the UK, is three separate bookcases joined together with three drawers on the front. According to the manual, it requires 169 screws to assemble.
But the good news, Professor Durvasula revealed, is that this makes the Liatorp the ‘ultimate relationship test’ for a couple – pass it and you will be together for years. In an interview on US TV, the therapist said: ‘Some pieces of furniture require two hands, two people, pieces of glass, making drawers.
‘Because it requires so much collaboration, so much co-operation, and there’s a potential that someone could get hurt if this thing comes crashing down, you better be on the same page. If you can put that piece together, you can start planning your 50th wedding anniversary party.’
Professor Durvasula said assembling flat pack furniture required ‘communication, co-operation, collaboration and respect’ – tools that every relationship needs. But she added that as soon as hammers, nails and Allen keys are involved, it is not just the furniture that tends to be at risk of collapse.
New York-based marriage counsellor Dr Jane Greer agreed. She said that she had seen couples go to war in Ikea ‘over a couch that neither of them even liked’.
‘Underneath, every discussion is really about how important am I to you?’ she said.
‘How important is my comfort and happiness to you? If I want this couch, and it’s important to me, then why isn’t it important enough to you?’
Courtney Frappier, a New York publicist, says her recent trip to Ikea with her boyfriend Alex Mele ended in tears and she vows she will never return to the store. The rows over their Bjursta sideboard and the Bekant desk were so bad that her boyfriend calls them ‘Terrible’ and ‘Misery’, she told the Wall Street Journal.
Despite this, Ikea’s success has been staggering. In the UK, twice as many people visit one of its stores regularly as go to church every Sunday. Some 10 per cent of all furniture bought in Britain is from the Swedish company, which rings up annual UK sales of around £1.2billion a year.
And around one in ten babies born in Europe is said to have been conceived on an Ikea bed.
Ikea spokesman Janice Simonsen said: ‘ While Ikea has no set philosophy on couples shopping together, we want everyone to have a good experience.’