WALDEN’S WORLD

The new challenge of marital life laid bare

Lockdown was always going to make us question who we’d married – in some cases, quite literally. “The other morning I looked over at the woman opposite me and realised she had completely different hair and skin to my wife,” confided one male friend in an email at the weekend. “Then there was the sudden, perplexing, lack of eyebrows. I heard myself ask: ‘Who are you and what are you doing at my breakfast table?’ ”

Another who has been confronted by his wife “as nature intended” admits he “couldn’t think of a polite way of asking why she suddenly looked like an older, greyer sister she doesn’t have”.

Meanwhile, my own husband has been forced to issue a fatwa on the novelty slippers I’ve taken to wearing around the house.

It hasn’t helped that, unable to go to the hairdresser, spray-tanner, beauty counter or waxer, many women are seizing the opportunity to embark on a concerted “beauty detox”, with some trying “skin fasting” – a Japanese rejuvenation fad, which involves ditching all products – and others embracing the “female fuzz” body hair revolution.

Men aren’t immune to the drop in standards. With many having either lost the impetus to shave or run out of shaving gear, wives are finding themselves waking up next to everything from “hipster bearded guy” to Bigfoot. And although some will seek reassurance from the cliché that it’s “what’s inside that matters”, for others that may plunge them still deeper into the abyss.