The newly cohabiting couple
‘We don’t have “boy jobs” and “girl jobs”: it comes down to tolerance’ Hannah Betts, 48, journalist
As I write, my beloved has been away for a fortnight, another week pending, and our abode is beautifully – he would say anal-retentively – spick and span. Think: floors unlittered, bath unsullied, sans detritus in the form of KitKat wrappers, dirty mugs, used plasters, mouldering towels and assorted mounds of pocket contents.
We moved in together a year ago when I was 47, he 44, and the shock of middle-aged cohabitation has been great. His line is that I am clean and tidy, he is merely tidy; a theory he resorts to whenever I drop to my knees, raging: “I’m almost 50, yet occupying a student squat!”
How is not being clean an acceptable adult boast? Plus, the tidiness claim isn’t actually true. If he is ever kidnapped by a witch, I need only follow the trail of Co-op Value Bourbons to discover him.
Early into living together, he acquired an apparatus that he refers to as “the pantechnicon” – an ugly, midcentury, multicompartmentalised desk that folds up into a box. This is supposedly the solution to housing all the male chaos (tools, bits of string, camping equipment, scabs, bogeys, and the like). And it works very well, if you’re happy having a wheeled coffin lurking in your living room.
The only other time I cohabited, I was filled with festering resentment about how gendered our domestic roles became. I’ve tried to let go of this for sanity’s sake, also because I’m not exactly helping matters by never having learnt to drive.
Besides, it’s not that there are “boy jobs” and “girl jobs” more that there appear to be male tolerance levels and female tolerance levels, and I break sooner. And I have managed to avoid the traditional passive aggression in these circumstances – in favour of aggression proper.
‘She can’t abide dust and dirt – why though?’ Terence Derbyshire, 45, management consultant
Hannah’s right about our different tolerance levels. I know that mess drives her insane, and don’t want her having to trail around after me, so try to adjust my behaviour accordingly. However, this doesn’t mean I get it.
Since we moved in together, our minuscule flat has been a four vacuum household: main, robot, cordless, hand-held. Hannah can’t abide dust and dirt – why? – and order must prevail.
She even spends hours tidying up before our cleaner visits, which I seriously don’t understand although she tells me that it’s so Susan can actually clean. I favour a weekly, pre-weekend tidy; she appears to require one daily.
Hannah is an enthusiastic dishwasher user, but it becomes a holding pen for dirty knives that I take out and wash up, meaning it surreptitiously hands work over to my side.
That said, Hannah often tells me that my washing up is more akin to rinsing, which doesn’t count. Plus I’m pretty careless and have managed to break a shameful amount of her (beautiful) crockery, although, in my defence, this is not the avoidance strategy that she suggests it is.
In the meantime, I take care of the garden, which I find far more satisfying than housework. Maybe mowing is my hoovering, pruning my tidying?
Our cleaner’s attitude when faced with sprucing up the pantechnicon (my brilliant, portable, shut-away desk) is one of weary resignation. “I did what I could,” she sighs, she and Hannah shaking their heads. My feeling is that it only gets better with dirt, just as lichen improves rocks, wear improves jeans, and mud enhances Land Rovers.
The long-term plan is to build a shed-cum-man cave, in which I and the pantechnicon are relegated - which I think would suit us both down to the ground.