Our dishwasher broke last week. I bought a replacement that scores triple-A for energy ratings, but also for general shitness: if anything heavier than a teaspoon is placed on the cutlery tray it implodes and the rinse-blade won’t rotate if anything larger than a side plate is loaded into the rack. There is only one lesson to be learned: I should have gone to John Lewis.
It would be convenient if you could buy children, partners or pets from John Lewis. They’d be installed in the home with uncompromised skill, guaranteed for five or even 10 years at no extra cost and when things went wrong you could call up and say, “I’d like this fixed”, and a kindly person would come around within 48 hours and bring spare parts or a replacement.
But people are not white goods and John Lewis doesn’t protect things that breathe. The Co-op sells funerals, but providing care for life? The minutiae, the chaos, the things that are not necessarily tangible or even really explainable, like kids or relationships when they are difficult? No supermarket or department store offers that kind of cover.
So I want to say thank you to John Lewis for failing to tend to my every need. I’m sure, in murkier water, I would have traded my husband in if it had been easy, and I’m sure he would have had me fixed tri-annually if a phone call to customer services was all it took. But our marriage – frayed a little, threadbare in areas, but largely intact – is happier than it’s ever been. And I feel it’s because, rather than in spite of, the alcoholism.
If I carry on with the shonky analogy of dishwasher and marriage, the alcoholism could be seen as limescale in the pipes. We’re deftly chipping away at it, and while it’s slowly shrinking, it still exists. But our marriage is more than serviceable; in fact, it seems to be working better than ever.
Once the alcoholism seemed to be the only named problem in our relationship, the major area of despair. In trying to eradicate it with no real guidance, a lot of finger-pointing and an avoidance of seeing it for what it was, we acted like idiots. It was, and still is, just a symptom of other difficulties, of which there can be many in life: just one component of a complicated but by no means unsalvageable marriage.
Unwittingly, I’ve always been attracted to alcoholics, and my husband had always been attracted to alcohol. To accept this, and work with what we know, is the first step.
When we came to realise that the alcohol was not the cause of all suffering in our life, we understood that we could stay married if the desire was strong enough. Besides, we had children and a mortgage together, still fancied one other, liked the same films, and were both born with large noses that we have finally grown into (hence being greatly pleased at similar stages in adulthood that getting older, for us, has some nice surprises). We realised that the mechanics of our relationship could be adjusted; sometimes fixed; at other times left alone.
If I look back to when this column started, shortly after my husband came out of rehab for the first time, I can see how things have changed. Even then, the golden days of his new sobriety – similar to the first hours of motherhood, when holding my daughter felt like I’d taken the best hallucinogenic in the world – were already fading. We were approaching the adolescent stage of our relationship, but with the added pressure of relapse. And then, unsurprisingly, boom.
My husband started drinking again and I went slightly bonkers and the temporary bubble of hope went splat and we separated. After a while, I started to get help. Then R followed, but of his own accord. Now we’re here, eyes wider open, together again. I can’t really tell you exactly how my husband is because that’s his business. But on the outside he seems very well; of course he occasionally gets over-anxious or very down, and sometimes he picks up a drink. But he no longer runs away. All I can say is that I love him very much.
And me? I thought this column would mainly focus on our relationship, but it fast became a shameless but useful exercise in self-awareness and introspection. I had to take responsibility for my life – the high, lows and everything in between – regardless of what my husband was doing. I’ll keep on trucking, checking myself, looking inwards, outwards, forwards, occasionally backwards, but hopefully not go around in circles. Goodbye, and thank you.
