Skyspook: When I go into the bedroom at the end of the day to go to sleep, and see the bed made, it reminds me that you love me. It fills me with love.
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Many years back, in a very different time and place in my life, I worked as a hotel maid. I wasn’t particularly good at it, adequate, I’d say. But I needed a steady gig, and what I lacked in skill, I made up in energy and enthusiasm (perhaps the sentence that precedes this aside could suffice as my condensed life story). Through my training for that job, I learned a lot of basics, where I’d been virtually hopeless before, the most emblematic being how to make a bed.
I had never made a bed before then, and after making them room after room, I wasn’t exactly eager to bring the practice into my personal life. It seemed like a way of proving to our guests that we’d been there, giving them the feeling that their room was clean. Showy like napkin folding. Lacking in practical value, and therefore to my thinking, an inferior chore, something only to be attended to after everything else was done. And when is everything else done?
So 12 years passed in which I didn’t make a single bed, not for me or for anyone else.
Until a few months ago when on a lark, I made our bed one morning. And it’s become a regular part of my routine ever since.
Before, straightening out the tangle of sheets and blankets and our down comforter was the last duty of every day. Often Skyspook would do it, wondering aloud how I managed to twist my side of things into such a knot (guilty as charged). It was tedious, and we both just wanted to go to bed. Especially after having brushed our teeth and taken our medicine, and with the prospect of potential sexy time awaiting, it frankly sucked having to have one more thing to worry about, and it seemed that no matter how many days we were together, the messy bed would surprise us each and every night.
But now. Oh now. We climb in together, and it’s effortless. Get right to the good part. The cuddling. The closeness.
*
We have a queen size bed, and it feels enormous – in the best possible way.
Ex-Husband and I had a king size bed, and he always complained that I was a cover hog, that the bed was too small. We had separate blankets and sheets from one another because of this fact, and he hated to touch or be touched in any fashion when we slept, let alone hold one other. There was overlap in our sleeping schedules, but we rarely, if ever, went to bed at the same time, even when we were monogamous. No matter how much I tried to limit myself to a small zone of the bed (approximately a third of our bed), it never seemed like he was satisfied with his share. He’d complain that I used too much, that he needed more. It bled into virtually every area of our marriage, our life together.
And the thing is: He wasn’t asking for 50:50. He was asking for as much as he could get. He was pushing for 100%, as close to 100% as he could get. By any means necessary. Even at 99%, he would always push for that extra impossible 1%, always dissatisfied, never happy.
So many relationships are like that. Both members push with full force against each other trying to get as close to 100% as they can get. Ostensibly, they’ll both end up with 50%. But I hate it. I really hate it. Because at the end of the day, you’re exhausted and resentful.
I’m sick of it. I’d rather come up with a plan, negotiate these things openly and honestly. If my partner wants 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, or 90%, I’d rather just talk about it and come up with an arrangement that makes us both happy so I can focus my energy on self-improvement, working on the relationship, building a life – rather than endless power struggles and intra-relationship rivalry.
It’s wonderful to be breaking free of those cycles, making the bed so we both can lie in it.
I would gladly trade the illusion of perfect equality for the reality of perfect harmony any day.