by Cathy Alter
Once again, I didn’t want to lean on my own understanding. Which is why I was able to slide so easily back to the comfort of magazines, the way a junkie succumbs to the warmth of the pipe. I was addicted to the quick fix.
And so I found myself once again at the same bookstore where just a few months earlier I had stood for hours in front of a wall of screaming women’s glossies. But I was not in front of that wall quite yet when as I was heading toward it, something on a different set of shelves completely stopped me along the way. Something that was screaming even louder:
The Cohabitation Trap
When “Just Living Together” Sabotages Love
A sun-kissed blonde in an orange halter dress and ponderous expression stared sideways at me from the cover of Psychology Today. She held a chrome floor lamp with a purple-striped shade, its chord lassoed around her and her boyfriend, who was nuzzled against her, smiling like he had just seen God, his eyes closed in divine bliss.
Upon closer inspection, I realized the cover date was July/ August, and I saw this as a personal sign from the publishing gods. The outdated magazine had somehow climbed back on the shelf just so I could learn from its magic. There was nothing on the subject of shacking up in any of my September issues; I had already been through them twice looking for exactly that, madly ripping through each one looking for the good stuff in the same way a twelve-year-old boy devours a Playboy.
I needed this information right away, and who knew when my ladies would get around to revealing the goods? Intent on finding out if I was literally making the right move, I didn’t want to wait unknown months to find out about what Psychology Today was offering me right now—like the characteristics of “The cohabitating type,” or “What to do before you cross the threshold.”
So I scored me some Psychology Today. I had never read the magazine before, but because of its title, I had always assumed it was on a par with the New England Journal of Medicine and read primarily by academics or members of the trade. I felt lucky that these professionals were providing expert guidance for just $3.99 plus tax. Once inside, though, it was obvious I had been majorly mistaken. Maybe it was the photo of a lion tamer in a top hat next to a feature about a man who cured angry people with a little whipping of compassion. Or perhaps it was a story under the Insights column that promised to reveal what the length of your fingers said about your sex life. Was this Cosmo for the math and science crowd?
Despite the colorful typeface used in the story title, “The Perils of Playing House” was a grim piece of writing. In fact, the story began with a giant orange letter F, which composed the first word of the story: Forget. Were those bastards at Psychology Today trying to send me a subliminal message? I read on. “Couples who move in together before marriage have up to two times the odds of divorce, as compared with couples who marry before living together.”
Well, yes. I had lived with my ex-husband for a year before getting married, and clearly that hadn’t worked out. But still, in my mind, living together went hand in hand with marriage. Moving in meant marriage. And because this was the sequence of my first marriage, I was deeply conflicted about wanting this same progression with Karl. I feared that I was destined to repeat my same miserable history.
The editorial supported my doomed expectations. “We move in together, we get comfortable, and pretty soon marriage starts to seem like the path of least resistance. Even if the relationship is only tolerable, the next stage starts to seem inevitable.”
This was really depressing stuff. The article went on to analyze all the wrong ways people move in together: slowly, one toothbrush and bra at a time, until they’re de facto roommates; experimentally, choosing to take a trial run rather than commit; stupidly, under pressure to move the relationship forward.
It was hard not to read this with one foot in the past, one cast in midair. With my ex, I was guilty of all of the above. But with Karl, I was guilty of nothing. How could I forgive myself for things I hadn’t done yet?
After I was done reading, I did something that, depending on how you looked at it, was either stupidly brilliant or brilliantly stupid. I left the magazine out on my coffee table. Sure, there was probably something subconsciously premeditated to my carelessness, like I left it there on purpose for Karl to find. Like I left it there because even though I had long ago decided to let Karl be the pacer of our relationship, I was tired of dancing around and wanted to force the issue. Like I left it there because I had gotten quite comfortable with letting magazines do the talking for me.
Whatever the mental underpinnings, I set the magazine on my coffee table (cover side up, no less), turned on Judge Judy, and forgot about it. Forgot about it until Karl unexpectedly dropped by later that evening.
“Oh, ho, ho,” he singsonged, picking up the evidence. “Doing a little research?”
I had already come clean to Karl about my self-improvement project, so he had a vague sense of what I was doing with all these magazines in my apartment, but I’m not sure if it had actually dawned on him that he would be a major player in the story.
“What does the magazine have to say about living together?” he asked, gingerly resting it in both palms like it was the Magna Carta.
“I’m pretty sure the word trap used in conjunction with cohabitation is not a good sign,” I answered.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said, walking toward the bedroom with the magazine.
With Karl off in the bedroom, I felt nervous and off balance. After all, I had just willingly handed over my playbook and showed Karl all my moves. Then again, I wondered how much stock he would actually put in what he was reading. Ever since reading O magazine’s Ah, Men! June issue, Karl had a blanket hatred for all my magazines and for Oprah in particular. When I had asked him why, he responded like a freshman who had just signed up for her first women’s studies class.
“Because Oprah is a perpetrator,” he had insisted. “She preys on any insecurity a woman might have, and confirms these insecurities with bullshit articles dressed up as expert testimony. What a great way to sell magazines,” he had sniffed. “Yellow journalism for women.”
“Is this what they’re teaching you in Maxim?” I had joked, realizing that poking fun at his magazine of choice was easier than trying to defend my gendered love of Oprah.
I had only seen Karl react this way once before, when he unleashed a torrent of insults concerning the appeal of Sarah Jessica Parker, the very definition of belle laide, a personified middle finger to conventional beauty. Men hate her for the same reasons women love her. I had thought SJP was an anomaly, but then I started reading Oprah and realized she held an equally powerful dividing rod.
When Karl emerged from the bedroom, I had already done some preemptive wine guzzling. A bit numbed by the booze, I was ready for “the talk.” One, I now worried, that I had deviously preordained by leaving the magazine out in the first place. One that could completely backfire on me.
“Did you learn anything interesting?” I asked, taking the magazine, which Karl had rolled into a tight tube, the way a relay racer grabs a baton—and then runs away as fast as possible.
“Nothing that I didn’t already know,” he answered ambiguously. “What did you get out of it?”
“The main takeaway for me was the importance of discussing our expectations about living together right up front, before even one box is packed.”
I refilled my wine and poured him about nine fingers’ worth of whiskey. Karl took a healthy pull and took another tiptoe through the topic. “Well,” he slowly edged, “what are your expectations?”
I was too chicken to tell him that my expectations led straight to a proposal. So I danced around the topic. “I think we need to just make sure each of us is getting what we’d like from the arrangement.”
I sounded like I was making some sort of deal with Sammy “The Bull” Gravano. I think this would be mutually beneficial for the both of us. Badda bing! But I also realized that I was talking like we had alrea
dy had the discussion to live together, like it was already understood that, of course, this is what happened next.
Karl brought up the massage chair to illustrate his expectations. A week after our camping trip, Karl had showed up at my door with a globular black armchair that, once plugged in with its garden hose of a cord, pounded, kneaded, or vibrated its way into every imaginable nook and cranny. It was a merit badge of sorts, a reward for surviving the rigorous demands of the outdoors. It was also the ugliest piece of furniture ever to cross the threshold of my apartment. At the time, I didn’t want to criticize his largesse, afraid I’d turn him off from future gift giving. But at the same time, I worried that the vibrating chair was just the tip of the déclassé iceberg. What would be next—a velvet Elvis? Even worse, what if Karl was an unromantic gift giver—did he even know his way around a jewelry counter?
Pointing to the chair, which I had shoved as far into the corner of my living room as geometrically possible, he said, “If I told you a month ago I was planning on getting you this chair, it wouldn’t have been as good as my just showing up at your apartment and surprising you with it. It’s the same thing with living together. To analyze and discuss and pick apart what it all means takes all the fun out of it.”
“But look at what it says right here,” I said, opening up the magazine and pointing to the “Talk Talk Talk” section of the article. I tried not to whine, but I could feel that familiar tone of quiet hysteria enter my voice. “‘It’s helpful for partners to talk about topics ranging from the sublime to the mundane,’” I read. “‘Marriage, kids, life goals—and who will take out the garbage or feed the cat.’”
“Listen to me,” he said, prying the magazine out of my hands. “I know that I just want to come home to you every day. Beyond that is left for discovery.”
Did he understand what I was really asking? It was true that he was answering me fully, just not fully answering the question I was really asking: Will this all lead to marriage? I racked my brain trying to recall any of the tips from O magazine’s June feature, “Getting Him to Open Up.” I remembered, for example, that it was vital to “Choose the right time” when embarking on important subjects. And that it was strategically smart to have any life-changing conversations on his turf. Luckily, since the first two tips were moot by this point in the evening, I also remembered an actual line from the article:
“That’s so interesting,” I said coolly. “I wouldn’t have thought of it that way—please go on.”
Karl gave me a look like lava had erupted from the top of my head.
“Let’s say you move in with me,” I inched, copping another of Oprah’s tactics. “Can you tell me what needs to happen in order to take the next step?”
“I’ll try and make all my crap fit in with your crap.”
“No”—I inched again—“what do you think would happen next?”
“We’ll spend some time bumping around, trying to make room for all my motorcycle parts.”
“And next?”
“Oh, baby, are you worried?”
Karl was taking a totally different read on this conversation. He was correctly sensing my insecurity, but his timing was all wrong. He understood my “nexts” as being about immediate concerns when I was really talking about the future.
“The article says that couples who cohabitate are less satisfied, argue more, and have lower levels of commitment,” I recited, realizing I had this part practically memorized. “Doesn’t that worry you?”
“I don’t think we have any of those problems,” he said, taking the magazine away from me and tossing it facedown on the floor. “We just kick ass.”
Karl would find a young student to take over his lease at the end of the month, and then would move into my apartment. (Because really, that was the only option, considering Karl lived in a subterranean cave—where if moving from room to room I forgot to duck, as I always did, I’d slam my forehead against the top of every door frame.)
With one major set of logistics resolved, new ones presented themselves. Now, I had to make room for Karl. Metaphorically speaking, I had made tons of space for him. But that didn’t do me much good when considering, for example, the state of my closets. A parade of mismatched shoes cluttered the floor and made it impossible to get inside for a good look, as did the sagging racks, anachronistically organized with 1980s pleated-front khakis traffic piled into low-rider jeans, sandwiched next to, tragically, a pair of OshKosh B’Gosh overalls.
Clearly, I needed to divest myself of at least five hundred pounds of clothing. A writer’s words are her babies, but to me, so was my beloved and trusty wardrobe. I didn’t know how—let alone want—to edit it.
Once again, I was back on the pipe, jonesing for my magazines, hoping for a hit of competence. Basically, I needed to demolish and then rebuild a wardrobe with half the closet space.
To celebrate its eight hundredth issue, Glamour offered eight hundred beauty and style ideas in what they called their “Bible of Insider Scoops, Solutions and Secrets.” However, once inside, I noticed that their holy book was a bit misleading. Instead of eight hundred separate and distinct tips, I quickly deduced that the editors counted a column like “11 Reasons We’ll Always Love Black” as eleven ideas, which was sort of cheating the reader a bit. (And actually, the eleven reasons should have been ten, since number 1 and number 11 were the exact same reason: it’s slimming.)
But despite their hinky math, I was still able to find plenty of inspiration from Glamour’s scriptures. To help pare down my wardrobe, I focused on the “84 Things You Need for the Perfect Wardrobe.”
14 pairs of no-visible-panty-line undies
7 bras (2 black, 3 nude, 1 pretty color, 1 convertible)
1 warm coat
1 good suit ( pant or skirt)
2 work blazers
1 casual weekend jacket/parka
8 knit tops (a mix of cardigans, pullovers, and heavier sweaters)
5 shirts and blouses
10 good tees/tanks
3 little-bit-sexy, dressier tops
4 pairs of work pants (1 black, 1 khaki, 2 others)
2 pairs of jeans
1 pair of other-fabric casual pants
3 dresses (1 you can dress way up)
3 go-to-work skirts
2 pairs of shorts (or casual skirts)
2 good-fitting swimsuits
4 pairs of flat shoes/sneakers (1 work-appropriate, 3 others)
5 pairs of heels (2 work, 2 fun, 1 dressy)
1 pair knee-high boots
4 bags (1 work, 2 casual and 1 night)
1 set hat/scarf/gloves
An encouraging note accompanied the list: “Don’t panic about the number—think of it as a goal!” ( Which made me wonder—was Glamour trying to calm the readers who needed to pare down to this number, like me, or to work up to it?)
What followed was an exhausting trip down memory lane. I encountered the first coat I ever bought with my own money, a Calvin Klein navy duffel coat that I acquired in 1989 at Barneys New York for $600. With the hood on, swallowing my head and instantly robbing me of my peripheral vision, I looked liked the Grim Reaper. If I could only have one warm coat, this was not it.
I found the Anna Sui pin-striped dress I wore to my five-year high school reunion. While all the other women wore some boring variation on the little black dress, there I was, fresh from NYC (I’d show these plebeians!) in my larger-than-life lapelled, faux-double-breasted, Wall Street-meets-Jessica Rabbit glory. I had even managed to find pin-striped stockings to confound the whole look. And just to ensure NYC-sophisticate overkill, I had tied the whole ensemble together with a stiff leather motorcycle jacket and a perpetually lit cigarette. Considering my nickname in high school was Brownnose, I was aiming for the whole Olivia-Newton-John-as-Sandy transformation. In reality, I probably looked more like a drag queen on a smoke break, but at the time I thought I was hot shit, which explained why I had saved the dress all these years. But again, if I could only
have three dresses, I was not willing to sacrifice current style for outdated memories.
A dress I did keep was an orange velvet empire-waist number that belonged to my mother. When she gave it to me, she had said, “I paid a lot of money for this in the sixties.” It’s true that if you keep something long enough, it’s bound to come back in style. With its high-seamed bodice and romantic mix of velvet and paisley, my mother’s old pride and joy looked like it had just walked off the sketch pad of Marc Jacobs. Plus, the cut gave me excellent cleavage.
I also hung on to a 1940s brightly painted and outrageously sequined Mexican skirt, a popular souvenir that women brought back from their honeymoons. I purchased it ten years ago at Manhattan’s Twenty-sixth Street flea market and have worn it continuously (though it makes me look like a walking piñata). This season, finally, designers had caught up to my fashion acumen, and everyone from Cynthia Rowley to French Connection to Donna Karan was doing a version of my skirt. Naturally, I was convinced that I was responsible for the whole craze.
By the time I was done with my closet, the majority of it lay heaped on the floor. Among the casualties bound for Good Will were anything made out of velour (unfortunately, this would be more than you might think), a disturbing number of belts, and an office’s worth of suits (happily forgotten as soon as I abandoned my position as a Bloomingdale’s executive trainee and opted for a career in the dress-code-free world of advertising).
I also discarded enough shoes to rival my local DSW. Jeanne once mentioned she read an article that estimated the average woman owned forty pairs of shoes. “Per season?” I innocently asked.