In my case I first felt the angst and ultimate surrender to commitment about six months prior to my wedding. For a variety of reasons including the arduous and lengthy Catholic annulment process and my limited finances at the time, I moved in with then fiancee, now husband. This was a difficult process both physically, trying to cram what was left of my belongings into a house that was already full and had NO storage, as well as emotionally. Giving up my little home meant giving up a great measure of freedom and control, which is why I experienced and expressed my commitment at that time. It was the first of my marital sacrifices and it was very difficult for me. The home that we now live in was once shared by my husband and his ex-wife, they bought it shortly after my step-daughter was born.
Since to this day most of my belongings are in the garage, it is easy for me to feel like a guest in their house. In the process of merging our households my husband did agree to paint and even get rid of a few things to make some room for me. The key item that I really wished to be rid of was his sofa. In my estimation it was an ugly, crusty, worn out piece of motion furniture that I found equally uncomfortable to sit or gaze upon. In his estimation there was nothing wrong with it and that was that. Still, he kindly agreed to sell it at a yard sale and use my sofa.
My sofa wasn't perfect, it was a hand-me-down from a dead woman, but I found it less revolting and ugly and it had no particular ties to his ex-wife (I sleep in the bed he shared with her for goodness sake!!) In the end it turned out that the dead lady sofa was pretty much on it's last leg, even with a slipcover that only I seemed to straighten, it was clearly not going to make it. So we commenced to sofa shopping.
I come from a long line of furniture lovers, my grandfather owned a furniture store and my mother, aunt and cousins rather enjoy owning and shopping for furniture. Little did I know that this process would ever be anything but fun. Thus I naively embarked upon what I thought would be our first purchase for our shared home together. Everything went horribly wrong. We couldn't agree on anything except maybe fabric, we liked leather. The first few shopping trips became a jumble of opposing feature preferences and the longer we looked the further it seemed we got from any sort of common ground. Too soft, too firm, too short, too deep, not tall enough, too tall, too overstuffed, to under stuffed, the unending frustrations went on and on. In time we were able to come to a point where we could define the terms of the conflict, and UN peacekeepers couldn't find a way to end our stalemate.
I like a sofa largely for it's design. I appreciate the art of good furniture design so much that I have a short list of pieces I have always hoped to collect for their sheer beauty as art (ie. Eames chair, Noguchi table and Barcelona couch.) I give little thought to comfort, in fact if it "looks comfortable" odds are I won't like it. Thanks to a quirky lower back issue I'm more comfortable on a kitchen chair than in anything I sink into and thus firm, clean, modern furniture is perfect for me, and is in fact comfortable. That said, I can find plenty of more pedestrian pieces that please me, so long as they don't appear to belong in a frat house or a trailer park. (Although squashing my lifelong dream of fine furniture collecting is as heartbreaking as telling a kindergartner there isn't a Santa.)
As we eventually discovered, my husband likes a sofa largely for it's ability to hold his head up for him when sitting so he doesn't have to utilize those pesky neck muscles. Picture one of those old fashioned wooden dolls made with all the limbs as separate pieces held together by strings rigged to a spring-loaded base. When you depress the base, the doll goes limp, all the parts dangling, head flopping to the side, the creature almost looks dead until you release the base and the parts all go back in place, head erect, doll upright and lively. This is my husband. When you depress his buttocks on a sofa, he is rendered incapable of holding himself together. His muscles fail him, he appears half dead. It is a particularly pathetic sight on the dead lady sofa because he has to slump down so far before landing on something to support his wobbly head.
And so, I want something clean, sleek and minimal, he wants something large, soft and supportive. When it comes to comfort beyond aesthetics, we're still incompatible. The upside is that we are incompatible optimists and so we went to every furniture store and sat on every sofa looking to find one that we both genuinely like without either of us having to settle. This year long process led to arguments in furniture stores, tears, and my actual fear that we simply could not be married because THIS was insurmountable. And in truth, it sort of is. There really is no way to buy a sofa that we both absolutely love. Many experts (well seasoned salespeople, therapists and even a life coach) have confirmed this, what is in order is a compromise. Ah, but how do we arrive at one we could really be at peace with? Well that's the big question with marriage isn't it?
Marriage ultimately requires a partial death to self, a choice to sacrifice some freedom in exchange for intimacy. With that comes some new freedoms that are shared, but others that simply are gone. The delicate balancing act of sorting out the "me" vs. "we" is one of the age old mysteries of marriage, and yet for most of human history we've decided to engage in this complex pursuit. I can't help thinking that our immense emotional investment in this sofa crisis has been a practical way for us to flesh out some of the very real challenges of creating a shared life. I'm happy to report that after a year of blood, sweat and tears we'll have our new sofa tomorrow, we'll save the coffee table dilemma for another day.
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