You never really know, do you?

Never was the saying Nobody really knows what goes on in a marriage. more accurate than when it came to Ruth and Colin. If you were to look at the big picture, they were doing great. Married young, with the proceeds from their wedding and help from their families, they had bought an interesting, quirky bedsit in the heart of Dublin in a wonderful Georgian house. In their early twenties when they bought it, they just thought about the ease to go to school, pubs and the city center. A family was far in their future, and when babies would come, they planned to sell or rent the bedsit and get a proper family home close to the city. Then life happened.

Life came over them, changed them, their interests and allegiances, and now in their early thirties they hated each other with passion.

They say that you can only truly hate somebody you really loved. If that was the case, it meant Ruth and Colin were genuinely in love when they got married, as now the dislike and hatred they felt for each other was paramount.

The distancing happened gradually, then the first infidelity came, quickly followed by remorseful confessions and promises that it will never happened again. Responded with reluctant acceptance, followed in its turn by the other’s infidelity, paired of course with confessions and payback.

A vicious circle that slowly led to all love disappearing leaving behind just anger and hatred. The question of divorce came up, but in Ireland it takes time and the joint property made it even more difficult. They decided to sell the bedsit and split the money, but after conferring with ‘their people’ they understood that although the money they would get would be good, split in two, it would not be enough to enable them to stay in the city, not to mention buy anything else.

A mortgage was the only way, but they first needed to build a credit rating, so no matter how they looked at it they were stuck together in the bedsit they had bought as hopeful newly weds.

The current arrangement, was one that no human being had ever seen or would be allowed to see as nobody was welcomed in their bedsit. They had split the bedsit in half with two huge wardrobes placed next to each other and facing opposite ways. This way they formed a sturdy wall, while also providing storage space for each half of the room.

The entrance door and the kitchen were part of a small hallway leading off to the shower room. The kitchen and the shower room had schedules posted for the times when they were both at home. No guests were allowed and headphones needed to be worn when listening to music or watching TV.

Ruth would sometimes wonder how had they gotten this far in their hatred for each other, but then he would do something that would drive her mad and she would forget about anything else.

Nobody would believe it about them, the hurt that they caused each other, just because they were that kind of people, and not because they did not love each other. Maybe that is what attracted them and had brought them together in the first place. They both had a mean streak and an inherent interest in their own person. Might be that people like them should never get married, though they were too young when they did it to know that.

In the first few months after ‘the arrangement’ as they called their decision to split the bedsit, they were both tempted to annoy and anger the other one, but then they realized that tensions at home affected both of them, so they just gave it up, and started behaving like distant room mates.

It is, sometimes, difficult to contain with our minds how our reality becomes itself, and how things, that if we were to describe to somebody else, would seem unconceivable, but they are just our reality and for fear of judgement or because we are not willing to explain ourselves, we hide them and show the world the image that we know is easiest to digest and accept.

Exactly what Ruth and Colin did. To their family, to their old friends, they were the happily married couple, too focused on their careers, but a solid unit that for sure will start a family soon.

To their new friends, they were single people, sharing a house, living their lives, not too many details needed, and that was that. Life went on and soon it was ten years later, they were both in their forties and they discovered that ‘the arrangement’ was working for them, moreover, they had come to rely upon it in their lives.

When Colin got a promotion, he took Ruth to the celebratory party. It is a lot easier to be accepted when you are part of a couple. The fact that Ruth had a handsy rendez-vous with one of the firm partners in the spare room did not bother Colin one bit. He could see the wives’ eyes pitying him and seeing him in a more accepting light, he was like the fox in the hen coop.

One summer when they were both stuck in the bedsit, they took an impromptu vacation to the Canaries where they had a blast, being secure in the presence of the other, but free in their pursuits.

And then they were in their fifities, and they were just really bored with everything. The city was stifling, the bedsit crammed with objects gathered over the years, the work did not require them to be in the centre anymore. That is when the big change came, they both wanted to sell and in the conversations it became clear that they did not want to live apart. Not because they loved each other, but because that was their life and they were happy with it.

So they sold their bedsit. Mind boggling to think it had been their house for over thiry years. One large room divided by furniture. Life is too much to be explained sometimes.

The money they got was a lot more than they would have ever dreamed of, and it enabled them to buy a large house with a garden in the suburbs. So life began again.

Ruth and Colin enjoyed their new found space and would sometimes find it unbelievable they had lived for so long in just one room. When people asked them for how long they had been married, they would proudly say thirty odd years and would smile serenely at each other.

‘We had a good time didn’t we Colin?’, Ruth would say in a sage voice.

‘And the best is yet to come my dear!’, and they would giggle like people sharing a secret that nobody else is aware it even exists.