It takes two to make a thing go wrong

How IKEA ruins relationships

The idea is that you are now in a relationship. Seemingly anonymous, you discover yourself in the directions, docile and monogamous, having allocated an entire weekend afternoon to constructing a semblance of life.

The idea is that you’ve moved in together. You and your new domestic partner probably have liberal art degrees, with which one may find it rather hard to find a job that pays well, and meandering careers in idealistic industries.

The idea is that you can’t afford real furniture, so you drive to a very ominous building and haul back a box filled with not “wood” per se, but a wood-like sheath incased with pressed sawdust and glue, herein referred to in quotes.

The idea is that you spend that afternoon on the floor trying to communicate the critical minutiae of furniture making to your resigned partner; i.e. how to hold a particular piece of “wood,” in aid of screwing it in, without coming across as a very severe and unforgiving person.

The idea is modernism. Your new DOMBÅS cabinet, which kind of sounds like dumbass, has the distant sheen of something that costs way more than it actually does; that is, until you touch it. Test out your dumbass cabinet. Go ahead, just try to hang a winter coat in it.

The idea is that you discover that your partner had held the one piece of “wood” for which she was solely responsible upside-down, and now the entire thing is off kilter. It still works, for hanging t-shirts and scarves.

The idea is you now have two choices. One, go up to her and tell her that she screwed up, that you won, and that such conquering might be prophetic of your relationship with her. Or two, say nothing and resent her for years.

The idea is because you have unexamined commitment and intimacy issues, you choose the latter because it’s both less confrontational and strangely, ultimately, more destructive.

The idea is after she leaves you for another guy, you fall into a depression and stop putting your clothes in the cabinet, not because it’s off kilter, but ironically, because such off kilterness only reminds you of why you loved her.

The idea is that you learn something about yourself by the break up, and that all corny clichés, like this one, are resonant because they are true. You learn that you can be an emotionally lazy and weak spirited petty dick who dreams of being alone but can’t.

The idea is after one drunken evening in which you destroy the thing with your bare hands, slightly injuring yourself, you remove the pieces of “wood,” one day at a time, when you leave for work, over the course of a week.

The ideas are always better than reality. The supposed lives lived inside a catalog or showroom seem unfairly immune to the very difficulties that such a life, when actually lived, would incur. The idea is this is okay, to just try to make things the best you can next time. Good luck.