THIS IS US

The Rollercoaster Cure for an Endless Pandemic

I needed to scream. Like a kid. It was glorious.

Wednesday, my boyfriend and I decided to have a day of play, so I re-arranged my Zoom life and cleared my schedule for a New York adventure. I put my auto-reply on, set my Slack to “out of office,” and stepped away from this very laptop. He likes to joke that “all you do is type anyway.” Anyone who works on a screen for a living knows that, in fact, we do a lot more than click our keys. But I like to let him have his little fun at my expense. It helps in those inspired moments when I come up with a gentle zinger and can turn the tables on him with a mischievous grin.

I have been learning — now in my first serious pairing in 11 years, at 43 — that a healthy relationship requires a bit of poking fun. That’s something I was never really that good at, frankly. I’m a bit of a sensitive flower. It also requires very structured roles and responsibilities for housekeeping (me), dinner prep (him), and bill paying (us). Apparently, as we have quickly learned, it also requires one person to love and cherish a menagerie of bed pillows…and the other to want to burn the bed down every time he has to remove them to get under the covers (him).