AS a new year begins, it’s easy for couples to take each other for granted and neglect the incessant sniping that keeps loathing alive. Here’s how to get it back:
Try new positions
Usually row about chores in the kitchen? Switching to sexual inadequacy while next to the worktops is new, and lets you save dark hints about unemptied bins for the car to ruin journeys in a whole new way. Or try to slip barbed comments under the watching eyes of relatives blissfully unaware. Adds to the sense of naughtiness.
Dirty talk
It’s easy to go through the motions of the same resentments about who scraped the car. Give your partner a saucy surprise by introducing some filthy new insinuations of of porn addiction and/or affairs with co-workers, all bracingly unfounded. Your other half is bound to be roused by the unfamiliarity. You won’t speak for a week!
Role playing
Why not suggest a role play exploring some fantasies? He could fantasise about a whole three months without her muttering about his drinking, and she could explore a dream marriage to a man able to sustain an erection who didn’t snog her best friend on New Year’s Eve, 2008. Sharing them will be so benignly hurtful.
Remember the unspoken enmities you nursed as newlyweds
Go to your honeymoon destination to recreate those heady days when the carping was still new. Malaga in drizzle will send you back to your youthful bickering, still seething about the cost of six bridesmaids or Smelly Olly’s best man’s speech. The pointed silences will have such a nostalgic air.
Visit IKEA
A passive-aggressive purgatory of Swedish names and tiny rooms, it’s the perfect place to drop sarcastic remarks about mislaid Allen keys and never-used magnetic spice racks. In many ways a trip to IKEA – obsessed with domesticity, boredom, arguing, and unable to escape – is symbolic of every marriage.
Bring in a third
If you’re feeling bold, perhaps invite a third into your home? A mother-in-law, partner’s unemployed friend or anyone who remembers NYE 2008 is the perfect way to make the atmosphere even more uncomfortable. Careful – bitching with them about your partner alone is considered infidelity by the rules of the throuple.
