I’m accidentally dating my wife
My wife and I have only ever dated by accident. After our third date a decade ago (well, what I thought was our third date) that she texted me asking, ‘So was that just dinner and theatre, or was it “dinner and theatre?”’ To this day, she insists that she had no idea what was going on (despite my sudden interest in her after two years of just being acquaintances, the Skype calls, the hand-painted postcards… actually, I’d better not start). A few years later, early on in our marriage, when we were still childless, young professional Londoners, we thought we’d wildly treat ourselves to dinner out on a Thursday. We were baffled, though, as to why our local Italian restaurant in Tufnell Park was so busy on a weekday – until we realised it was 14 February and that, for the first time in our relationship, and against our shared will, we were celebrating Valentine’s Day.
None of this is to say that I’ve never romanced her, dear reader. I proposed at the top of a church spire on a starry night, I’ll have you know; I sourced a 200-year-old late-Georgian Era engagement ring; I know precisely when she will actually appreciate being bought flowers (usually when she’s ill). But we’ve never really dated. By both circumstance (most of our courtship was long-distance) and inclination (she’s unsentimental, I’m pretentious), ‘dating’ has never really been our thing. Until, for the first time in ten years together, and seven years of marriage, we have found ourselves having a regular date night – and, true to form, quite by accident.
Last year, we welcomed Baby No. 3. And it’s great – if you have a brace of kiddos already, let me encourage you to aim for keeping the match ball. But it does change the game somewhat, and time for mum and dad to be man and wife together becomes that bit more precious. For the past five years, I’ve given up my Friday nights to volunteering in my local church youth group but decided several months back that it was time to step back from that particular commitment. And so, suddenly, TGIF was a reality once more.
About this same time, quite by coincidence, my wife bagged a free trial of one of the many recipe box subscriptions knocking around these days. Not one that sends you all the ingredients – that tastes far too dystopian for our palates. We leave that to our single friends living in their chromium pods up in the city. No, our subscription box just sends the spices and stocks along with a recipe and so allows us the illusion of preparing our own meal together from scratch – something we always enjoyed back in our long-distance days, trying to maximise our time together. (In reality, I always end up cooking it and have to go and wake my wife up because she’s fallen asleep while putting the baby to bed.)
Eventually, we found ourselves in a Friday night rhythm. The kids would get a quick pasta tea and be put down early, I’d whip up the 25 to 30 minute recipe, and we’d sit down to our one bit of TV a week. Currently, that means a rewatch of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, complaining as we go about which episodes have been dropped from Netflix for no longer being politically correct (RIP, Martina Martinez). Not long after all this started, we also got a free trial of a wine subscription box when we bought a new tumble dryer (sexy, right?). Those sneaky vintners nabbed an extra two months out of me when I forgot to cancel it, and when they decided that, in the year of our Lord 2024, it could only be cancelled by calling them on the phone between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday to Friday. This does mean, however, that if we share a bottle every Friday, we now have two to three months’ worth of Italian and Argentine plonk on reserve.
And so, it hit me, one night, a few months ago, with the living room lights low, across a plate of swiftly made jerk chicken and a glass of surprisingly good sauvignon blanc: it only took a decade, but I can now reveal that my wife and I, well… we’re dating. And I hate to jinx it, but it’s going really well.
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