jasminda

 

Dear Jasminda,

My husband has a very annoying habit of going to the bathroom in the middle of the night, washing his hands and then putting those icy, wet hands on my warm body. He thinks it is hilarious. What should I do?
Mrs Virginia W.

Dear Virginia,

Now, if you had said your seven-year-old son was doing this to your five-year-old daughter, I would have explained it off as sibling shenanigans, but this is your husband. The man you vowed to love and honour in sickness and in health (until he lost the use of his faculties after two many longnecks), and the man who vowed to love you until death do you part (until your mother-in-law moved into the spare bedroom during the pandemic). And now we have what feels to me to be the start of a War of the Roses movie.

So, his cold wet hands are innocent enough, but of course it can’t stop at that. You have no choice but to retaliate, and so you do, in jest of course, sewing the arms of his shirts together, or, on a rainy day, putting multicoloured blobs of paint on his windscreen wipers to create colourful rainbows when he’s in a rush to go to work. You know, those sweet little gestures that let him know you are still fun. The problem is, he will get back at you and take it up a notch, and very soon you’ll be locking him in a sauna and turning his beloved dog into pate.

It can’t last of course. This one-upmanship. So as much as it may kill you, maybe laugh off his icy hands and then look into his eyes and whisper, ‘Game on, and it starts with tonight’s dinner.’

I reckon he’ll never do it again and your life will go back to its former state of marital bliss.

Carpe diem, Jasminda. lost