Love means learning new things (and not spending $300 on ceiling fans).

Like how your husband knows how it feels to have to use a bucket instead of a toilet because his parents couldn't pay the light bill and if there's no electricity, there's no water, either. Sort of puts all my house neruoses and "Ooh! We need plantation blinds!" and "I don't care that they've painted; we can still paint our room and the bathrooms!" and "we need a $200 bookshelf/divider in the living/dining room, oh, and a chaise longue too, because i've just always wanted one" into sharp, crisp, Regenia-is-a-spoiled-brat focus.

And it also makes it very clear just how lightly I have to tread with this whole house thing. Every mention of money brings with it a discussion of his manhood and his ability to pay for the house into question (whether or not I intend it to). Every mention of decorating has, trailing behind it, the implication that I'm going to bankrupt us both with stupid things like $100 curtains and exotic landscaping.

So you can imagine the psychological minefield that ensued when we went to Lowe's this weekend and shopped around: me skipping around, looking gleefully at paint swatches and flowering plants, cabinetry and front-loading washing machines. C: doing the calculations in his head of how much everything was going to cost him; a horrified, dazed look on his face. Things finally came to a head in the Lighting aisle, when we were supposed to be looking at cieling fans.

Me: (pointing to a darling small chandelier for the bathroom) That's it!
Him: That? Me: No, That.
Him: That thing? It doesn't even put out any light! Why would you put something like that in a bathroom, where you need light? I mean, What's the point!
Me: It just goes above the tub! there are other lights in the bathrom!
(various people glance at us uncomfortably; you'd think Lowe's customers were used to domestic strife in their aisles by now)
Him: No there aren't! I'll show you; we can go to the house right now and I'll show you. You can't have a little light like that in the bathroom; you just like it because it's pretty.
Me: I do like it because it's pretty.


We looked at the cieling fans after that, but walked way after we realized we were prepared to drop $300 on cieling fans. No more discussion was made about the chandelier. Apparently love means understanding where your partner's insecurities or soft spots or fears lie and doing what you can to either assuage, tiptoe around, or at least not aggravate them.