MARS & VENUS IN QUARANTINE

There is no door separating the bedroom from the living room in my 60-square-metre apartment, where my husband, Mark, and I have spent the past year together. It’s not like we were having problems qua problems when I picked up a hardcover copy of the 1992 self-help bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: A Practical Guide for Improving Communication and Getting What You Want in Your Relationships, by John Gray, PhD, but after a year of quarantine, we weren’t exactly in any position to be turning down marital advice in any form. Not to mention, Mark had recently started saying “Cool, cool, cool” every time one of his co-workers asked him to do anything, a habit I loathe. I don’t want to kill him, but I don’t not want to kill him. I’m sure he feels the same way about me.

I viewed it as an ironic little joint reading project, and Mark was game. Besides, it was Covid-what else were we doing? We could even commit to the bit and order a fondue set and some royal-blue wine glasses to drink pinot noir out of like it was really the ’90s. In other words, we could pretend we were our parents, who seemed to have had it all so together at our age.

Some version of them, anyway. If I was being honest with myself, the project was more than ironic. My suspicion was that advice for a happy marriage hadn’t changed much in 30 years. This might have