I have been single for six years, y’all… and in many ways, it has been glorious. For six years, I’ve binge watched teen dramas on Netflix, crocheted sweaters for the dog, eaten dinners of sweet potato fries and maraschino cherries, and decorated my entire apartment like the set of Babes In Toyland every Christmas, right down to the hot pink tree. In fact, anyone who’s spoken to me for a minimum of 11 minutes is aware that pink is my favorite color, as evidenced by my office supplies, electronic devices, shooting range gear, and even one of my guns. A close second to pink is glitter, as also evidenced by my office supplies and every craft project to which I can apply bling. I am just unapologetically girly. There is no age limit on a neon pink North Face or Laura Ashley bedspread and more than once, when I’ve failed to find something in pink, I’ve crocheted or sewn it myself. As I plan my life with Jake, I’m not sorry that it’s so resembled a Delia’s catalog for the last six years… because now I have to live with a boy.

 

I don’t just have to live with a boy, y’all. I have to live with the male equivalent of myself. For every pink glittery item I own, Jake owns something that was once alive and cute. Three years ago, when I was dancing to Taylor Swift with the dog at 2:00 am, my future husband was getting up to shoot something for funsies. My life is to the Victoria’s Secret Pink store as his is to Bass Pro, and as we discuss decor, I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to live in adjoining duplexes like some kind of fundamentalist Mormon family.

It all began a few months ago, when I started thinking about getting new bedding. I realized that such a potentially pricey purchase should really be mutual, considering the fact that we’d probably be married in a year, so I started quizzing Jake on bedding sets and color schemes. Jake being Jake, was so confident in his opinions, that I started to agree with his choices… only to later realize that I didn’t like his ugly beige and brown boy bedding at all. So, naturally, I obsessed over it for a good week, sending Jake approximately 30 different screenshots of what I considered reasonable compromises until he gently suggested that I was acting insane, since we didn’t have to worry about this for a thousand years. Point taken. I really was borrowing trouble.

Over the last few months, however, as we’ve browsed department stores, musing over wedding registry options while Christmas shopping, decor has come up more and more. Each time, when I would start to get frustrated with how often Jake vetoed even my most neutral color suggestions, he’d brush it off as he always had, stating that we had plenty of time to decide these things. I’d usually respond with a joke about how we’re going to have to have separate bedrooms with an adjoining door. Admittedly, the communication breakdown here has been pretty mutual. Now, though, I’m wearing a ring. We’re choosing a venue and date this week. Jake’s planning to rent a place in Jackson in the next couple of months and I’ll of course move in, so I won’t have to commute an hour a day from Shetland. I’m contacting photographers and Etsy designers and cash bar services and we are running out of time!!!!!!!

On Saturday, Jake and I went to Hobby Lobby, where he vetoed clock after clock and picture after picture and any color not on the brown spectrum.

Jake: “It’s too nautical.”
Me: “How is it nautical? It’s nautical because it has a weather vane on it? Why don’t you show me one you do like? You have literally said no to everything here.”
Jake: “How about this one?”
Me: “The one with cardinal directions on it is “too nautical”, but one wrapped in sea rope isn’t? Fine. How about you live in your batcave for the rest of your life and we don’t get married?!?”

Of course, he took my hyperbole as another joke, rather than genuine frustration.

Jake: “What’s wrong?”
Me: “We don’t like any of the same stuff.”
Jake: “Stop saying that. We do, too.”

I tried, y’all. I tried to bring it up rationally… ‘cept with the batcave comment, but he’d literally down voted twenty previous suggestions, so I feel that bit of exaggeration was warranted. Regardless, I put it all aside that night and planned to enjoy our time together. Jake, however, had a touch too much to drink… such a touch, in fact, that I lay in bed at 1:30 listening to the sounds of crashing as Jake sang the Whoville Christmas song Fahoo Fores and promised myself that if he survived his shower, I’d kill him. I was, indeed, ready to do just that when he was too out of it to roll away from me and stop snoring in my ear, ultimately landing me on the couch for a few hours. I mention this to set the scene of an exhausted Belle (all due to Jake), because the next evening, as we were looking over my Amazon wedding wish list, he nixed some brightly colored measuring cups to which he’d previously agreed and I lost it.

Jake: “What is wrong?!?”
Me: “Marriage isn’t me living in your mancave with sex on tap.”
Jake: “I don’t think that. Don’t say that.” 
Me: “You hate everything I like! You veto everything and you hate all color!”
Jake: “I don’t hate color. I promise, we will have color in our house.”
Me: “No we won’t! You say that and then you say no to every single color I choose! I’m gonna give into everything you like, and I’ll be miserable in your hunting lodge and no one will even know I live there!!!!”
Jake: “That’s not true.”
Me: “One time… I asked you to choose a color of towel and you… you… you chose beige!!!!!”

 

Me: “I love color and I don’t need everything to be pink, but I want my home to feel like I live there!”
Jake: “It will.”
Me: “No it won’t. I’m marrying one of the bad people from Pleasantville! I don’t want to live in Pleasantville!”

Jake did his best not to laugh at my ridiculous melodrama and held me as I cried. I told him I worried that I’d end up in the same situation as my brother, having no say and no place in my own home. I reminded him of every time he’d insisted we would have color, but brushed me off when I asked him to tell me which ones he liked. He apologized for making light of my questions at Hobby Lobby, when I pointed out that we actually don’t have months and months to find common ground. Through my tears, I reminded him that I had tried to bring this up rationally and calmly and he’d scoffed at me.

Jake: “I do not scoff.”
Me: “You do, too. You scoff like a little old lady looking at ear guages.”

In the end, he again promised me color and to listen better when I tell him something’s bothering me. He swore to me that I would be comfortable in my home and people would know I lived there. We both promised to communicate better, because for better or for worse, I have to live with a boy and he definitely has to live with a girl.