Nuno,
I think the problem is that for 11 years we’ve only sat across from each other. Dinners, kitchen tables, the booth at the diner near his mother’s. Across the table is where we discuss the boiler, the calendar, whose turn it is. It is a meeting room with bread.
I want to fall in love with my husband again. Please do not send me a package. I do not want rose petals, a couples’ menu, a sunset cruise or a worksheet. I do not want anyone to tell me what we should feel by Sunday.
I only want to remember why I once found him the most interesting person in the room.
Yours, tired of the candle
The Request Behind the Request
Dear Tired,
Your letter asks for something that does not exist, and in doing so describes exactly what you need. You have refused the package, the performance and the promised outcome. That refusal is the most useful sentence in the letter. Keep it.
The request is rarely the request. You wrote “fall in love,” but the evidence you offer is smaller: a table arrangement. For 11 years the two of you have faced each other, which is how people sit when something must be settled. Nobody has settled anything lately. You are both still bracing.
So the hidden request is attention, and ease. Neither can be produced under the gaze of a person who is waiting to see whether it worked.
Two Chairs, Facing Out
Sit beside him. Not across.
A café terrace where the chairs are lined up toward the street, like seats at a very slow cinema. A harbor wall, which has no opinion about how long you stay. A bus stop, if the bus is late and the street is ordinary. Choose somewhere with no menu of experiences and a view of people who are not you. Arrive without a plan for the conversation, and put the phones face down in a pocket, not on the table.
Then do almost nothing. Order something small. Watch the street.
At some point a dog will cross it with great purpose and no owner in sight, and one of you will mutter something about it. The other will answer. A laugh will arrive that neither of you scheduled. This is the whole method. You will discover, with some surprise, that you still notice the same things. The same absurd hat, the same waiter who is clearly in charge, the same pigeon with a grievance.
Nothing large happens in that moment, and that is its virtue. It also does not need to be repeated on a schedule; the habit you are building is only that of turning your chairs the same way. Looking in the same direction removes the interview from the afternoon. Neither of you is being read. You are both reading something else, and you get to see the other do it.
Three Small Instructions
Keep separate interests, openly. Spend one afternoon a week apart, on purpose, doing something that belongs only to you. Come back with a report that nobody asked for. A person who has been somewhere without you is, briefly, a stranger worth a question.
Share one meal that asks nothing. Not a tasting menu with a story. A counter, a bench, a market sandwich eaten standing up. Meals where the food is the event leave the two of you free to be incidental.
Leave 2 hours unplanned. Not “quality time,” a phrase that sounds like an invoice. Just 2 hours with no destination and no one in charge of making them meaningful. If the bus is late, good.
The Warning
Skip the table for two with a candle. Skip any weekend that comes with a title, a theme or a form to fill in afterward. And skip the conversation that begins “How are we doing?” It forces a verdict before anyone has had coffee. A marriage is not a service that needs a satisfaction survey, and nobody can sell you an outcome, so be wary of any itinerary that tries. Also skip the terrace with a single row of tables turned toward each other; check the chair direction before you sit. What you want is a place that gives you a plain chair, a short menu and a decent view of the street.
Nuno’s Verdict
You do not need to fall in love again. You need to be easy in each other’s company, and that arrives sideways, usually while looking at something else. Sit down next to him. Wait for the dog.
If nothing happens on the first afternoon, return on the second. Some things only show up once you stop watching for them.
Yours, from the next chair over,
Nuno
Have a travel wish of your own? Write to Nuno. He might respond.
