Please don't show me how you live
A domestic visit, a bowl of hummus, and a minor existential crisis about drawer dividers and love
2:07 PM. ONE WOMAN IS SPENDING AN AFTERNOON IN ISLINGTON WITH TWO PEOPLE WHO ARE IN LOVE
The trouble with visiting other people’s homes—especially the people in relationships, especially the smug, ethically monogamous ones—is that you may now see how they live. Not just live, but live. Capital-L Live. With drawer dividers. With lemon reamers. With toothbrushes that stand upright in ceramic holders shaped like coral. With a dedicated “guest towel” that they most certainly do not wash between guests.
I recently went to visit a couple I know, Meribel and Simon*. Now in their early thirties, they had just moved house from the Harringay Ladder to Islington and had invited me over to “see what we’ve done with the joint.”
They opened the door in matching cream-toned outfits like they’d been called in for a J.Crew catalogue shoot. He was sockless and wearing velvet loafers he referred to as his “indoor” shoes. She offered me a Cynar spritz.
“It was time we bought a place,” Meribel said as she mixed the artichoke bitter with not Prosecco, but English sparkling wine.
“The fizz is Nyetimber,” Simon told me after Meribel handed me my drink. “We stopped at the vineyard the other weekend on the way to my mum’s, and the whole time we were thinking how lovely it’d be to have you and your… uh, future partner—he’s out there, Anto, we swear—join us for a couple’s hols. Right, Mer?”
Meribel flashed a smile and I returned one even bigger. Still grinning, she put a gentle hand on Simon’s shoulder. “The nibbles—would you mind plating them, honey?”
On cue, Simon got up to scoop hummus into a bowl shaped like a cabbage and arrange crackers on a plate. Turning back to me, Meribel tells me he made the dip from scratch: “He uses this really nice olive oil. We love it—it’s the best.”
Looking around the kitchen, I noticed the magnetic calendar on their Smeg fridge, the ceramic mixing bowls carefully stacked on open shelving, and a large Mason jar full of coins.
“What’s with the jar—do you really have that much spare change between the two of you? So retro, no?” I asked.
“Oh,” said Meribel, blushing a bit. “We’ve started keeping an honesty jar for screen time, things like that.”
“It’s been really useful for us—we really love it,” Simon added, spreading hummus on a cracker.
2:18 PM. HOWEVER
Before I go further, I must tell you that I adore Meribel and Simon. And I adore them together as much as I adore them separately because they are, by all accounts, very fun, very lovely people.
However.
There is something deeply violent about watching two people exist inside their own system. Not because they’re performing it for you (though they are, in a sort of “oh don’t mind the espresso station” way) but because they’re completely unaware of its existence. This is just how they are now: calm, velvet slippered, full of homemade hummus and artisanal crackers made from einkorn flour.
And it’s afternoons like the one I spent in Islington with Meribel and Simon when I cannot help but ask myself: When did this happen? Who permitted it? Where do they go to yell at each other?
3:32 PM. THE GRAND TOUR
“Shall we give you the grand tour?” asked Meribel.
(Despite the essay’s overarching subject, I must admit that I do love touring another person’s home, namely because I am, frankly, an incredibly nosy person.)
“Onward, maestro,” I joked. “Let’s get this show on the road!” Starting in their kitchen, we weaved in and out of various rooms: their sitting room, then their living room, then their powder room off the front corridor, then up their sisal-carpeted stairs to their sisal-carpeted bedroom.
Finally, we reached the tour’s last stop: their bathroom. The tile work gleamed, evidently spared the damp, persistent horror that is British black mould. And then I saw the His and Hers shelves.
His had three items: a razor, a tub of Kiehl’s moisturiser, and a wooden comb. Hers was a devotional altar: balms, serums, tiny spoons for scooping out under-eye cream.
Like a woman presenting her hearty dowry of goats and raw seashells, Meribel gestured toward it proudly: “Isn’t it great? Got it off Portobello and had the contractor fit it in!”
I replied with what I hoped was a supportive expression of interest, as my focus was currently fixated on the little acrylic labels affixed to every perfume bottle: “FOR DATE NIGHT,” “FOR WORK,” “FOR SUMMERTIME HOLIDAY EU ONLY.”
I had never considered that perfumes might have categories. The one I wear smells like the inside of a wealthy, childless aunt’s handbag (which is, if we’re being honest, exactly how I want to smell) and I wear it every day—for date nights, for work, and, yes, even for summertime holidays that take place exclusively within the European Union.
Jesus, I thought. Is this what it looks like when you’re getting everything right?
4:44 PM. WE FALL ASLEEP HOLDING HANDS
Later, Meribel, Simon, and I sat on their white boucle sofa and drank cold rosé made colder from the single ice cube Simon had dropped into each glass. With the tour completed and the last of the hummus polished off, we had finally reached the part of the afternoon every third-wheel knows well: the polite-nodding portion of the programme, where your main job is to smile and shake your head in the affirmative while desperately trying not to look too single.
Inevitably, we were talking about how much better they’re both sleeping these days.
“It’s the magnesium powder,” Simon said. “We swear by it. I stir it into glasses of warm water with lemon every night before bed.”
Ever the people-pleaser, I nodded my head vigorously.
How do you sleep nowadays? Meribel wanted to know. I joked that, no matter what I drink before bed—be it a magnesium-lemon concoction or booze, the latter my more customary pre-sleep beverage of choice—I do not sleep well.
In unison, they let out a polite laugh. “We used to be like that,” Meribel said, smiling at Simon. She wove her fingers through his. “But we fall asleep holding hands now, which helps.”
Alright.
I have no choice but to address this now—the elephant in the room that is composed of only two letters: “WE.”
God. I hate that word. Not in theory—just in certain contexts (and also because I am, at present, a little far from “we-dom”). It’s been all over this essay, this pronoun of the emotionally secure and grammatically smug. Once couples start saying “we” instead of “I,” you know it’s over—not just for you as the single friend, but for the two individuals and their egos. For the idea of them as two fully separate people. For any chance of them ever choosing different desserts at a restaurant again.
To engage in “We” talk as a person in a couple is to imply that some cosmic shift has taken place—that what was once your singular, clawing little ego has now finally been tamed, filed down into a smooth relational unit of two. The selves have merged. The edges have flattened. The placemats match the drapery.
To make matters worse, as I continued to nod and sip and talk about deep-sleep hand-holding, I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I’d said “we” without flinching.
6:56 PM. PLEASE DON’T EVER LET ME BUY A LABEL MAKER
On the walk home from Islington, I felt like I had just visited the future. Not my future, exactly, but someone’s. Someone emotionally consistent. Someone who properly files their taxes in January. Someone who doesn’t experience the occasional pang of nostalgia for good moments with bad people. Someone whose life would never be derogatorily described as “like, really, really chaotic.” Someone who is not me. But also, someone who unmistakably could be.
I stepped into my local corner shop and bought a bottle of white wine and a Toblerone. The man behind the counter asked if I wanted a bag. I said no and tucked the items under my arm like two misshapen baguettes.
When I got back to my house—tiny, drafty, mine—I poured myself another glass of wine (sans singular ice cube this time) and sat on the floor because the sofa in my kitchen was covered in laundry done the day before that still needed to be folded.
I texted a friend: “Please don’t ever let me buy a label maker.” He responded instantly: “Too late. I have one. It changed my life.” As I unwrapped my nougat, I considered blocking his number.
7:13 PM. NYETIMBER WEEKENDS AWAY AND MAGNESIUM POWDER BEFORE BED
It’s not that I don’t want love. I do. Or something like it. I want someone who asks if I’ve eaten, who rubs my back absentmindedly while watching the news, who says, “Come to bed” instead of “Are you still scrolling?” But I do not want to become a person who owns a Bluetooth-connected compost caddy or a shared dry-erase calendar.
Perhaps this makes me seem naive—maybe even jejune1—but the truth is, I want to be known, cared for, and loved without anyone seeing the way I live now. I still haven’t figured it out. And I’m worried that the things I have figured out won’t ever accumulate to reach the disciplined level of Nyetimber-vineyard-weekends-away-and-magnesium-powder-before-bed.
I still eat dinner off the chopping board sometimes. I still use my phone’s torch to find my phone. I still have a tin of anchovies I moved flats with in 2021. I still haven’t found the courage to throw away a gift bag I received during Covid because it’s “perfectly reusable.” I can barely qualify anything I do in my daily life as a “routine.” Which is to say: I am not ready for a system.
Like a person with no plans on a Saturday night tapping through Instagram Stories of their friends having fun without them, I cycled through the mental snapshots I took at Meribel and Simon’s: the smiling faces, the indoor shoes, the “nibbleswouldyoumindplatingthemhoney?,” the shelf labeled “Ours.”
The “We” of it all.
Still on the floor beside the unfolded laundry with my glass of wine and triangular Swiss candy bar, I realised maybe that’s the saddest part of all this: that I don’t even want what Meribel and Simon have—not really, though it does seem to make them very happy, which, in turn, makes me even happier for them—and yet I came home with a particular emptiness, as if I’d just missed out on something for which I never applied but was still secretly hoping to be granted.
8:43 AM. ALL BETS ARE OFF
The next morning, I made myself coffee and sat at my kitchen table. The laundry was still unfolded on the sofa and last night’s wine glass was still on the floor beside it. I smiled.
Love, when it comes, can meet me here. In the mess, among the piles of half-read books and questionably clean mugs and the utter lack of shelving coordination. And I’ll meet the person—whoever he may be—where he is, too.
I know there are things in my life—things about me—that can change. That should change. But I don’t want any relationship to be the thing that does it; I want to do it myself. I want to adore and be adored as is—which is arguably, as I realised that afternoon with Meribel and Simon, the less realistic fantasy.
And, honestly, I want someone to help me fold the laundry.
(That said, if you’re ever over at mine for an afternoon, I promise I won’t subject you to a house tour. Unless, of course, it’s “we” who are doing it because “we” just bought matching carafes for our bedside tables. Then all bets are off.)
*Names have been changed—but still, I’d like to give a giant thank you to Meribel and Simon for such a wonderful afternoon (and for being such good sports about me writing about it).
Thank you so much for reading this piece! Trying something a bit different this week narrative/prose-wise to give me a bit of a mental break from the very me pieces I’ve been writing for a few magazines—so I hope you enjoyed it, and as always, lots and lots of love to the moon and back :) <3
(And if you saw me read this live, eek, thank you!)
I tried to find a link to this one scene in Succession (S1, E7 - “Austerlitz”) where Shiv says, “Don’t you find it a little jejune?” but can’t. Since I watched this episode, I have been trying DESPERATELY to use the word jejune somewhere and I’ve finally figured out a way to shoehorn it into this essay. So yay!
Now I’m nosy! Which perfume do you use? 💐