When Should You Lie To Your Husband?

Is it ever appropriate to lie to your partner? 

Yes: when he’s a French cleaning maniac.

For instance, when I’m cooking, my French husband Maxime will often appear at my shoulder, and ask me a loaded question such as: 'did you wash that pot? It doesn't look very clean!' or ‘where did you buy that meat?’ or ‘is it meant to have that uncooked texture?'

Lie, lie, always lie (and then banish your husband from the kitchen). White lies are your friends. This is my maxim for Maxime, and it helps me to refrain from strangling him.

I learnt the inestimable value of the white lie the (very) hard way, however. I went through years of domestic discord with Maxime in France: there are all sorts of aspects to cleaning I had been blissfully unaware of until I met him - and they are all aspects to which he attaches critical importance. For instance, Maxime is very particular about the washing, sorting clothes into five separate piles to be washed at different temperatures and speeds. I had never heard of anyone doing that before, and in a moment of madness, I amalgamated two of Maxime’s piles to wash. Worse, when he asked if that’s what I had done, I was honest and confessed. Oh, the histrionics that followed! Maxime squawked with outrage and disbelief and flapped his arms as if he was doing a seagull impression. Then he lectured me extensively about washing machines (a topic in which I have only minimal interest), every now and again bursting out with exclamations like ‘I can’t believe you did that!’ and finally finished with a series of dramatic sighs that would’ve done a Bell Shakespeare actor proud.

Although I have to say I was not altogether unhappy with the final outcome: I was promptly sacked as clothes washer.

Nevertheless, it would have saved a great deal of heartache (and time) if I’d just said ‘of course I washed your five piles of clothes separately, Maxime.’ But as I've said, it took me a while to learn my lesson, and my domestic misery after Washing-machine-gate continued:

I thought I would be safe doing the dishes. I mean, we have a dishwasher and I don’t have to wash dishes myself! But no. When a piece broke off our salad bowl, I glued it back on and continued to use the bowl as normal – and wash it as normal. One day, Maxime saw me unloading the dishwasher. The salad bowl was on the bench nearby, looking suspiciously like it had been recently unloaded.

 'Did you put the salad bowl in the dishwasher?' Maxime shrieked.

‘Yes,' I said (stupidly).

'No wonder it broke.'

'But that’s not how it broke!'

'Yes it was. It broke due to accumulated stress,' said Maxime.

I know how it feels, I thought.

Then Maxime gave me a series of complicated instructions about dishwashers which I would henceforth forget.

But the question I really wish I’d lied about was when Maxime said, ‘Do you know how to iron?’

A very contentious object

‘Yes,’ I said, and plunged into a reverie about ironing handkerchiefs while watching the cricket back home in Australia.

'I don’t know how to iron,’ said Maxime. ‘Could you iron this shirt for me please?’

‘Oh, OK.’

A little while later, I brought the ironed shirt in to him.

‘Oh,’ he said (instead of thank you), and he gave the shirt a puzzled frown. ‘So … for you, that’s ironed?’

I made it clear from now on he could learn to iron himself or employ an ironing lady, or I would iron his face. After all, we were both working full time, and I did the cooking, which thanks to a certain frog was far more work than it needed to be (I'll deal with that issue in another post).

The cleaning crises got to the point where a visiting friend said he thought that if we didn’t hire a cleaning lady, we’d break up. I thought it would be a bit foolish to break up over a sponge, and so I began to think about it. Especially since Maxime was saying with increasing frequency that 'the house looks like nothing'.  Maxime often talks about stuff being invisible. I know by now that if something’s invisible, it’s bad. I did clean the house of course, but as you can imagine, my efforts at cleaning were not up to scratch - I used the wrong product with the wrong sponge on the wrong surface (my crimes were legion). But when Maxime cleaned anything himself, it would take the whole day, with him emitting more of those angry squawks or long-suffering sighs. I couldn’t bear it.

Eventually we trialled a cleaning lady and I thought we were saved. Wrong. After the cleaning lady had finished, Maxime was even fuller of complaints than when I cleaned the house (I could be seen leaping for joy in the background. I wasn't the worst cleaner in the world after all!).

'I could clean better myself,' Maxime concluded after a tour of the house.

'Yes but you don’t, that’s the point.' I said.

'It seems to me that the cleaning lady doesn’t have a sense of vocation - she’s not dedicated.'

'Er, Maxime, how many people do you think say they want to be a cleaner when they grow up? I hate to break it to you, but we are not going to find someone with a PhD in cleaning.'

Thus the cleaning lady solution fell through. But Maxime and I are still together. How did we manage it? Well, for one, Maxime, due to the sheer exhaustion of having to maintain his level of cleaning rage has sort of burnt out. He’s lowered his standards and allows me to vacuum. As for me, I learnt the value of the white lie of course. Now if Maxime asks if I know how to wash cars, for instance, I say no. (It’s remarkable, the number of things I suddenly don’t know how to clean.) I don’t know how to sew on buttons (actually that’s true) or darn socks and, if I hadn’t been sacked as clothes washer, I would tell Maxime that I always always sort the washing into five piles. The result is that Maxime and I now live in semi-messy domestic harmony.

Except for the day I got a particular email from Mum. ‘Maxime’s parents say they do his ironing for him,’ she wrote. ‘They are wondering why you don’t do it?’

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
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