How Mitch ruined our marriage with home improvements.

Hello you guys!  I finally came out of my Thanksgiving coma!  Just kidding.  I wasn't really in a coma.  I was fixing my computer after my "computer-expert," teenage son downloaded a virus onto it.  It took days and days, but everything is in fine working order now.  These computers are complex! 

When we came home from our Thanksgiving trip, I discovered that Mitch had been extremely productive here at home.  We are making our house more energy efficient so earlier this fall he insulated the walls and attic.  Not that it wasn't insulated before, but like everything else in our house, it was done half-assed.  Wind would blow right into the house through the walls and it was hard to get the temperature out of the fifties.  Over the weekend Mitch put in a new thermostat that can be programmed with a touch screen.  Fancy!  I still don't know how to use it so I just poked it until the heat went up yesterday. 

He also got us a new bed!  To say our old bed was lumpy would be a gross understatement.  We would both wake up crippled on a pretty regular basis. The new bed is memory foam and it is the first queen-sized bed we've ever had.  Oh my god, the luxury!

The third thing he did that is a major improvement is that he fixed our plumbing because before when the shower ran, the hot water would trickle out of the shower head, but most of it would rush out the tub faucet and go right down the drain.  We would run out of hot water in about ten minutes.  It was a pain. 

I was so happy and in love with him when I saw all these projects finished, but now I'm starting to see through the haze of love and I'm noticing something alarming.  Maybe I'm just paranoid, but all of these little projects he did take away some level of the forced intimacy that is what makes our marriage so magical.  The insulation and thermostat make our heat more cozy and efficient, taking away the necessity to snuggle to preserve body heat. 

The bigger bed gives us more room to spread out.  Whereas before we couldn't both lay on our backs at the same time or else our outside arms would fall of the edges, making it necessary for at least one of us to lay on our side, usually facing the other one in an intimate position that doesn't allow for any "I'm mad at you but you don't even notice me" attitudes even if we were mad at each other, because if you lay with your back to your partner because you're mad at him and you fart on his leg while you're sleeping, and it makes him simultaneously jump, do a full spin, and say, "JESUS!" which wakes you up too, it gives you something to think/talk/fight about other than what you were mad about before you went to bed (and totally steals your anger-thunder). Now my alleged sleep farts go totally unnoticed.  I might as well not even be farting. 

The plumbing also has taken away a huge measure of forced intimacy.  Like I said, the water would run out in ten minutes and not warm up again for at least an hour.  This caused us to have to take showers together.  Not that it was so hot and sexy, it was more a practice in washing efficiency in order to not have to rinse sensitive areas in cold water; but still, standing naked and wet with your eyes shut tight to keep soap out ties the marriage bonds a little tighter.  Now that is gone too.  I can take long showers all by myself with nobody there to remind me to shave my pits or to ridicule me for not ever washing my legs.  (As I've painstakingly explained to Mitch many times; much like trickle-down economics, when I wash my hair the soap trickles down and washes my legs for me, hence the need to never actively scrub them myself.)

I appreciate all his hard work, but I wonder if we will be like strangers a year from now.  From now on we will have to put some effort into intimacy, and if I do something sweet and intimate that doesn't directly benefit me, he'll know I like like him.   I'm still playing hard-to-get (want).