Matrimonial Quantum Entanglement

Marriage is the agreement where you and another person decide to physically merge in such a way that you will be guaranteed to show up at the same spot at the same time for maximum inconvenience.

A few examples:

You are about to work out in front of the TV. You’ve been setting this up for a few minutes, turning on the tv, adjusting the sound. It’s super obvious what is happening but nevertheless, just as the workout is starting, your spouse positions themself directly in the front of the tv. They claim they left their coffee there.

You need to leave the house ASAP and your spouse is obstructing the exit by hanging laundry in the back room. The washing machine takes up so much space there is only a very narrow strip, maybe 16 inches wide, between it and the wall. You can’t both be in it at the same time and yet you are.

You need to go from the front of the house to the back. Your spouse receives the quantum notification and proceeds to move from the bedroom to the balcony such that you will jostle each other in the hallway’s bottleneck. This passageway was originally designed to accommodate two traversers, but your spouse has lined a good portion of it with a small table and a folding screen. You have further eroded the pedestrian capacity with a huge metal filing cabinet from the 1930s and an Ikea cupboard that could probably qualify as a small third bedroom. So maybe you like it when this happens?

Though frequently at opposite ends of the apartment due to offices in different rooms, you show up in the kitchen at the same time, rummaging in the same area, but not for the same things. Your spouse wants beer nuts, you grab around them for Pringles. Too hungry people working in near total solitude confused by congestion.

Let’s not even discuss the bathroom except to say why is it like this? How does one sync one’s biological plumbing to go off at the exact same time? This one is probably the hardest to handle.

Maybe it’s a small cramped apartment. Maybe its perfectly correlated wave functions. Maybe you are no longer two things but one inseparable whole. You know that’s not true but it’s the romantic spin you place on these daily collisions. Satellites of Love as Lou Reed might say.

Sidewalk Face 128