I Should Have Bought Her Tulips

Want to measure the quality of a relationship? Ask one partner about the things that are really important to the other person; and why. Results will vary.

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I bought my wife flowers sometimes back when we were still married.

Usually for an occasion. Or as part of an apology. Or sometimes, just because.

Roses, usually. A mixed floral arrangement other times. The truth is that I never worked particularly hard at it. It wasn’t something I invested time and thought into. It was generally an afterthought move because I encountered the flower stand in the produce section of my local supermarket, or it was something I ordered by phone for delivery—and trust the florist to arrange.

I kind of thought flowers were stupid. I understood the visual and aromatic appeal, certainly. But it seemed to me like quite the racket.

A bouquet of fresh flowers will last about a week to a week and a half if you tend to them. Refreshing the water, picking the right sized vase, flower food packets, a little vodka (seriously), some sugary soda like Sprite, crushed aspirin, apple cider vinegar and sugar, and even a little bleach are all said to prolong the vase life of your fresh-cut flowers.

Or—here’s a radical idea—maybe don’t buy things you have to throw away in a week, is how I would have thought about flower bouquets in my twenties.

The Merits of Tulips vs. Roses

She liked tulips best. Tulips, she told me many times, were her favorite flower.

As far as I remember, I would check for tulips with the florist, and occasionally buy arrangements that contained them, if available. It’s hard to remember, but my recollection is that tulips were less available than roses. I have no idea whether that’s a seasonality thing, or a scarcity thing, or an economic decision by florists to mostly have roses available because that’s what all of the cliché guys like me are buying for all of the cliché occasions.

All of that to say, I mostly got her roses on the rare-ish occasion in which I’d bring her flowers.

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Ironically, her wedding bouquet was made of roses. She let it dry and hung it upside-down for display on our bedroom wall. I found it in the driveway garbage bin when she moved out. That’s the kind of thing that would have been heartbreaking under more normal circumstances, but since I already felt like dying after she and our little boy drove away, I took finding the bouquet in the trash like a champ. Like a crying champ.

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I should have bought her tulips.

Sometimes people (usually guys) write me or leave comments under something I’ve published indicating their displeasure with my take on a domestic situation they’re having with their relationship partner.

And I can hear them now.

“Jesus, man. Do you actually hear yourself? You can’t possibly believe this shit. YOU BOUGHT YOUR WIFE FLOWERS. Who cares how often? Who cares what kind? If she has some complaint about it, it just shows what an ungrateful [insert mean, probably misogynistic, name call here] she really is. You’re so much better without her. Good riddance.”

I’ve gotten some variation of that same message dozens of times over the past decade of writing about the end of my marriage, and about relationships in general.

And I get it. Because this is how I used to think about it too. I don’t remember my wife complaining about the flowers I brought her. But she did “complain” about other things I thought she shouldn’t have. (Some might say she was explaining to me how her preferences were different than mine about various things, and I thin-skinnedly took it personally).

She didn’t like how much cracked black pepper I put on her meal I had just prepared for her. Holy shit. THAT’s what you’re going to focus on! I just cooked dinner!

She preferred white gold to yellow gold. Holy shit. I’ve bought you jewelry over the years—most of it yellow gold—and now you’re acting like it wasn’t good enough. What kind of entitled prima donna complains about the color of the gold they received?! (Note: She wasn’t complaining.)

In one of the few occasions I washed her clothes in our years together, I forgot to take an ink pen out of one of my pockets and washed them all together. The ink stained something of hers that she really liked. I treated it like it was no big deal and as if she shouldn’t be giving me so much shit since I was so nice to be doing the laundry.

She was seriously really upset about it. I was the opposite of understanding and validating.

It all added up to my wife not knowing the difference between stuff that mattered, and stuff that didn’t matter, I thought.

Roses. Tulips. They’re both going to die in a week, so who fucking cares?

Upon Further Review

These are the things I dedicated myself to dissecting following the unceremonious end of our marriage. If I couldn’t explain why my marriage ended, I’d never be able to be sure it wouldn’t happen again for the same reasons.

I’m guilty of believing all of the internet tough guys (or even the really nice ones who are just trying to help) have this problem. They think she was mean or crazy or demanding or manipulative. Why do 67 percent of second marriages end in divorce? Because of these types of beliefs and fatally flawed assumptions. Because people can’t explain why their previous partner left, or expressed displeasure within the relationship.

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Do the tulips matter? Relative to roses, or any other flower? Not in the literal sense of the word “matter,” I don’t think. But this really is at the heart of why relationships wither and die slowly. These seemingly inconsequential things.

The problem with me putting the same amount of pepper on my wife’s food as mine was how consistently and loudly it communicated: Everything I think and feel is right and true. Even when you tell me you wish things were different, you can always count on me prioritizing myself over you. You can always count on me doing things the way I want to do them.

Not checking pants pockets before washing clothes, yellow gold, and roses might communicate the same thing.

But in a way, the tulips thing was a bigger, more glaring example of why my marriage didn’t last.

My brain, even on it’s biggest dickheaded day, totally understands why ink on your clothes can essentially ruin them. Why accessorizing with silver-colored things might be more desirable to a person than yellow gold-colored things. Why too much black pepper for one’s palate might make something taste gross to someone in the same way I can be sensitive to ultra-salty food (like Chipotle’s queso chips—chill the eff out, Chipotle).

I can’t tell you why she preferred tulips to roses.

I seriously have no idea, even though she must have told me about the tulips thing at least two dozen times.

I know a bunch of obscure sports statistics and pop culture references. I memorized Pi to the 13^th decimal place in high school, just because, and still remember it. Even at age 44, I still remember pretty much every secret in both the original Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda from when I was like 8 or 9 years old.

More importantly, my wife knew I knew stuff like that. She was super-aware of what it looked and felt like when I poured myself into something like a new album, or a new book or movie, or my favorite sports teams, or playing poker.

You know where she never witnessed me behaving that way? Within our marriage. Toward her.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that I like poker and sports and video games and music and reading and parties more than I liked my wife. But when you measure the energy and effort I put into those things compared to the energy and effort I put into her and our marriage, I understand why some people might say otherwise.

I never asked her why she liked tulips more than roses. Or! Maybe I did once and didn’t really pay attention because I didn’t actually care about the answer.

But I wish I had.

I wish I fucking had.

Because this is the work. This is the stuff hiding in the shadows that dictates how other people perceive us.

If I actually knew the story and context behind WHY she loved tulips so much, then the flower-buying decisions would have more closely reflected who I wished I was in the marriage.

Want to measure the quality of a relationship? Ask one partner about the things that are really important to the other person. What’s that list? And more important than the list itself is probably the reasons why those things are important to them.

If the partner can list the important things and explain why they’re meaningful to the other person (and their partner concurs) then we’re looking at two people who can trust one another to handle with care that which matters most to the other. We’re looking at two people who can trust each other to meet each other’s relational needs as they navigate life together.

Anyway.

I should have bought her tulips.

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Matthew Fray is the author of “This is How Your Marriage Ends: A Hopeful Approach to Saving Relationships”, a relationship coach, and formerly the blogger at Must Be This Tall To Ride.