Marriage Counseling

The married couple in the apartment next door needs marriage counseling.

In Novi Sad, there's a couple in the next door apartment—A Russian woman and her husband--who spend all day and night screaming bitterly at one another, and sometimes in English. They're screaming at one another right now, as a matter of fact. I don’t think I've ever heard such consistently miserable people!

I don't mean to be nosy, but cannot help but overhear their vicious arguments about money, renovating, decorating, threatening divorce and name calling. The husband yells about his wife being a “stupid woman,” and “full of women’s hysteria!” I sincerely wonder if I ought to offer them some unofficial psychotherapy sessions.

Every morning and every night we are plagued with the cacophony of back-and-forth squabbling and bickering. How the pair has any emotional energy reserved to do anything else is beyond me.

They yell at one another through the washroom door while defecating (yes, I heard this), urinating, blowdrying their hair, showering, brushing their teeth, using a blender..... Doesn't matter much, the circumstance.

What I envision the scene through the wall to look like after an intense BM coupled with a heavy dose of psychological warfare.

Some nights, James and I lie awake, listening to the long and very cold and very bitter war.

I hope we never become that. Whatever that is. I don't think we ever will. There is too much love and respect and too many psychology courses between us.