A purple patch, or certifiable insanity?

Kudos doesn’t accumulate with my girlfriend like it should – it lives and dies with the life of her short-term memory. Since her consumption of alcohol is so profound that if we flew business class to Marlborough, New Zealand, once a month to pick up cases of Sav Blanc we’d probably save cash, this isn’t long. So even though I’ve cooked for her parents, dropped her car in to be serviced, bought her theatre tickets and fed her cat all month, I still find myself in hot water. What is my latest relationship gaffe? I didn’t know her favourite colour.

I’m sure you’re desperate to know what it is so I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s purple. Yes, purple – even though she doesn’t own a single purple object. Not clothes, not anything.

Purple?! What is she? A hippy? A middle-aged gay man? Who likes purple?

Apparently her first boyfriend, God rest his soul (he’s not dead), knew this. He constantly bought her purple gifts. Anything purple – pens, singlets, coasters, chocolates, envelopes, vegetables – he’d purchase and bring home for her. Isn’t that just so sweet? I, on the other hand, after two years, do not know that purple is her favourite colour, so I may as well have been caught touching up nuns in K-Mart wearing a Doors T-shirt.

How is it that you can know so much trivial detail, finite details, a mountain of detail about your partner, but not know one detail (and not even her birthday, which is fair grounds for termination) and the whole thing folds like a card table? I’ll tell you how. It’s because these details are the expression of an ongoing test to which you will always be submitted – the “do you really love me?” test. If you really loved your girlfriend you would listen to every single word she says, picking up on minute details, filing them away in the filing cabinet of your brain (or an actual filing cabinet if your brain isn’t up to it), listening closely for clues as to what future presents you may want to purchase her and gathering general knowledge in case the two of you should ever be invited onto a relationship game show.

“Now, for 10 points and to win The Relationship Challenge, taking home all these wonderful prizes, I need you, Wes, to tell me: What is your girlfriend’s favourite colour?”

“Ah, it’s… um… I’m pretty sure it’s …”

“I’m going to need your answer, Wes …”

“It’s coming to me … is it … is it blue?”

“No. [Audible groan from the studio audience.] Oooooh, that’s too bad, Wes. The correct answer was purple. Even her ex-boyfriend knew that one. That means you’re out of the game – and what does that mean, audience?”

[Studio audience, in perfect unison]: “HE DOESN’T LOVE HER!!!”

In case the reader is interested, I used the defence of asking her a detail about myself. I didn’t go for an obscure detail, I went for my birthday. Her answer? Totally wrong. She got the right month, but that’s it. You’d think that would be an argument-winning move, a checkmate, especially when I was able to accurately provide the date of her birthday. No, apparently that was beside the point; we weren’t talking about me, we were talking about her, and why did I have to make everything about me? Yeah, fair enough.

The really infuriating thing – and I know I’m banging on about this – is that she doesn’t even like purple any more. No, purple used to be her favourite colour. That would explain the lack of purple evidence. She has a new favourite colour, but let’s face it, she obviously can’t be trusted when it comes to colour anyway. Even at the pinnacle of her obsession with the colour purple I’m sure her conviction was so flimsy that, should I offer her a pair of Manolo Blahniks in exchange for publicly denouncing purple, she’d give up purple in a heartbeat. She’d spit on purple in the streets. She’d shoot purple in the face with a gun. Yet I’m taken to task, compared to an ex-, given the silent treatment for an entire day because I dared to not know that purple used to be her favourite colour.

Is this normal? In real life this seemed crazy. Put down on paper, it looks certifiably insane.

Kudos doesn’t accumulate with my girlfriend like it should – it lives and dies with the life of her short-term memory. Since her consumption of alcohol is so profound that if we flew business class to Marlborough, New Zealand, once a month to pick up cases of Sav Blanc we’d probably save cash, this isn’t long. So even though I’ve cooked for her parents, dropped her car in to be serviced, bought her theatre tickets and fed her cat all month, I still find myself in hot water. What is my latest relationship gaffe? I didn’t know her favourite colour.

I’m sure you’re desperate to know what it is so I’ll put you out of your misery. It’s purple. Yes, purple – even though she doesn’t own a single purple object. Not clothes, not anything.

Purple?! What is she? A hippy? A middle-aged gay man? Who likes purple?

Apparently her first boyfriend, God rest his soul (he’s not dead), knew this. He constantly bought her purple gifts. Anything purple – pens, singlets, coasters, chocolates, envelopes, vegetables – he’d purchase and bring home for her. Isn’t that just so sweet? I, on the other hand, after two years, do not know that purple is her favourite colour, so I may as well have been caught touching up nuns in K-Mart wearing a Doors T-shirt.

How is it that you can know so much trivial detail, finite details, a mountain of detail about your partner, but not know one detail (and not even her birthday, which is fair grounds for termination) and the whole thing folds like a card table? I’ll tell you how. It’s because these details are the expression of an ongoing test to which you will always be submitted – the “do you really love me?” test. If you really loved your girlfriend you would listen to every single word she says, picking up on minute details, filing them away in the filing cabinet of your brain (or an actual filing cabinet if your brain isn’t up to it), listening closely for clues as to what future presents you may want to purchase her and gathering general knowledge in case the two of you should ever be invited onto a relationship game show.

“Now, for 10 points and to win The Relationship Challenge, taking home all these wonderful prizes, I need you, Wes, to tell me: What is your girlfriend’s favourite colour?”

“Ah, it’s… um… I’m pretty sure it’s …”

“I’m going to need your answer, Wes …”

“It’s coming to me … is it … is it blue?”

“No. [Audible groan from the studio audience.] Oooooh, that’s too bad, Wes. The correct answer was purple. Even her ex-boyfriend knew that one. That means you’re out of the game – and what does that mean, audience?”

[Studio audience, in perfect unison]: “HE DOESN’T LOVE HER!!!”

In case the reader is interested, I used the defence of asking her a detail about myself. I didn’t go for an obscure detail, I went for my birthday. Her answer? Totally wrong. She got the right month, but that’s it. You’d think that would be an argument-winning move, a checkmate, especially when I was able to accurately provide the date of her birthday. No, apparently that was beside the point; we weren’t talking about me, we were talking about her, and why did I have to make everything about me? Yeah, fair enough.

The really infuriating thing – and I know I’m banging on about this – is that she doesn’t even like purple any more. No, purple used to be her favourite colour. That would explain the lack of purple evidence. She has a new favourite colour, but let’s face it, she obviously can’t be trusted when it comes to colour anyway. Even at the pinnacle of her obsession with the colour purple I’m sure her conviction was so flimsy that, should I offer her a pair of Manolo Blahniks in exchange for publicly denouncing purple, she’d give up purple in a heartbeat. She’d spit on purple in the streets. She’d shoot purple in the face with a gun. Yet I’m taken to task, compared to an ex-, given the silent treatment for an entire day because I dared to not know that purple used to be her favourite colour.

Is this normal? In real life this seemed crazy. Put down on paper, it looks certifiably insane.