There are many things I love about my husband but his taste in furniture is not one of them. In fact, on more than one occasion, furniture shopping has almost lead to our divorce. I have happily threatened to beat him to death with cheap couch cushions on more than one occasion. He still twitches when ever he walks past an overstuffed sofa.

As he should.

When Boo and I moved in together, prior to marriage (because we were heathen sinners who didn’t like having to commute an hour to see one an another to fornicate) we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Our home was filled with the not so lovely cast-offs my parents happily dumped in our laps. They happily handed us their old and saggy couches because we were doing them a favour. We were saving them the money it would cost them to haul their crap to the dump.

There was nothing terribly wrong with our free furniture, other than it was fantastically hideous and had been used as a trampoline by my siblings and I for more than a decade. Still, it was someplace to plant our arses and make out and since it was either the hand me downs or the floor, my soon to be husband and I graciously thanked my parents for their generosity.

I had no idea then that my husband was a furniture snob. Nor did I understand my husband’s propensity and attraction for the ugliest furniture alive. I didn’t learn that lesson until well after we married and we had enough scraped enough money together to buy our first pieces of brand new furniture.

Suddenly the agreeable and easy-going man I married morphed into a demon on a showroom floor. Nothing satisfied him, he picked everything apart and he became a penny pincher miser. He couldn’t understand the value of picking out a quality piece of furniture that would last a lifetime when you could get something cheaper and uglier for less than half the cost.

After threatening to break down in tears, I finally gave in and let my husband decide on our new furniture as long as I could pick the colour. It was that or kill him but I couldn’t stand the thought of sharing a bar of soap with gang of a manly looking women in our local prison.

That furniture didn’t last long mostly because it was cheap I’m a raging shrew. After being swallowed alive by the cheap foam cushions more times than my heavily pregnant arse could stand I told my husband it was the couch or me. Since I still put out on a regular basis back then (heh) he wisely decided it was time for furniture that wouldn’t send his wife into early labour.

Which meant round two in our furniture procuring journey. By now my husband learned the valuable lesson, you get what you pay for and was willing to pony up a little more money for something that wouldn’t result in us paying for a chiropractor’s child’s university fund.

However, for as much as he’d grown in one direction he remained as obstinate and pigheaded in another. One couch after another, we couldn’t agree. After visiting our fourth show room floor, I finally sat down and threatened to give birth on the most expensive couch I could find if he didn’t start compromising a wee bit.

There is nothing like the thought of having to buy something expensive you hate because your wife’s placenta rubbed all over it to inspire a man to cooperate.

That lead us to the furniture I’m currently sitting on. Ten years later and I loathe it as much as did when I first saw it being hauled off the delivery truck and into our home.

Welcome to my living room.

My back screams in pain every time I sit on them, there is a crater which my butt cheeks sink into and I can’t stand the colour. I can’t even blame my husband for their colour because it was my pregnant brain which decided dark navy blue fabric would be ideal for raising three children on.

There ought to be a law stating pregnant women should not be allowed to make any permanent expensive purchases when moments away from shooting a baby out their pooter. Just sayin’.

But my babies have wreaked havoc on the couch. I stupidly allow my children to sit on my furniture instead of banishing them to the floor like a smart adult would do and as such, the wear and tear on these pieces has forced me to start whining to my husband about needing new furniture.

The cushions are riddled with holes, mystery stains and more dog hair than what currently resides on my dog. It doesn’t matter how often I clean the upholstery, these couches are well, gross.

I’m tired of flipping cushions and artistically draping throws on our couch whenever company comes over. Every day I stare at the holes in this couch arm and I lose a little bit more of my sanity. This ugly dirty blue couch is starting to suck my soul out. So I started campaigning for a new couch.

At first, my pleas fell on deaf ears. My husband has better things to spend his hard earned money on than a couch he’ll only see once a month if he’s lucky. However, I am persistent and after almost 14 years of matrimony, I’ve mastered the art of whining.

After a solid year of dropping hints about as subtly as bricks from the sky and scrimping to save money, I finally wore my husband down to agreeing to look at new furniture. Visions of couch sex and vibrating recliners danced through his mind all the way to the showroom.

(Don’t judge me. A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.)

There was one problem. I forgot about my husband’s god awful taste in furniture and his penny pinching nature.

Round three at the furniture store has not been more pleasant than the previous dances.

My husband, well, he still likes ugly furniture.

I still have champagne tastes on a non-alcoholic beer budget.

And to make the couch choosing even more fun, we are on opposite ends of the upholstery spectrum. Boo insists on dark leather and I insist on a neutral fabric. He wants overstuffed and I want clean lines. He wants me to sell our children and animals to ensure the continued good health of our furniture and I’m still trying to add to the size of our brood.

Dogs. Children. Pot-bellied pigs. I’m not choosy, I just want more life under my roof to help chase away the death that constantly lingers.

In the end, and as always, it became a battle of the wills.

One which I think I lost. Again.

I’ll find out tomorrow when our new couch arrives.

The new couch my husband wanted and I wasn’t so keen on. But since he made the concession that it would be nice not to have furniture which makes us look like hillbillies and then coughed up the dough to pay for it,  I decided to take the bullet high road and just focus on the fact our new couch has no holes in it.

Yet.

I may not have won the furniture picking battle but I won the war in the end.

Here’s to not having to do this again for at least another ten to fifteen years. And if my darling children so much as fart on this new couch, I’m selling them on eBay.

(If you have any tips on how you managed to convince your spouse to agree to the furniture of YOUR choice, let me know. I’ll file it away for future knowledge so that the next time we have this showdown my couches won’t look like overstuffed brown turds.)