So we shouldn’t be surprised when we fail at love. But we are. Of course, everyone expects the odd hiccup at the start - kiss a few frogs until you find your true love, and all that. That’s different - that’s the search, the thrill of the hunt, the seeking of the One to make your life complete. But when you’ve found the woman of your dreams, when you look at her longingly and find out to your absolute surprise and delight that she’s looking right back at you and seems to think that you are the man of her dreams too; and you make a relationship, a home, a life of shared love and shared ideals and infinite happiness - how could that possibly fail?

Of course, you are astounded when it starts to go wrong. You absolutely deny it. How could that small errand she refused to run for you mark the beginning of the end? Don’t be stupid, she just didn’t want to go out of her way to the post office, there’s not really one on her school run, and you could pop it in on the way to work anyway. Of course she wasn’t being difficult, of course you’re not cross about it. It’s nothing, just a letter you had to post to the bank.

But then, how could you suddenly feel such intense, dramatic anger with her for simply scraping her fork on her plate at dinner? The dinner is still as abysmal as it used to be when she first attempted to cook, but after all this time you no longer compliment or reassure her, and she no longer expects you to. There’s no school run any more; there’s just the two of you at home, sitting across the yawning chasm of the dining table into which all conversation sinks. She used to follow your progress in doing little jobs around the house with loving, appreciative eyes - so why does she now follow you around the house with resentful eyes simply because you came back from the garden twenty minutes later than you said you would? And why does she complain about your muddy boots? You were weeding the back borders, the very borders she had insisted on having and you had fondly agreed to, even though you’d have preferred lawn to the end, so you and the boys could have had a bigger space for a kickabout or cricket, or maybe even a vegetable patch. You were weeding around the buddleia, the rose-mary bushes, the pink roses that you’d bought together -you’d bought them when you first moved into the house, your first home together with the luxury of a garden. She used to love you coming into the house after looking after her plants, with the scent of rosemary on your fingers. You used to bring in a sprig of rosemary for her, too.