Things I Tell My Wife by Matt Knutson

“It’s still too early to turn on the heat,” I told Sera. The discussion has come up more than once, and my suggestion is always to put on blanket. My retort recently backfired when my wife brought a heated blanket to bed. As someone who best sleeps with a fan on every night, we were beginning what looks to be an annual war about the temperature in the bedroom as well as the rest of the house.

Last Christmas I bought my wife a heated blanket because she was always cold. No matter how many years my African bride has been in America, she still won’t adjust to the bitter cold that we experience each year in the upper Midwest. Last year was particularly cold, so my gift of the heated blanket seemed brilliant. Did I ever expect her to bring that to bed? No. After all, we have well-defined roles in this house.

She’s always feeling cold, which makes her the perfect temperature for me. I’m normally pretty warm, meaning it’s my job to absorb her cold while making her warm each night. Now that she’s invited this blanket into the bed, I’m not needed and too hot to sleep. As the legendary Lincoln is quoted, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

I don’t mean to say our temperature battle is equal to the Civil War, but there certainly are two sides with strong opinions about what the temperature should be while we sleep. Each night my long legs unknowingly kick her heated blanket to the ground, and each night she attempts a new strategy to keep said blanket in its “proper” place. If I can’t remove the blanket, it means we need to turn the fan up higher. If I turn the fan to a higher setting, the blanket comes closer to my face. I just can’t win.

It turns out, I’m not alone. A quick Google search revealed hundreds of guys asking the same thing: Why is my wife so cold? Sure, some of these may have been referring to their spouse’s disposition rather than temperature, but it’s good to know I’m not alone in the temperature category.

The only intelligent sounding answers I could find that didn’t involve recommended visits to the doctor were alluding to the mysteriousness of women and the unknowable secret of life. Apparently solving why Sera is always so cold all the time is on par with answering life’s unanswerable questions, meaning I should let it go.

I don’t recall this being such an issue last year, but I think we were both too polite in our newlyweded bliss to battle about temperatures. These days when Sera and I go to bed at the same time, she insists I get in bed and lay on her side to warm it up while she brushes her teeth. By the time I’ve had my teeth cleaning turn in the bathroom, the heated blanket is in place and the bed is as warm as her native east African island. How do we learn to compromise?

The truth is, I don’t know. The reason we haven’t turned on the heat yet is to save money, but maybe it’s costing us more to have a heated blanket and fan fighting each other every night. Do we really want to be “those people” that turn the heat on before it’s really necessary?

When is it really necessary? My suggestion of when you see your breath inside wasn’t taken very seriously by Sera. A good stretch goal could be trying to wait until Halloween, I suppose. This autumn has felt warmer than previous years, after all. We’re surviving just fine with blankets strewn across the house. I’m just now realizing my wife’s new baking hobby may not be so much of a passion as a means to warm up the house without turning on the heat. Either way, I’m enjoying the chocolate chip cookies, brownies and rolls.

Will the heated blanket remain an intruder in our bedroom? I hope not for much longer. My blanket-kicking strategy can only last so long before she has it sewn into the mattress, and I’d hate to be the one cutting the cord on a Christmas gift I gave (though that doesn’t mean I’m above it). Perhaps my next strategy will involve redecorating the room with an island theme and beach music.

That’d certainly be a welcome motif come January when we’re all looking to get away anyway. Let’s hope by that point I’m not still looking to get away from the heated blanket.

 

Rochester resident Matt Knutson is the communications and events director for United Way of Olmsted County.