Why Judge Judy Hates my Toaster Oven

Last week, Matt and I were driving home from the store in my new city of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The backseat was full of all the new things we needed for our apartment, well, his apartment that had now— with the recent addition of all my clothing, kitchen items, and cat—become ours. We’d bought a carload of groceries, various grooming products, cat food and litter, and a brand new toaster oven. I was already feeling a little weepy about the toaster oven, not just because it was the first ever toaster oven I’d owned and toaster ovens are incredibly useful (did you know, according to the owner’s manual, you can bake a whole personal pizza in there?) but because it was our toaster oven. The first appliance we’ve ever bought together.

In the five years that we have dated, Matt and I have shared a lot of things, but we’ve always been careful to keep what was ours separate. The tabby cat is his, the calico cat is mine. His blue 2003 Volkswagon Passat, my black 2003 Volkswagon Passat. (This is purely a coincidence. We had identical cars before we met, but yes, it’s okay if you want to vomit a little.) Even when we lived together two years ago, we had two of everything like Karen from the Babysitter’s Club Little Sister books who owned duplicate items for each house of her divorced parents: two dressers, two woks, two separate bottles of laundry detergent (Mine was normal, his he made in the lab). But as we drove home I looked back at the big cardboard box that contained our new jointly owned toaster oven and couldn’t help but fall in love a little with the appliance all taped up in its blue box. I couldn’t wait to get it home, set it up, and make ourselves some symbolic toast. It was then that Judge Judy came on the radio and said these words: “Newly cohabitating couples should never, ever buy anything together.” Judy snapped me out of my toaster oven delirium. I’d been so happy thinking of all the things we were going to make in that toaster oven (Seriously, you can just put a raw chicken breast in there), but this seemed like a sign that couldn’t be ignored. After so many years of careful separation, were we making the wrong choice? Should I hand Matt over the 13 dollars for my half of the toaster oven? But then I thought about all the other typical “mistakes” Matt and I have made in the last few years. We’ve basically done every single thing they tell you not to do in a relationship. 

Don’t live together with roommates: we lived in a three bedroom, one bathroom house with two other roommates and three cats. Considering the cats’ litterbox was next to the toilet, that was seven living things sharing one bathroom. 

Don’t try making a long-distance relationship work: Matt committed to living in Michigan for five years before I was done with my MFA program in North Carolina. 

Don’t break up and get back together: From November to February of this last year, Matt and I were, for the first time in five years, not together. 

And let’s be honest, there’s a reason you’re not supposed to do these things in a relationship, because they are all awful. Living with roommates is awkward and stressful, even if you really like them, and there is no room for anybody to put things in the fridge. Long distance relationships are categorically the worst; it’s hard to feel the romance when you are staring into each others' eyes via a video chat that keeps freezing your face in weird positions. And breaking up was the worst of all. But we made all those mistakes, and yet, here we were, unloading our joint toaster oven from the car.

Matt is the only person I’ve dated for longer than a few months, so I’m not really a relationship expert, and also I’m only 25 so I will probably laugh heartily at all my silly, naive, beliefs about functional relationships when I remember this blog in my 50s, flying home in my personal hovercraft, but I think it’s not really the mistakes you make that doom or make a good relationship, it’s how you fix them. When Matt and I broke up, it would have been easy to get caught up in all the hundreds of mistakes we have made over the last 5 years, but instead we talked, we listened, we compromised, and we moved on. I mean, we also cried and yelled and occasionally angrily hung up on each other (or angrily signed off Facebook chat, which is a far less satisfying way to end an argument), but in general, we worked hard to make things better. I think it’s because we like each other. And we genuinely care that the other person is happy. And we want to be together. For me, those are the important things, not whether or not we bought a toaster oven together or a coffee table (Matt lived in this apartment for a year without a coffee table and didn't even mind, which I think should be a condition registered in the DSM). I know relationships are more complicated than that, I know we are only 25 and 26 and there are a million other things we will have to deal with that will make our relationship harder as time goes on, but right now here we are: one wok, one car, one bottle of normal laundry detergent. And I’m happy with that. So shut up, Judge Judy. I’m going to make some toast. Or maybe a chicken breast.