Charles Johnson came face to face with the future recently, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“She’s having the bedroom wallpaper scraped off, custom-made wallpaper that’s in perfect condition,” said Johnson, a security company executive who lives in New York.
The woman behind the pronoun is Tina Wynn, a publicity agent for the music industry and Johnson’s wife of seven years. The wallpaper removal is her first salvo in the war between the tastes.
“I want a change, and I want it now,” said Wynn, who calls her husband’s Art Deco furniture and pink, gold and black wallpaper “strictly George Jetson.”
The new look? “Something that says less about Charles and more about me,” Wynn said. That means enough plants to outfit a botanical garden and the antique mahogany furniture, Queen Anne chairs and four-poster bed that are stashed at her grandmother’s house in Yonkers, N.Y.
Johnson insisted that he was “not prepared to raise the flag of submission,” though he confided that his days of black-lacquer cabinets, glass-top coffee tables and bare windows may be numbered.
Wynn keeps telling him to get used to the idea. “Mark my words, Charles,” she says, “stuff is coming.”
Love me, love my sofa
Though it sounds like a topic better suited to an episode of “I Love Lucy,” skirmishes over interior decorating are a common occurrence when two people are in love with each other, but not necessarily with each other’s stuff. And the domestic tensions these skirmishes can engender are no laughing matter, the experts warn.
Battles over which partner’s aesthetic vision will prevail are guaranteed to crop up early in the relationship, no matter the couple’s race, income or sexual orientation, said Pepper Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle and the author of “Peer Marriage: How Love Between Equals Really Works” (Free Press/Macmillan, $19.95).
“Personal belongings aren’t just objects,” said Schwartz, who interviewed a variety of design-challenged subjects. “Very often, they are part of your identity, symbols of an important aspect of your life. If you know that your partner hates your favorite sofa and wants to get rid of it, there’s a fear that he or she wants to wipe out your past.”
Clifford Notarius, author of “We Can Work It Out: Making Sense of Marital Conflict” (Putnam, $21.95), agreed. “These conversations are often about hidden agendas,” he said. “You’re arguing about a sofa, but you’re really talking about status or control. For some partners, it’s about feeling loved or unloved. Love me, love my sofa.”
According to figures released by the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., Americans are entering first-time, long-term relationships later in life. In 1973, for instance, the median age for first-time brides and bridegrooms was 21.8 and 23.6, respectively. In 1988, the median ages had increased to 23.7 for women and 25.5 for men. The figures for 1990, which won’t be released to the public until next spring, should support the upward trend further, said Sally Clark, a statistician at the center. In other words, people now have a lot of time in which to become attached to belongings their future loved ones may find offensive.
Hidden meanings
“The biggest arguments often have nothing to do with style,” said Edythe M. Travelstead, an interior designer in Greenwich, Conn. “Most people aren’t even aware of the style of a room, but they are aware of how the room feels. Look for the hidden agenda behind the argument against losing that chair or that rug.”
Until a few months ago, for example, Gerri Wells’ security blanket was a recliner, upholstered in deep blue cowhide and comfortably worn in all the right spots.
“I come from a blue-collar background, where a recliner is a cultural imperative,” said Wells, a general contractor who lives in New Hope, Pa. “It’s the one place you can settle down in after a hard day at work.”
Her companion, Brigitte Weil, a professional baker and the founder of Brigitte’s Brownies, thought the chair was an abomination. “I grew up in a house full of good antiques,” Weil said, “and to me, that was the ugliest chair in the universe. It took me five years to convince Gerri to replace it.”
Wells admitted she was pleased with the chair’s successor, a high-backed, overstuffed wing chair with a matching ottoman-“something comfortable that Brigitte doesn’t mind looking at”-but said the process of change wasn’t easy.
Drawing the line
“The secret is compromise,” Wells said. “That’s where the stability of your relationship becomes a critical factor. Are you secure enough to get rid of something you love to please the one you love?”
But some beloved possessions are things only a mother could love. Five years ago, after Allan Wenzler, a mining company executive, married Brooks Rogers, a publicty agent, suspiciously heavy cardboard boxes began to arrive on the doorstep of their apartment in the Carnegie Hill section of Manhattan.
“I married a guy who likes rocks, so I just assumed that’s what they were filled with,” said Rogers, who explained that her husband has collected fossils and mineral samples since an epiphanic visit to the Museum of Natural History at age 8.
She sliced open a box and stared into the beady eyes of a taxidermied armadillo. The spelunking Wenzler was a meat-hunter, too, and he naively assumed that his bride would welcome into their home the evidence of exotic entrees past.
He was dead wrong.
“The heads were a definite no,” Wenzler said. After much discussion-some of it heated, Rogers admitted-he agreed to keep the snarling coyotes and pugnacious wild boars out of Rogers’ sight, transferring them to his office or his mother’s basement. “Although she did let me keep the armadillo,” he says.
