The Hard Parts

Chandler was certain that this was the angriest he has ever seen his wife. Someone who never met her before would no doubt think the same after just one look at her face. Her eyes were bulging with rage. Her shoulders were tensed up as she coiled her arms in frustration. The infamous vein was throbbing in a state of vexation and looked like it was about to jump off her forehead and strangle him all by itself. Her entire body was contorting with fury all while she was doing that thing where she whispers and yells at the same time. As far as Chandler was concerned, there was nothing worse than being scolded at a barely audible level. He could barely hear a word coming out of her mouth, and every time he asked her to repeat herself, she became even more exasperated with him. She finally had enough of his sarcastic comments and threw a pillow at him from off the bed.

"I don't care where you go, you aren't sleeping in here tonight!"

Throughout their relationship, starting with those first few weeks after they got back from London, up to and including tonight, either one of them could storm out during a fight. For Chandler, it was normally to catch his breath, clear his head, and regroup his thoughts. Before they moved to Westchester, he would slip downstairs to Central Perk for a cup of coffee and then he usually came to his senses after thirty or forty minutes. He would return to the apartment, realizing he was overreacting, and they would apologize to each other and come to a compromise.

Monica was different, she would leave, making sure he knew exactly how angry she was. For her, she just needed to not look at him or hear his voice for a little while. Once they moved in together, she introduced a new method to end the escalation of a fight, she would simply kick him out. Out of the bedroom, out of the apartment, out of her immediate space.

Chandler hated the exile. It made him feel like a guest in his own home, living under the rule of a tyrannical woman who could evict him on a whim. This was why, normally, he would quickly work his way back into her good graces. He knew that most of the time, when he did get kicked out, it was his own fault anyway. One dumb comment too far or some white lie to spare her feelings that ended up snowballing into some unmanageable story he had to confess the truth about. Tonight though, was different. Tonight he doesn't think he did anything wrong.

Chandler huffed loudly as he exited the room, earning him one more stern look as he tucked the pillow under his arm and made his way downstairs into the den. He grumbled to himself the entire way.

"Can't she understand that I'm doing the best I can."

He tossed the pillow on the couch and pulled a fleece blanket out of the closet. As he positioned himself to go to sleep, settling in for the night, he began to reflect on how they got to this point so fast. The twins were born only six short weeks ago, and everything was going great. Then he went back to work and now everything felt like it was falling apart.

He laid down on the couch and let his thoughts wander back to the beginning, when they first moved out of the city. They had worked together well, taking care of the twins, unpacking boxes, and completing a few projects around the house; which included painting a couple of rooms and figuring out where their new furniture was going to go. The house was much bigger than the apartment. They had so many new rooms to decorate. Monica started making lists of what they would need. She had these little squares and rectangles marked off with tape all around the house, signaling where furniture would go when they were ready to purchase it.

"Oh, we need a chaise lounge in the bedroom. We can have a small bookcase and set up a little reading area. The sunlight coming in is so beautiful in the late afternoon."

He laughed about that. "Monica, when are we going to get time to read? Unless this is a new place to canoodle."

He smiled as he remembered pulling her down to the ground, inside the borders of the tape, compelling her to make love on the floor as they christened their imaginary chair. They were in complete harmony, piecing their home together. He would crumple up and discard old newspaper pages that were used to protect the carpets from paint while she put the twins in their crib for a late afternoon nap. They'd settle down for an evening cup of coffee after dinner, playing made-up, competitive games to decide who would have to go upstairs first if one of the twins began to stir. He was constantly amazed at how much fun he was having. It seemed every night he would make some sentimental statement, endearing himself to his wife.

"Mon, I seriously had no idea how great this could all be."

He remembers that it was important to Monica for them to get into the house before their anniversary. He found that so odd, since, when the day finally came, they opted to celebrate by staying home and sharing take-out Chinese food in the kitchen while drinking the remains of an already opened bottle of wine. Always pushing the envelope, he tried to convince her to have sex on the table but she protested, and pulled him up to their bedroom instead. He had originally thought she wanted to be in the house so they could plan something special without the prospect of moving out of the city looming over them, but he realized that night, she just wanted to be in her new home. With her family. He assumed it must have been some detailed image she had playing in her mind since she was a little girl. A milestone she could finally cross off her list. Something he had no complaints about. It was probably his favorite anniversary celebration they had so far.

Inevitably, the calendar kept moving forward and he finally had to go back to work. The commute was worse than he thought it would be. Even catching the express into Penn Station meant being on the train for over an hour both ways. He would leave every morning a little after six-in-the-morning and get home around seven-at-night. It was an exhausting ritual; racing down the platform to catch his train, squeezing in and out of the crowded passenger cars every day and making it into his office just in time for his first meeting.

His firm was already a week into a new tentative deal with a big client when he returned. Everyone in the office was focusing on it. He had to start bringing work home to catch up. He'd walk in the door, feeling rushed, with a stack of reports to read and open them up the moment he sat down at the table for dinner. Monica would wait to eat with him, but with his nose buried in some demographic analysis or the dissemination of a focus group to review, they barely spoke throughout the meal. By his second week back, Monica had stopped waiting and ate without him, using the time he was home to do laundry or clean one of the bathrooms. Chandler didn't seem to notice at first until she started announcing, in a clearly agitated and loud voice, what chore she was planning on doing while he ate. His nights would end with him in the den, laptop on his chest, half asleep as he tried to work on new print ads. By the time his third week back started, they began snapping at each other and arguing about everything.

"Chandler, I need more help around here when you get home. Can you at least put your clean clothes away? Or help give the twins their bath?"

"Mon, I have to catch up with this work. Can't this wait until tomorrow?"

"But you won't do it tomorrow either! I'll just end up doing everything again!"

"Mon, while you're on leave and not collecting a check, one of us has to work. If I get something approved for this new client it could mean more money down the road."

"Are you saying what I do around here isn't work?"

Chandler rolled over on the couch and bit on the inside of his cheek. They have been having some variation of the same fight all week and it culminated with a classic blow out tonight.

"Maybe if you're stupid dream job paid you something for maternity leave, I wouldn't worry so much."

"My stupid job?"

"Mon, I didn't mean that, but look, you are only getting a fraction of what you were making thanks to FMLA. Maybe you need help around here. Maybe we should call your mother."

"I am not asking my mother for help."

"Well, it would be nice to have at least one Geller woman around here who appreciates me. Maybe you could learn a thing or two from her about how to be nice to your husband."

"You know I don't like it when you make jokes while we're fighting."

"Who's joking? I'm just finally seeing the resemblance between to two of you. Maybe I should start calling you Judy.":

And that was it. The regrettable, stupid idea of comparing her to her mother. Out loud. When she was already mad. The straw that broke the camel's back. The snide comment that made the vein pop.

Chandler reflected on his words from earlier this evening, but realized that their problems aren't just because of tonight's fight. It was the culmination of living in the same house and practically becoming strangers. Since he returned to work, they haven't spent any meaningful time together. No talks in the kitchen over coffee early in the morning. No shared meals or impromptu snack trays that his wife would whip up for them to munch on while they enjoyed a quiet respite from taking care of the twins. He has been working in the den so late these past few weeks, they haven't even gone to bed at the same time, let alone have had sex.

Weekends were no better, Saturdays he could be found squirreled away in some corner of the house, punching at his laptop with his fingers, trying to get himself ready for Monday morning staff meetings. The only extended time they would have is when they were taking care of the twins at night. Even that lost some of its spark and became almost clinical in nature. They spent three weeks devolving from this happily married couple to bickering roommates. Chandler suddenly shot straight up on the couch and held his hand over his mouth as his eyes opened wide with a startling discovery.

"We're becoming the Bings."

Upon uttering that which he had always feared, Chandler stood up and paced the den.

"What am I doing? We can work this out. Well, we can't work this out if I stay down here in the den like an idiot. I should go up there."

He moved to leave the room, but hesitated before he could reach the entranceway.

"She was really mad. Not normal mad either. She was 'I could smoke a cigarette and she wouldn't notice' mad."

Chandler sat back down and stretched out on the couch as he resigned himself to spending the night in the den. He thought to let the cooling off period between the two of them finish and tackle this head-on in the morning. He turned over and shut his eyes, but it did nothing to calm him down. He couldn't fall asleep now, not with his mind still racing.

"What are you still doing down here."

Chandler quickly turned back over and saw Monica standing over him. She had her arms folded, but without his glasses, he couldn't really make out her facial expression to determine her mood.

"You kicked me out. So, I'm out."

Monica sighed gently. "I never kick you out all night."

Chandler sat up, leaned over and rested his chin at the base of his palm. "I know. It feels different this time."

Monica tapped her foot. "It feels different because everything is different now. And because I am really angry. And so are you, and these kids, this house, your job, it's draining us of all our strength and patience."

"Monica, look..."

"No, you look; it doesn't matter how angry we are, or how tired we are. We are not my brother and Rachel, and we promised ourselves a long time ago that we never would be like them. We don't fight and then bottle it up and resent each other and do something stupid that makes it worse. We don't spend the night apart. Ever. We don't take a break. We cool off, apologize, work it out, and then, if there's time, we have really great sex. Now march your butt upstairs because we only have about two hours until the twins wake up again."

Chandler let out a soft chuckle. "Is that what we do?"

"That's what we do. It's been working for us for this long, why stop now?"

Monica reached her hand outward in his direction, beckoning him with her fingers. Chandler lifted himself up off the couch and walked over, taking her hand. She pulled him behind her towards the stairs.

They did not embrace immediately while staring into each other's eyes to ease the tension between them, they did not share a passionate kiss that magically solved their problems, and they did not make any promises about how everything will be fixed all in one night. Yet, as Chandler looked down at their interlocked fingers while they made their way back to their bedroom, he knew that they were going to be okay. He knew they would be okay because they were not Ross and Rachel. They weren't Charles and Nora. They weren't Jack and Judy. They weren't any one of a number of other couples who did not know how to make things work like they do. They were Monica and Chandler, and they were going to be okay.

A/N – Just some timeline and terminology housekeeping. The last episode of Friends aired on May 6th, 2004, which is also listed as the twins' date of birth. Normal healthy babies get released from the hospital in about 48 hours. So, with that in mind, for this post-series story I am writing, I gave them a week to live in the apartment after the babies came home making the actual day that Monica and Chandler move out in that final scene on Saturday, May 15th, 2004.

For those who aren't from the United States, FMLA stands for The Family and Medical Leave Act which can be used in cases of adoption. FMLA just really ensures that you can't get fired or replaced during the first three months when you take extended time off for a family or medical emergency. The employer isn't obligated to pay you, so a lot of women use a type of insurance fund that they pay into so they can at least still get a percentage of their normal paycheck. We are pretty terrible at taking care of working mother's here in the U.S.