Splitting Hairs

For me, growing a beard is not a snap decision. The men in my family are part Chihuahua, hairless to a fault. We can’t just skip the morning shave and go from Cary to Ulysses S. Grant. But this spring, I decided to grow facial hair for the first time in years, and I set out on a three-week campaign to produce a well-manicured goatee and “chin strap” – a thin line joining sideburns to beard.

As the hair started to come in, I was feeling pretty good. But as soon as Sara noticed my sculpted stubble, the campaign for clean-shaven started. “It’s prickly when we kiss,” she would say. “Are those blond hairs or gray?” And a favorite: “You’ve got some crumbs stuck in there, Grizzly Adams.” In case I’m being too subtle, I’ll just come out and say it: My wife doesn’t like facial hair on me. I knew this. So why did I grow a beard in the first place?

The week before, Sara had announced she was cutting off her long hair – it used to reach the middle of her back – and donating the hair to an organization that makes wigs for cancer patients. I supported the motivation behind her decision, but I thought to myself, “Sara has the right to radically change her appearance without asking my opinion. Don’t I have the same prerogative?” Besides, I wasn’t considering getting a piercing, a tattoo, or pectoral implants – I was going to grow a goatee. But the more Sara said it chafed, the more I found myself defending my whiskers. I was starting to chafe, too, in the face of a blatant double standard. Sara’s argument was that my beard affected more than just my looks. It had a physical impact on her enjoyment of being close to me, while any opinions or concerns I had about her hair were purely aesthetic.

For perspective, I looked to some friends. The husband, after being clean-shaven for most of their relationship, has worn a beard for the last year. The length and style of his wife’s hair has vacillated from medium-short to medium-long over the years we have known them. When I asked her about his beard, she admitted she loves the way it looks, and says that once it grew out, it became less coarse. But for as long as they’ve been together, she confessed, she has never cut her hair super-short because of her husband’s wishes. He claims that his opinion – and advice – is based on the one time she had her hair cut too short and was miserable for a month, but there’s no denying that he is the driving force behind the minimum-length requirement.

“They’re a bad example,” countered Sara, mostly because they didn’t fit her model of how the romantic politics of hair should work. But really, their relationship is just a mirror image of the way we split hairs in our house. Clearly, there is a “hair czar” in some relationships, and apparently it’s an equal opportunity position.

Defiantly, I kept my beard for another week, until it got to a length where it looked good – but felt awful. My chin itched constantly, a result of the whiskers curling back towards my skin. Of course, I did my best not to show my discomfort around Sara. As far as she was concerned, my facial hair and I were very happy together. But I couldn’t help noticing that kisses were becoming pecks. Was Sara consciously reacting to the beard or involuntarily flinching away from my stubbornness and stubble? I didn’t know, but that’s when I came to a realization: Sara’s short hair looks good. I like it a lot, and we’ll save something like $20 a month in shampoo and conditioner alone. But if my beard was uncomfortable for me, unworkable for Sara, and unimportant in the long run, why was I keeping it? Was I really trying to save my facial hair, or just save face?

So, that weekend, on Saturday after the kids were in bed, I brought out the razor. Within minutes, the goatee was gone. Moments after that, I was kissing my wife – and she was kissing back. I won’t go into how the rest of the evening progressed, but it’s fair to say that once I shaved, things went smoothly.

Shawn Peters lives in Metro West. Send comments to coupling@globe.com.