Those of you in relationships know how interesting it is when you first visit the home of your romantic interest. You get a real insight into the person when you see the surrounding in which he or she lives.

When my husband Steve and I first started dating years ago, and I walked into his house for the first time it was like touching down on some alien planet. I’m not a snob but I’m one of those people who cares pretty deeply what my living environment looks like and a ceramic Uncle Sam head (yes, he had one) is not entirely my idea of a tasteful home interior.

Steve is not a patriotic zealot. Sadly, he just liked the way the Uncle Sam head looked.

And then there was the black velvet painting. I tried to bargain with myself by telling myself that at least it wasn’t a black velvet painting of Elvis, but really, is that even a relevant argument? I’d like to say the painting was some kind of kitschy so-uncool-it’s-cool attempt at decorating, but I would be lying.

One room was painted gray except for a 3-foot by 3-foot area on one wall where he’d run out of paint. Apparently he wasn’t bothered by seeing that blank space day after day. I, on the other hand, a woman with obsessive/compulsive tendencies that would alarm Monk, took two trips through that room and was ready to confess to the Lindbergh kidnapping. I repainted the whole room.

He’d at some point attempted to wallpaper his bathroom. Not being the most patient man in the world, he was frustrated by the task and ended up just rounding off the corners. That’s right; it was a room without right angles.

Of course, eventually I viewed the house as a project, a place that needed me to sweep in and save it from the spirits that had so far made it look like a back roads flea market.

So when we moved in together I started infiltrating his Man Palace with my furniture, my linens, my wall stuff. To his credit, he didn’t object. Actually, he didn’t care one way or another, which made it much easier. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d had any kind of discernible design taste to speak of.  The truth is I cared deeply about what my surroundings looked like. He did not. So basically, “strong preference” trumped “complete apathy” and I had carte blanche.

Now, fast-forward with me, if you will, 20 years. We live in a different house, one that we bought together. From the day we bought this house, it has been my domain to decorate. We hadn’t lived here long, however, before Steve decided to build a garage. Little did I know this was going to be more than just a place where he could cavort with his car parts, bond with his power tools, and generally pray to the Craftsman gods.

No, it has become much more than that. It is his Man Cave or, as I call it, the Kitsch Kavern. It is a place in which he can release all that “self-expression” that he has heretofore had to stifle. Who knew that it was still there bubbling under the surface?

So slowly but surely he has started to fill the space up with the same kind of stuff (I’m sorry, make that “personal art”) that he used to have in his house. Only now, like an infection that wasn’t completely wiped out by an antibiotic, it has come back stronger. His most notable acquisitions:

• An enormous set of Samurai swords he bought at a yard sale
• A motion-activated deer head that sings Christmas songs
• A long strand of pumpkin lights because, apparently, in the Man Cave, there are no seasons
• A Vikings helmet. And not the football team helmet, either– the one with actual horns. 
• A punching bag that is actually a rubberized torso and head of a man. He dresses it up when the spirit moves him. It has been everything from Santa Claus to Frankenstein.

I could go on but I won’t, because, frankly, the list is starting to scare me a little. The man is one knick–knack away from the loony bin.

But this arrangement actually works. He doesn’t say anything about the carefully coordinated tones that grace the walls in the house, and I don’t say anything about the giant Alf doll sitting on his work bench.