Flatpack rows come free as couples navigate Ikea

You set off for the trip to Ikea to fit out your home with the best that Swedish ingenuity has to offer, but the experience can prove more testing for your relationship than putting together that flatpack wardrobe.

After you emerge utterly spent and exhausted from the store, faces as thunderous as Thor, having bickered and fought over everything –up to and including the kitchen sink — just try and remember you are not alone.

With 367 stores worldwide, Ikea’s low prices often attract young couples starting to furnish a home but, in just a few hours, most couples have gone from planning their future to thinking about breaking up.

This is according to American psychologist Ramani Durvasula who noticed that a significant number of the couples who come to him for help say they always have a blazing row in Ikea.

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“Happy couples enter the store, and they often leave fighting,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “The store literally becomes a map of a relationship nightmare.”

Walking through the idealised mock-ups of bright Scandinavian homes can provoke arguments about problematic areas, such as who cooks, cleans, or looks after children.

And the nightmare doesn’t end at the store, according to Durvasula. Putting those flatpacks together — even with your new hammer- action drill — can lead to more arguments back home. And it’s never a good idea to argue with weapons to hand.

The good value on offer can be costly to your relationship, unless, of course, you’ve made it through the labyrinth-like store, actually found the exit and even assembled the BODBYN kitchen without killing each other.

In which case, you’re a match handmade in Heaven — God doesn’t do flatpacks.

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