Quote Of The Day

You know your relationship is going badly when.....

Said by one friend of mine to another about his girlfriend:

“Sometimes I just want to hold her head underwater and watch the life drain from her eyes.”

Put down the axe, Mr Torrance!

Belissima!

I know a woman - we'll call her Candy, cos that's not really a name anyway - who is in a long term relationship but is in love with another guy. She's been with her boyfriend for a long while now, but a year or so ago things started getting old and tired between them, and she fell for someone else. She is now in the unenviable position of having to make the ultimate choice: security, stability and fondness without the love she has been dreaming of, or uncertainty, excitement and passion with a person who makes her feel like she's really living for the first time. What would you do? Of course, I have oversimplified the situation - there is alot more to it than what seems like a formulaic rom-com (although if this was a rom-com, we all know how it would end - she'd choose the other guy and they'd sail off into the sunset and live happily ever after). It does make me aware of how very fragile relationships are, no matter how strong the foundations. And how life never really turns out the way you expect it to. Just a short while ago, Shoes and I hit a bit of a bump in the road, and I got scared for the first time in our 7 years together that we weren't right for each other. We got through it, and I'm all the happier for it. But I bet Candy thought she'd get through it too, and look at her now. There but for the grace of God go I, we say, when we have no idea if something similar is predestined for our own futures. Millions of women around the world experience the trauma of the breakdown of a long term relationship - the loss of the one you thought you'd be with forever. And every single one of those women went into that relationship believing they were solid as a rock, that nothing could shake their love. Life is so much bigger than us. We think we know; we think we're in control of who we are how we're going to end up, but really, we're not. Even being there for Candy as she goes through this, there's STILL a part of me that thinks, well, this will never happen to me. I guess I need to believe that - we all need to believe it can't happen to us; because if we believed the alternative, maybe we'd give up too easily. Maybe we wouldn't fight as hard for what we believe in, because we never really believed in it 100% in the first place.

As I prepare to go on a romantic holiday with my boyfriend, Candy is looking into her crystal ball in vain, trying to see who she ends up with. It's bizarre. You think real life is less exciting, less harrowing, less like a film script. But where do they get the ideas for film scripts in the first place? Ok, maybe not Jerry Bruckheimer movies.

Speaking of romantic holidays, in less than 24 hours I will be on my way to the airport, preparing for the best break ever in Italy! Belissima! Shoes and I are stupid with excitement. This will be our first holiday with just the two of us since we did Plett, Knysna and the Garden Route in September 2005. We go first to Venice, the city of gondola-inspired proposals (no, I'm not getting that lucky... unfortunately sharing money means I know he can't afford a ring right now!), and then on to the prettiest village on Lake Garda, Malcesine, with a day trip to Verona. I am so going to stare lovingly down at him from Juliet's balcony at the Capulet house. He's going to be seriously embarassed. We're going to use this time to chill the hell out, relax and meander around cobbled streets and markets, and sit at cafes and watch the world go by. London? Where's that? Winter? What kind (it's going to be 25 in Venice on Friday)? I can't wait. Will post once more tomorrow before I leave so I have an outlet for my no doubt excessive enthusiasm.

Cinderella ain't got nothing on me!

I had a rather panicked e-mail this morning from Shoes' sister in response to yesterday's post. Black Velvet (so named because she is completely horse mad) said some very sweet things, including that we are her "relationship heroes." This isn't the first time she's said that to me, but it certainly makes me feel warm and tingly all over anyway (and perhaps ready to start cashing in on self-help books - move over Dr Phil!). She says she believes the following is the secret of our success, and I quote: you don't have unrealistic views of each other, and you don't put unrealistic demands on each other, which in my opinion is one of the things that can break a relationship. Alot of the time people tend to want their partners to fullfil every aspect of their lives and be everything to them, this to me is unrealistic, one person cannot fulfill every need in another person.

Interesting. And, in our case, very true. We've never looked to the other one to complete our happiness, rather just to add to a part of it. Perhaps this is why we find our relationship, for the most part, very easy. Earlier this year, we came face to face with our biggest hurdle when, for the first time in almost 7 years, we questioned whether or not we were meant to be together. It's something I had believed whole-heartedly since I'd met him. To wake up after so long and realise that not one, but both of you has doubts about whether you actually want this, is terrifying, to say the least. After some soul searching, honest conversations and a period of mourning the loss of the fairytale (yes kids, it took me 27 years to realise that soulmates don't exist and that it is possible to find happiness with more than one person on this earth), we found our way through and came out the other side with a sense of humour - to this day my most integral aspect to any relationship. If you can't laugh at it, you might kill it, and then where would you be?

But what Velvet said rings very true with me - There is nothing wrong with being content with what you have, if what you have works and makes you both happy. Girls grow up hearing stories of Cinderella and dream about finding their Prince Charming. Long ago, I cast aside that idea when I first got burned by love, and decided Princes don't exist - just decent guys who try their best. But looking at what I have with Shoes; there's nothing else I want or need in a man that I don't have in him. And if that's not a Prince Charming, then what is?

What this really boils down to is a suspicion that there's something else going on that I'm missing, simply because I'm just not usually this lucky. There are always people in life who have it easy - some are born into money, some are whip smart and carve out amazing careers with what seems like very little effort and some are incredibly talented. I'm probably never going to be wealthy (ok, wealthy - who's kidding who here; I suppose I might never pay off my credit card debt, that's more realistic), I'm never going to have a career that will put me in the history books and I don't have any outstanding talents that could make the world sit up and take notice. But I have this relationship that outshines everything else in my life with the grace and smoothness with which it flows. 90% of the time, at least. And if that's not having it easy, then I don't know what is..... Besides, one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, right?

Can Happiness Be Luke-Warm?

Yesterday I said I was feeling sick and tired of life, in the sense that I need a holiday, but I that was not unhappy. I'm still not unhappy, but I'm taking the sick and tired thing one step further - I just can't bring myself to do any work today. Or any day this week actually - I've been fairly unproductive since Monday. I'm unmotivated. It's not because I don't enjoy my job; it's still fine as far as jobs go. I'd prefer to be sitting on a yacht in the Caribbean running my toes through my piles of stirling, but who wouldn't? It's just that I'm tired of working. I've had enough to being a slave to the system, and I'd like to stop. Now. Just grab my stuff and waltz out of here, on to a better future which involves sipping cocktails and expensive trips around the world.

I'm pleased to say that I am grown up enough to realise the futility of this. Shoes and I once discussed becoming a con artist team, like in the movies, and marrying a old geezer on his last legs for money (me, not him), but we were both too grossed out by the fact that I'd have to shag him. I mean, I guess if he wasn't grossed out by this, we would no longer be a couple. So, lucky me then. But since winning the lottery or getting randomly "discovered" (as you do these days) are not on the cards for me, I decided I needed something else to lift me out of the bleakness that is my daily routine. What better than to live vicariously through other people?

I've spent most of today trawling through blogs - or, to use the apparently correct term, blogosphere. Partly for my own amusement, and partly to see what everyone else is writing about. I suppose it's no wonder really that almost all personal blogs focus on love. Love, loss, lust, good sex, bad sex, mars vs venus and women scorned (this last from both male and female writers, and it makes for an enormous number of posts!). Also, nearly all posts are negative, in the sense that the writer is suffering some form of drama, difficulty or heartbreak due to love won or lost.

I felt quite alien while reading. Here I am, happy and secure in a relationship with the man I plan to marry, coming up for my seven year anniversary in September, yet almost no other bloggers out there seem to have got it right. Instead of inducing a revolting smugness in me, this has actually caused me to panic. What have I got that they haven't? Or, more precisely, what are they waiting for that I haven't found? Perhaps Shoes and I are too complacent. Maybe we shouldn't be so relaxed - maybe we should be lamenting over the differences between us and constantly pushing ourselves to be better, closer, more in synch with each other. Shouldn't we? Maybe our contentment is actually just laziness, and in 10 years we'll wake up and find we have nothing to talk about because we didn't put the effort in when we had the chance. Oh dear, my heart is pounding, I feel a dramatic swoon coming on. It's really worrying - we're not special, we don't do anything different, yet we're solid and dependable and strong where others are crumbling around us.... this makes me feel that we might be freaks!!!!!!

Perhaps I will go home and pick a fight with him. It might be fake, but at least I would have a witty, acid-tongued post at my fingertips for tomorrow. Ok, jokes aside though, it is a bit weird how calmly we move through our relationship. I'm rather melodramatic in other areas of my life, but my relationship is one area where I hate surprises (unless they're non-threatening and involve presents), and I am definitely anti-conflict. That's not to say we don't have it out when we need to - we do, and we shout and slam doors when necessary, but it rarely happens, and most of the time we're just content in our own little bubble with our own inside jokes and coupley ways (I know, sorry, you can put the barf bag away now). Why though? Why is it so easy for us and so hard for some others? Either we're a fantastic fit, or we're not looking deep enough and missing the heights to which others are aspiring. Hmmm, food for thought. If only there was actually a right answer.