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Like most people, behind closed doors I am very judgemental. I am not naive enough to think that my friends do not do this to me, and tell me to my face my new haircut or dress is fabulous and then say to their boyfriends when they get home that it made me look like a water buffalo in a net curtain. White lies can save a lot of hurt and it is something I believe we are all guilty of.
One of my worst personal habits (and I do have more than a few) is being very judgemental about other people’s relationships. Almost all of my friends are now in long-term relationships, some of them speeding towards marriage and children, some on the verge of moving in together, and some moving nowhere at all. I cannot help myself when I use my own relationship as the yardstick to measure all others against.
Me and C met when I was 17. We worked together in a large shop. When I first met him, I hated him. I am prone to exaggeration but not in this instance. I thought he was rude and arrogant. I didn’t like his stupid gold chain around his neck and his confrontational way of speaking to me. At the time, I was dating another lad who worked in the same shop. We had arranged to meet up on a Sunday and being as I was young and more than a little stupid I had spent the entire Saturday night drinking vodka in a car park with my friends, and when he came to meet me at the bus station I was fast asleep, wearing last nights clothes and a pair of huge sunglasses, and probably smelling like I’d spent the night in a ditch. We walked to the pub, whereupon we both agreed that this wasn’t working, and that we shouldn’t see each other anymore. He was a perfectly nice person; we just had absolutely nothing in common. We thought we did but once we had scratched slightly below the surface it became apparent that we didn’t agree on anything and didn’t really like each other. C had heard about this and said he’d like to take me out to “cheer me up”. I was a little dubious but seeing as I had nothing else to do that Friday I agreed to go out with him.
Prior to our date, I found myself to be a little nervous. I bought a new outfit and was ready about 4 hours prior to him collecting me. I must have driven my parents mad marching up and down the big window at the front of their house waiting for him. He had come to pick me up on his motorbike and whisked me off to a nearby big town. We had cinema tickets but prior to that we found a little patch of dry grass to sit and chat.
I’d never met anyone like C before. He was funny, clever and charming. His sense of humour was completely on a par with mine, we agreed on most things and he had led such an interesting and varied life. He’d been in the RAF cadets and knew how to fly. He had been ice climbing in Canada (where you climb up a frozen waterfall), had lived in Manchester and Newcastle. He had broken many a bone in accidents. He liked the same films as me. The date was a roaring success. I wanted to see him again, and so I did.
Today, as I write this, is our 8 year anniversary. We have lived together for 5 years. I have never felt as comfortable with anyone as I do with C. I don’t ever have to try- he just accepts me for every little thing that I am. He doesn’t question anything about me, just sits back and enjoys the ride. Goodness knows I am not an easy person to get along with, and certainly not to live with. I think that’s why we get on so well. Opposites really do attract in our case. C is anally retentive and a naturally neat and structured person. I am ferociously neat at work but at home I whirl through the house like a hurricane, leaving a detritus of half-drunk drinks, socks, underpants and tubs of Vaseline behind me. I love music, and C doesn’t listen to it at all. C likes a short back and sides, thinks men shouldn’t wear jewellery and eschews anything even slightly “fancy” but assures me he loves me in all my jewellery, make up and daft-clothed glory. C is brilliant at physics and mathematics, but knows nothing of art or poetry. I am totally the opposite. At work, he is sensible and calm, at home he is a daft little person who sings songs about me in the shower and does voices for the pets. He is naturally studious and hard-working, doesn’t ever do half a job and is punctilious about money. I am a hopeless fool who spends money like water and am constantly having to beg a few pounds from him. We balance each other very well. He is quite literally “my other half.” We make sense, and he is as comfortable as my oldest pair of jeans. No-one on this earth makes me laugh like he does. I intend to spend every day of the rest of my life trying to make him happy.
When C and I first got together, I had a few raised eyebrows from friends who could not believe this tidy little posh person (he was privately educated) I had picked up. He was an antidote to the skinny rock boys I had been with before. Unlike the rest of those boys, C is actually a man. Despite his tender years, he is the wisest person I know and prone to living his life like a little old man if I didn’t occasionally drag him out into the real world.
When I first got together with C, he was a damaged person who hadn’t had a very nice life. I am not going to reveal the details of his upbringing as that is for him to do, but suffice to say his past echoed into his life and explained a lot about his behaviour. I am prone to picking up these damaged people and trying to help, and C is my best project to date. He was a shy, nervous and unhappy person before I met him, and the change in him is miraculous. He tells me I gave him confidence he never had before, and I listened to the details of his life as a child, and made him understand it was not his fault, and that he could never have fixed what had happened. He has never used his past to justify poor behaviour as an adult- in actual fact he rebelled in the best possible way by becoming a responsible adult at the age of 8. His young years were unstructured and messy, and he tried to control every tiny aspect around him, because control was something he never had. I helped him to understand this and eventually, he learnt to let go a little. I hope I don’t sound like am blowing my own trumpet- I only know this because he told me.
In the same vein, C has been a great influence on me. He pushed me a little into becoming an adult and keeps a tight hold when my emotions get out of hand. I am a spur of the moment kind of person who is prone to having wild fits and deciding, for example, I won’t ever be happy until I live in Mongolia as a sheep herder. C makes me understand that actually, I’m just having a bad day and that things blow over. He is my counsel, my best friend and my reason for getting out of bed. In the light of his adoration, I have shone and managed to do things I could never do on my own, like pass my driving test and slowly climb the career ladder. We have always been there to catch one another if we fall, a shoulder to cry on and friend to have a laugh with. I want to take care of him and he wants to take care of me. I send him news stories I know he will love and he buys me little treats from the supermarket. I cook his favourite meals and he fixes things around the house. Our lives hum along in tune.
Our relationship is not without its bumps in the road, and we have both slipped up. But we would never intentionally hurt one another. We have made mistakes and learnt from these. I would never say that any relationship is perfect- that’s impossible. But I think this is about as good as it gets.
I am not saying the way we do things is right. Neither am I saying it is wrong. But I do look down my nose at couples who do things differently. I really hate it when couples have their arguments in public- I would never do that. I have a friend who is constantly sniping at her boyfriend, and I feel so sorry for him when she criticises him publicly. Another friend is so desperate for her boyfriend to change, and he never does. I personally don’t believe in this. If you love someone, I believe you love them for all that they are. You cannot cut off the bits of them that do not fit. My friend wants her boyfriend to get a job so he can move in with her, and he never seems to try, or always has some poor excuse on hand. I feel for her. If you really love the person you are with, you’d run over broken glass to make them smile. I cannot understand why he won’t.
It really isn’t any of my business to say if they are happy, but from what I can see, they’re not. I don’t ever need to worry about where C is or what he is doing because I trust him implicitly. I could never imagine reading his emails or going through his drawers, like my friend does to her husband. I could never imagine needing to stay at a friend’s house because the arguments are getting too much, or having to have a friend over when he is not there so I can inhale my own bodyweight in wine and call him every name under the sun. I want to grab them by the shoulders and yell that it doesn’t have to be like that, that you can be happy.
I know I am being too judgemental. It comes from a good place, I think, that I just want them to be happy. I want them to feel loved and to love, because it is such a wonderful feeling. But I am not them and I do not really know what they want. I keep my thoughts to myself and nod and smile- offering advice if and when I feel it is appropriate.
I suppose this piece, as well as a little note to myself to stop trying to tell other people how to live, is really a love letter to C. I didn’t really know happiness before I met you, and I can’t thank you enough for loving me. I don’t really understand why you do, but I know it. You are completely unshakeable, my rock, my beginning and my end. I’ll never stop believing that the stars shine for you, never stop needing you, but most of all, I’ll never stop loving you. That is my promise to you.
