1. …. we were not having the best sex of our lives.
You’d think this would be self-evident but still. We were young. Christian. As far as we were concerned honeymoon sex was the best sex ever. I’m glad no one tapped me and told me it probably wasn’t. It would’ve spoiled the moment more than a little.
So what’s the go with this myth that the best sex happens when we’re young? Why is even talking about it off-limits past a certain age and stage in relationship, while it’s splashed everywhere early on? Lana Del Ray sings ‘Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?’ I kinda want to tell Lana to relax but part of me knows she’s right to worry. Our culture worships youth and beauty and tells us unless we’re fab, fit and between the ages of fifteen and twenty five, we’re seriously missing out.
Is it too radical to suggest that sex, like wine, actually gets better with age? Or perhaps not age but intimacy. Practise. Experimentation. Time pressures. Threat of child barging in at any moment. (Of course it also gets worse with these things too).
Maybe we should have a little faith. Start putting it out there that getting older or being together awhile can actually be brilliant for your sex life! ( And you can afford more than an airbed for your second honeymoon to celebrate the 20th, 30th or 50th anniversary.)
2. …. we’d have three children and one of them would die.
The death of a child ranks almost top of the ladder when it comes to events most likely to cause chaos within a relationship. Children who lose parents are orphans, spouses are widows/ers. Parents after the death of a child are… nameless. A blank slate. Almost anything can happen.
Dealing with grief within a relationship teaches you how to be alone. If marriage feels like an exercise in finding a ‘soul mate’, death is one of the harshest way to provide a reality check.
If you’re lucky, your partner will be your closest friend. But face to face with death – and all the wildness it unearths – you realise that essentially, you’re alone. No one experiences life – its beauty and its blackness – quite the way you do. And nor should they.
Realising this is essential to growing up. And being able to face our aloneness is also essential to being in a relationship. We love one another, we hold one another up, we’re confused and lost together, we light a candle for each other. But unless we can also make peace with being alone – with all that we feel about ourselves and our beliefs and the world and the people in it, separate from those we love the most – we’ll probably never be all that great at being together.
3 … both of us would change our minds about many of the things we held most dear.
You get married partly because you feel like you’ve found someone who thinks and feels a lot about the world the way you do, right? It would have entirely freaked me out on our honeymoon had I known that both of us would change our views – sometimes radically, sometimes subtly – on many of the things we were both equally passionate about. And sometimes we no longer quite agreed.
Actually though, don’t you think it’s more worrying if we don’t change?
Changing ideas, values, beliefs, coffee brands within a relationship can be a major threat. What if one holds the old line and the other zings off somewhere new? This fear can be almost enough to prevent us from facing our doubts, from jettisoning beliefs that need evaluating and fronting up to the hard business of developing ourselves as individuals post-marriage.
Because it is hard work- particularly in light of the kind of romantic comedies that suggest that being in a relationship is about ‘finishing each other’s sentences.’ Maybe sometimes. Equally often, being in a relationship is about committing yourself to growth, being brave enough to accept change and hanging together when you disagree. And it’s about knowing that’s not just normal but pretty darn healthy.
We probably think it never gets better than being on a honeymoon. And that’s cool. But it’s even better to find out we’re wrong – that there’s so much room for growth!
Lovers new and especially lovers older, Happy Valentines Day!
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