Think of the least sexy stuff that you can imagine, and I’ll guarantee you that my partner and I have had a conversation about it recently. Toenail clippers. Rubber gloves left in the sink. The contents of babies’ nappies. Bird feeders. Dust mites.
It’s fine. There goes my desire, too.
It hasn’t always been like this. There are frayed-round-the-edges recollections of snogging on the street, surprise tokens left on desks, and jolts of adrenaline whenever he texted me back. At the beginning of our relationship, a friend suggested I “let the craziness out slowly” – nothing personal, just a prudent and foolproof tactic in the dating climate. Mindful of her words, there was a constant buffing of my personality. An endless putting of my best, smartest, funniest and most stylish foot forward.
Blimey. How did I get from fire-engine red lippy to Hagrid?
When I was a teenager, with hormones Pac-Manning their way through my body, I had a very specific vision of what true romance entailed. Fed largely by a steady diet of Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game and Betty Blue, I assumed that true love would basically entail not much more than swapping heavy-lidded stares with another person. We’d trade the occasional post-coital barb, surely, but for the most part we’d be staring off into space, as though off our heads on love. It was a fleshy and brooding tableau, all happening under a cloud of cigarette smoke (look, it was the 1990s). I wasn’t so much sex-starved as sex-famished, and I presumed sex on tap to be right up there with six numbers on the Lottery. Oof, life came at me fast after that. It transpired that not very many men wanted to loll around and stare at each other with intensity for long stretches, for a start. They expected conversation. Conversation, with benefits. By which I mean, benefits for them.
Then there was the unrequited yearning, which felt like the very definition of romance. The weight of stares across darkened pubs. Going home alone, to feel the consolation hug of a Radiohead album instead. The surety that the sadness and rejection and anxiety in my bones was chemistry, a spark.
What the teenaged me – all Biactol and Anais Anais and idealism – would make of my current romantic set-up is anyone’s guess. There’s no cigarette smoke, but there are yellow Snack wrappers rustling at our feet. We aren’t staring at each other with lustful desire; our eyes are usually resting on whatever Netflix is offering. If whatever on TV is dragging, occasionally one of us might throw a “how about it, so?” glance at the other. Several thoughts run through my head, and none of them are to do with how lucky I feel. Usually, I’m calculating if we’ll wrap it all up before the start of Prime Time.
Nowadays, the final vestiges of romance are just about hanging in there. I buy my own tokens of affection now. I am not averse to walking through the house with a Korean sheet mask on. We argue (sorry, robustly debate) about what constitutes the “slamming” of a toilet seat.
Years ago, this all would have felt like a sign that things were beyond repair; on an inexorable slide into complacency.
When I was single, I made a pact with myself that I would always enshrine the thrill of romance. I’d be the best girlfriend ever. I would remain wonderfully unpredictable, entertaining and unknowable. I would sustain the lovely, fizzy energy that gives any new relationship a decent shove in the right direction. I wouldn’t allow for things to become mundane or sexless or pedestrian, the way other long-term couples seemed to.
Letting it all hang out
Well, the boring bits have turned out to be the best bits. Sure, the admin that keeps a home together is a drag, but for the most part, they feel lovely. They feel safe. I can be fully, unapologetically myself. I can exhale. I don’t need to suck any saggy bits in, or sit at a jaunty angle that hides my lardy arms. I don’t even have to worry about “letting out the crazy”, for he’s seen it all. I was too busy trying to keep the flame and fizz going in previous relationships that it never occurred to me to just… be me. Letting it all hang out is a romance in and of itself.
I’m of the generation that bought into the Hollywood grand gesture in a huge way. Ghettoblasters in the driveway, cue cards on the doorstep, roses between the teeth. We came to understand that this big, visible, demonstrative stuff was important. But it’s the barely-there things that keep the wheels greased. A cup of tea when you’re stressed. Emailing each other the review of a film you mentioned days previously. Dad-dancing to the TV (not to the theme music of Prime Time. We’re not savages).
I think of my 14-year-old self, with her big ideas on long-term love, and wonder if she’d feel let down by such an exquisitely unsexy display. The Snack wrappers. The slippers. The stretches of silence. But then I remember that she has so much to learn. On romance, and everything else.
