This is what six years gets me: Hello to him loving (and enduring sometimes) the good, the bad, and the ugly of me, indulging any whim I happen to think up this week, and letting me know on a daily basis that he wants nothing more than to watch movies (with the subtitles on, of course) and order take out with me for the rest of his life. Hello to my best friend and future husband. A tiny hiccup: Goodbye to any desire to shave my legs more than once a month, spontaneously whip out crotchless, edible panties, or thinking its adorably "manly" of him when he leaves his clothes all over the floor, his dirty dishes soaking in the sink for a week, and the new toilet paper roll sitting on top of the empty one.
There are so many times I've wished I had written down everything I did during the first phases of our relationship so that I had some sort of master list I could work from for inspiration. Because, quite honestly, between the daily wear and tear, working, going to school, cleaning the house, getting groceries, paying bills - the list goes on and on - the absolute last thing I feel like is sexy. I don't have the energy to think up cute, enticing little ways to rouse libidos. You know what sexy looks like to me? A clean kitchen, a scrubbed bathtub, a fridge full of groceries I didn't shop for, and having absolutely nothing else to do except bask in the fact that I have nothing else to do.
What I've come to realize is that when people said, "Relationships take work," they didn't mean disagreements about money or how to make up after someone spent all night out and the next night on the couch. No, no...it's nothing that Leave it to Beaver, nothing that easy. That's the stuff you're prepared for. What they don't tell you, what you can't even fathom while you're in the throes of a new love, is what comes with time. Pearls of wisdom like one day, things you think are cute now will drive you fucking crazy. One day you'll understand why granny panties were invented, and the most subtle way you can think of to tell him you're not in "the mood" is to throw tampons at his face. Some days you may actually have to Google "How bad is prison, really?" just to scare yourself out of burying him in the back yard. Those are the things you don't expect. Well, I didn't anyway, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
That's the dirty work - doing the day-in-and-day-out ugly of it all (and it gets ugly. If you say your relationship doesn't, you are absolutely full of shit) - and still waking up happy (at least somewhat somedays) that they're beside you. If you can remember in the middle of a knock-down-drag-out fight that you do in fact love them, even when you want to punch them in their fucking face for being so fucking stupid - well, that's what it takes right there. It takes a real, concentrated effort sometimes to look at this person you love - who just happens to have been in your face for the past however many years, bitching at you because he can't find his keys (that happen to be in his hand, by the way) or his shoes (which are in the closet - go figure), asking you to rub his feet or make him a sandwich - and remember that your other half has needs that matter, too. Sometimes, he may even need to matter more than you and have his needs met first.
That's how relationships survive however many years of monogamy and emotionally and mentally beating the shit out of each other....Give and take, push and pull.
However, love T as I do, today is not that day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.
