Happily Ever Afterwards

You know the problem with fairy tales? Aside from the completely unrealistic hair expectations, they skimp us on the endings. 

'Happily ever after' is, to be blunt, bullshit. It is the land of enchantment equivalent of leaving a vague facebook status and slyly waiting for spectators to fill in the elusive gaps.

Where did they live happily? How big was their mortgage? Did they split the housework? Did Snow White lose the baby weight? Did The Beast and Belle fight over the hair left in the shower drain? Did Ariel work through the resentment of dissolving her entire existence for a man who then proposed to another women he'd known for a day?

Questions. So. Many. Questions. 

In real life, that place behind the smoke screen of social media that we're forced to physically dwell in, we can't gloss over the prospect of forever with one positive adverb. 

You can be happy. You can be locked into an end of days contract. But you can't statistically expect to be doing both simultaneously all the time. At some point, it will get messy and difficult and hard. Because what the stories fail to explain is that after the sun sets, it has a tendency to rise again and wake you on the other side thinking 'okay, now what... and why are you hogging the entire blanket?’. 

Love stories and fairy tales alike spend the bulk of their delivery telling us the chase is where the story lives. That once that glass slipper slides onto your dainty foot, your work is done. Congratulations, you have caught a human, now take a seat together and wait for death. 

While the courting days are lovely in hindsight, it's really not where the juicy bit is. It's in the daily hit and miss of attempting to uphold all that while your evolution continues. 

Last year, Soccer Hubby and I clocked over the old marriage ticker into a decade. Despite the bitterly annoying fact that he retains the same athletic body and good looks that he did ten years ago, I spent a lot of that time wanting to throw sharp objects at him. 

I didn't. But let's face it, some days that margin of escape is thinner than a Victoria's Secret model. 

There are days when I still scour the drawers of the house for our marriage certificate to make absolute certain that it wasn’t just a contract for live-in housekeeper that I had unknowingly signed by mistake.

Besides the stereotypical arguments that marriage creates for the benefit of romantic comedies, there are serious times when we hit the slump and honestly ask ourselves ‘what am I still doing here?’  

At the root of this detour resides the unshakable feeling that your partner has not only stopped seeing you through heart shaped glasses, they have just stopped seeing you at all.

You’re no longer on the same page. Or book. You’re on a motivational novel and he’s three websites deep on live sport results.

I whole heartedly agreed to love Ten Years Ago Soccer Hubby forever and ever and all the love songs. But, spoiler alert, I wake up next to a new man now. Ten Years Later Soccer Hubby, whom no one mentioned on our wedding day. He has a whole new list of proper grown up stuff to concern himself with. Not only that, I have to share this version with two other humans.

I can basically stand on the kitchen table, shaking flares over my head and screeching ‘pay attention to me pay attention to me pay attention to me!’, and be thrilled when he looks up quietly and says ‘did you say something, babe?’

Harder still is the day you realise, this is a river that flows both ways.

He married a woman who had nothing but time for him, great plans on the horizon and the temperament of someone who has a good seven hours sleep each night. Not the anxiety ridden bundle of can't-be-arsed now sharing his surname. If he looks at me for more than fleeting moment, my brain swirls into low self-esteem overdrive and wants to know why. Surely it’s just because I have Pringles crumbs in my hair? He can’t be looking at me can he?

Two humans came out of this body. Two. This is a working body now. Let us be completely honest, no one ever took the shrink wrap off something and thought 'that's kept its shape, I'll reuse that'.

If I find an unscheduled five minutes to myself now, I want to spend that moment with my crippling social anxiety, hidden from contact with all humans. Including the ones I squeezed out vaginally.

But we can’t. I’m expected on football sidelines. Offering condolences over sports teams who were apparently robbed. Preparing dinners that are requested like classic songs. Managing bills from owning children that are more expensive to run than a designer bag addiction.

We are exhausted versions of our former selves.

'You're dismissive,' say I.

'You're nagging,' says he.

‘You take me for granted,’ say I.

‘You put completely unrealistic expectations on me,’ says he.

‘The only thing I expect, is for you not to be a twat,’ say I. Because I’m pre-coffee.

This is a problem.

Although these updated 2018 software versions of us exist, they still expect the same old 2003 system formatting. We know we’re new and improved, but we still crave that initial attention and adoration that originally convinced us the other was The One.

But, again, that’s the problem with fairy tales isn’t it. They’re just a promise of what is to come.

I know Soccer Hubby 2.0 has been broken into an array of pieces that he meticulously rations to all those who demand it. I know that. But a huge part of me still craves to be the only one.  

I want him to tell me I’m beautiful. I want him to ask how my day was and listen. I want him to still want to do that. I want my girls to see him doing that.

He wants me to want to cheer him on when he plays. He wants to still share that world with me. He wants me to use my grown up words and not expect him to be a mind reader.

We’re older. We’re tired. We’re semi-caffeinated. We don’t want just words anymore, we want to see some actions.  

All the promises of the big Ever After have melted away and here we sit in the very midst of it, waiting for life to take shape.

That’s marriage. That’s ever after. When you stop hanging your emotional all on what they’re saying, and start watching what it is they’re doing.

What is the point of someone offering you the grandeur wizard of love, if you pull the curtain back to find it's just a little man working non facilitated smoke and mirrors? We have to click together our ruby slippers and assess what our heart really considers home.  

When this guy brings me coffee in the morning, kisses the tip of my nose and scurries off to entertain our kids, I know that that is exactly where I’m meant to be.

(As in, with Soccer Hubby. Not just in bed with a coffee. Even though being encased in blankets with a coffee is quite lovely. Actually, let’s say it’s on par and move on.)

I will probably always find myself in moments when I feel invisible. Unseen. Unheard. But it is usually within these moments that I shift the cushions on our bed and find he has hidden a treasure trove of my favourite chocolates, a post-it note with a single ‘x’ resting on top.

I may miss holding the entirety of his attention span, but those days couldn’t compare to holding his hand for a passing moment as we chase after the family we created.

We start out in this story as The One, but we morph (all be it un-glamorously and against our will) into The Once I Get A Second.

Because once we do, it’s just us. It’s chaos. But it’s ours.

‘Do you still think I’m your princess?’ say I

‘No,’ says he. ‘Now you’re my queen’.

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