A glimpse behind the glitter

It's a bitter-sweet moment in a relationship when you get your first taste of reality. It's been a long time coming for Mr L and me. A freakishly long time coming, now I think about it - he has been in my life for nearly two years now. But there have been a few bust-ups in that time, and some time apart, which has left us repeatedly going through the brand-new honeymoon phase. We'd see each other each time at our very best - dressed up, best of behaviour, bubbling with excitement to be together.

He always used to say that to me actually, wistfully, usually in relation to us not spending enough time together: 'you get the very best of me.' I saw the very worst of him too, at times. But it was all heightened.

Now? I think maybe we're seeing a little more of each other as whole people. Not every conversation is packed with filth. Some of it is life. It's work-stress and it's worries and it's even the ugly vulnerable parts that you try to hide from the outside most of the time. And that's a beautiful thing. But there is something that tugs at my heart a little, and I'm trying to unpack it.

The silly, princessy part of me, the part that listened too closely to fairy tales and half-baked women's magazines and Arthurian legends, gets scared when I see this man becoming more vulnerable with me. Princess J expects him to continuously prove his worth to me. Ideally, this proof will come with box-office-worthy grand gestures and florid displays of affection. This is why my relationships fail. I expect them to be cinematic.

I don't want to be too hard on Princess J, as she directs me from one corner of my subconscious - she's processing a heavy load of social conditioning. She's still about 8 years old, and trying to make sense of a scary, confusing world that is absolutely nothing like the stories she was told. But she needs to learn. She needs to learn that people can't just be dumped into the hero or villain categories - most of us fall into 'other' (or perhaps more accurately both, at the same time, always both). She needs to learn that if you always test people, they will fail at some point. She needs to learn that there are things much greater than perfection. Like honesty.

So, this week, it's not about sex or romance or kink or excitement. Its about his man flu, and my IUD fitting and his work stress and my looming deadlines. And no matter how much Princess J smacks me on the forehead with her fairy wand* and tells me that this is it, party over, I feel good about it. Okay, mostly. I feel mostly good about it. And cautiously excited: perhaps we really are starting to let each other really see us, for real. Not just the fun bits. And that's a kind of closeness we haven't had before.**


*You know real princesses don't have fairy wands, right, J?
**Note to the reader: I am fucking terrified.