On Saturday my boyfriend and I woke up and realised it was our 20th anniversary. Which was mathematically curious, considering that surely makes our relationship older than us, two people who battle daily with the many bruising realities of adulthood and remain bewildered by such things as decisions about taps, and how we got here. The truth of how we got here, to an anniversary so significant it has its own plate (traditional gift: china), seems to be – every month we silently agree, first, not to break up and, then, to keep going.
The popular stories we were brought up on insist that all of life happens before a person settles down – marriage, it goes, is the end. What happens next? Nobody really knows – all relationships are secret, turned inwards. All we really know about other people’s is that either they survive, inching along stickily, picking up children and grief and a passion for gardening along the way, or they don’t, exploding in glittering failure. There is no third way. But, from the inside, a thousand seasons can pass in a single morning, a combination of survivals and failures, and hate and tenderness. Love letters are disguised as text messages about lunch. Arguments about the Tesco delivery are not about the Tesco delivery, we learn, except when they are.
