It wasn't like the love story that you read about in books and gaze wistfully at in movies. Epic, tragic, unrequited love. The sort of love that crosses oceans and desserts and ends with armies fighting one another and gallons of bloodshed.
This love was far more real than that.
She couldn't remember the exact moment she first thought it. In some ways it felt like it had always been there, and then, slowly (or quickly depending on your viewpoint), over time it had been discovered as an essential truth that neither could ignore. They kept digging into one another's life's and thoughts and opinions and kept coming up with interesting artefacts that just confirmed what they already knew; I love this person. The love kept growing as more things were discovered; silly things like crisp flavour preferences and sexy things like where on their bodies they could be touched to make them moan with pleasure and deep, dark things like the ways in which their exes had fucked them up. As more time was spent with one another, more things were revealed. They felt themselves growing from it; walking taller, feeling stronger, acting better. This wasn't a love that overwhelmed or destroyed or required the hacking off of chunks of one's soul to keep alive.
This love was far more real than that.
The montage sequence of their lives showed them walking along a beach at night hand in hand and smiling, kissing one another tenderly on the cheek on a German train, laughing till she had tears in her eyes in a restaurant due to his Alan Partridge impressions. All these moments were clearly crystalised in her mind but even then, between those highlights that their love also shone through brightly. These were the times when their love became more than just the sum of its parts. Just being in one another's company, being tender and understanding to one another, making one another laugh. Just sat in her flat or his. Saying nothing or saying everything. Just allowing themselves to be together. These times couldn't be described as 'exciting' but neither were they boring. They were a slow burn. A simmering passion and fascination for one another; a conversation that never stopped, a comfortableness that came in silence, they sappily stared into one another's eyes and said the words again and again that seemed woefully inadequate to describe their feelings; I love you, I love you, I love you.
Theirs was a love that was real.
It was made more real through it's imperfections. He hid things. She pushed him away. He stayed regardless. They talked and talked and talked until things became better and then they talked some more. In therapy she had learned that honesty is the only thing that works. Lying to yourself, tricking yourself, keeping things hidden from yourself might be easier in the short term but honesty will always out. It finds a way to escape and it will burn you alive. She knew honesty wasn't a short cut to happiness; but it was the only chance you could ever have at beginning to approach happiness (even if in the short term it requires you being burned alive). So together they stood hand in hand and did their best to learn. They agreed to walk through the flames of honesty together and managed to walk out the other side still in like and in love and still holding hands.
She knew they'd have to do this many times through their lives if they were to remain together but if they survived the flames once, she felt certain they would survive them again and again.
For theirs was a love that was real.
It was a love built on all those words mums tell their daughters that relationships should be based on; friendship, respect, trust. They would walk to the ends of the earth for each other, do anything for each other. But neither would ask the other to do anything. Just by knowing they could rely on one another meant nothing needed to be proven. There were no mind games, just frank open discussions. Manipulation wasn't required. (Why would it be when they felt like this?) She realised now that the thing that had felt missing all her life, a thing that she didn't have a word for, she had now found. It was a thing that set the universe into alignment. The crazy that she had laboured through before in previous relationships seemed extra-perplexing in hindsight - why would you put yourself through the stress of a relationship unless you had all this amazingness to back it up? She asked. It seems obvious now but I honestly don't know, he replied. She believed that the crazy they'd experienced before came from trying to bridge the gap between what it is and what you want it to be. That gap has to be filled with something and crazy seems like the obvious solution at the time; it's such an excellent distraction technique you never have to face the fact that what you're putting yourself through isn't real. There were no gaps or cracks in this.
It was a love that was real.
Sometimes jealousy would creep it's way into her brain or his. Previous paramours, hook ups, flings, long term loves. All these fed the paranoia pixies that each resided in both their brains. They shot the pixies down with truth and understanding. They didn't need to hide anything or pretend to be fine. They just discussed how they were feeling without accusation or recourse long into the night. She knew the pixies would always be there but their power was lessened greatly by not giving into them, by acknowledging them, by wanting to ensure they were kept to a bare minimum in the other person's brain too. They spent hours in bed, trailing their fingers along one another's bodies and turning each other on, feeding their burning mutual attraction. Talking breathily about their deepest fantasies, enacting those fantasies out. She felt relaxed and happy and sexy when she was with him in a way no one else had made her feel before. She knew now that this was what it was always supposed to be like, it seemed silly on reflection but without anything else to compare it to she had put up with much, much less. It every conceivable way she had put up with much, much less; mentally, physically, emotionally.
But she didn't need to put up with less any more. She finally had a love that was real.
