Twenty years. I keep saying it out loud like it still doesn’t quite make sense. My fella and I have been together for twenty years. Two whole decades! That’s long enough for everything to have changed at least twice, for phones to go from chunky bricks to what they are now and for us to become those people who say around twenty years because even the exact date has quietly slipped our minds, we know it was a Friday in June and we've narrowed it down to either the 16th or 23rd. lol
We met online on one of those free dating websites where you made a profile and them messaged people that you had an interest in. We are proof that internet dating works sometimes. We chatted online using the dating website first then progressed to MSN Messenger (remember that?) and then finally moved to texting and phone calls and then finally met up in person a few months later.
After 20 years together, it's not fireworks every day, it’s not roses delivered on a random Tuesday and it’s not romance like something out of a film. It’s mostly just us, still here, still laughing at stupid things, still annoying each other in ways that are both deeply irritating (Stu snoring) but still choosing each other.
When you’ve been together this long, the big romantic gestures seem to fade into the background and the little moments take over. It’s the same conversations on repeat, and we're acting like they’re brand new every time. It’s routines that never really got planned, they just sort of happened. Us in the same seats and the same nightly check of the doors, with me asking if they’re locked even though I’ve watched him do it. Evenings that roll into each other with TV, snacks and one of us drifting off somewhere else in the house to do our own thing.
Stu, my fella snores loudly with confidence! Like someone who has never once worried about being elbowed in the ribs at 2am. Some nights I lie there staring at the ceiling, planning my future as a woman who lives alone in a very quiet house but there is a plot twist; I snore too. I apparently sound like a lawnmower and he lies there feeling exactly the same way about me. We’ve both nudged, sighed, rolled over and muttered things we’d never say in daylight. We’ve both slept badly because of the other one and then laughed about it the next morning like it’s just part of the package because it is. Twenty years together means you stop pretending you’re not annoying. You just accept it. You might still complain about it, obviously but there’s an understanding underneath it all. This is the person, snoring and all.
It also means laughing at things no one else would find funny. Private jokes that make zero sense to anyone else. A look across the room that says Did you just see that?", a shared eye roll, a badly timed comment that sends us both into silent, shaking laughter when we really shouldn’t be laughing at all. Those laughs matter because life isn’t always kind. There are stresses and worries and days when everything feels hard and in those moments, having someone who can make you laugh without even trying is massive. Stu knows how to lift my mood just by being himself. He has seen me at my worst and stuck around anyway.
That’s another thing no one really talks about enough. Twenty years together means my fella has seen my good moods and the bad ones. The motivated days and the ones where I can’t be bothered with anything or anyone. The confidence and the insecurities and the versions of myself that I didn’t even know were coming.
We have grown together and we are not the same people we were at the start of our relationship and thank goodness for that. We’ve changed together and sometimes at different times and there have been moments where we’ve had to work a bit harder to understand each other again, where we’ve had to bite our tongues and we’ve had to accept that being right isn’t always the most important thing and that’s not always easy. There have of course been disagreements and times when one of us has said something badly or at the wrong moment. It’s not perfect and it was never going to be, but it all makes our relationship great! Great in the way that makes me feel safe and great, in the way that means I don’t have to perform or pretend or be anything other than myself.
Maybe the biggest thing is that it doesn’t feel like twenty years! We may not have those romantic gestures but we have each other! We’ve basically become a two-person team with snacks, shared memories and an ongoing debate about snoring. hehehe
