Relationships – I’m assuming you’ve never had one here – are quite nice. You are partnered up, you are safe, you have a team mate who will tell you with affectionate honesty if your hair looks shit, and will find it adorable, not moronic, that you have somehow managed to splash bolognese sauce on your eyebrow. You get to have sex a lot! Brilliant. However, along with all the rose petals and racing pulses, your first long-term relationship naturally brings with it a veritable smorgasbord of howling cock-ups.
And lo, beneath this very sentence, I have diligently detailed some key examples of these cock-ups. Be warned: glamour you will not find here...
1. Fatness
With the exception of those tedious gym-types who stroll past your living room window clutching a protein shake on a Sunday morning as you lie in your pants picking Dorito crumbs off your midriff, everybody gets kind of doughy from time to time. But you, my friend, will get fatter still, because you are in a loving, trusting relationship. You are comfortable with each other, you have seen each other naked one thousand times, you live out your lives in sweatpants and thick, woollen socks.
You will order Chinese takeaways together twice weekly. You will eat frozen pizza and watch endless Disney films ‘neath an unwashed duvet. You will both join a gym out of guilt after a particularly heavy weekend, which you will attend together exactly once and during said visit you will burn a total of seven calories each, all of which will be spent laughing at each other attempting to use the elliptical machine without looking like a cock. After this you will attend instead with your sporty mate who takes everything far too seriously, and then not at all ever again. Oh, sweet summer child, how large you will grow.
2. Netflix and chill... but actually Netflix and actually chill
You will binge watch at least eight HBO shows to completion. If by some outrageous turn of events you haven’t already got into Game of Thrones, it will be that. You will get giddy together watching the ninth episode of each season (invariably where all the MEGA SHIT goes down). You will shudder together and comfort each other when that loveable rogue gets his head mashed into a fine paste. You will grow horny together when everyone fucks, which is thrice per episode. You will cheer on those blissful rare occasions when a villain finally receives his or her comeuppance and has their bowels absolutely kicked in by a scowling Northern man.
3. You will attempt to cook romantic meals for each other and they will be shit
As Richard Nixon famously said: I am not a cook. I recall a time in my second year of university when I got really high and, ravaging the cupboard for ingredients to scrape together into something resembling a meal, I hollowed out some large tomatoes, filled them with tuna, and sealed them shut by melting cheese over the top. It was quite tasty. Consequently, for Valentine’s Day I decided to recreate this culinary extravaganza for my partner. However, to speed up the cooking process I opted not to cook the tomatoes in the oven, but to microwave them. Four minutes later, my girlfriend sitting expectantly at the dinner table (set up in the living room, beside a clothes horse laden with damp underpants) was presented with a plate containing a steaming mound of tuna surrounded by a moat of watery red juice.
4. You will do a lame couples costume for Halloween
It will most likely be Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow, because you now love Game of Thrones more than you love each other. Other spooky possibilities include Jack and Sally Skellington, the Joker and Harley Quinn, or the Kray Twins. You will have drunk sex still in your costumes later that night, and depending on your costume choice it will either be outrageously sexy or just… just awful.
5. People will give you a lame couples nickname
It’s all Bradgelina’s fault; damn those two plump-lipped Veela (Harry Potter reference, anyone? No? Fine). Some couple names work when compounded, some do not. Let’s say your name is, oh I don’t know, Otis. And you are dating a woman named… pfff… Mildred. After the three month mark, you can bet your arse that your most annoying friends will refer to you henceforth under the singular noun: Miltis. No wait, that’s shit. Let’s say you were called Jack and Laura. You could be Jaura? Lack?
Ugh, you know what, all couple names are shite. Kimye. TomKat. Bennifer. Right, let’s just pretend this whole paragraph never happened. Delete. I am sorry.
6. You will never get an STI
Ah, such smugness you will enjoy! Such bliss, sitting together in the morning cradling mugs of tea as your flatmates stagger home, ashen-faced and bedraggled, their wallets emptied, regret in their expression, viral infections coursing through their veins. You, my friends, will never know such anguish. As your flatmates slink away to their bedrooms, you and your partner will exchange a knowing look, and be at peace, safe in the knowledge that the barriers of Love and Commitment are shielding you from that scary world singles inhabit, one of red-faced who-are-you mornings and peculiar itchings.
7. Vouchers
[CAVEAT: I am making the assumption that your first LTR will begin in your un-monied youth, and that you are not the offspring of landed gentry]
You will go on dates every now and then – usually when the loan first hits if you’re students – and you will sit in a restaurant looking middlingly presentable. You will skip the starter, eat a nice main course, and share a dessert. You will drink one glass of water each. At the end of the meal, you will discretely, ever so discretely, slip the waitress a little bit of paper. It is a Pizza Express 2-for-1 voucher, and will save you the princely sum of six pounds each.
8. You will have your first drunken argument <3
It will doubtless be in a sports bar called something like ‘BALLERZ’ and the argument will occur after your fourth treble vodka. Perhaps a deep-buried issue finally bubbled to the surface, encouraged by the deluge of cheap alcohol. Perhaps one of you suggested that the other calm down a tad, thereby pressing the big red button for the classic ‘YOU NEVER SUPPORT ME YOU BASTARD’ row to go full-on Bikini Atoll. The reason for the argument is irrelevant; the fact is, though you do not presently recall what it was, you are convinced that what your partner did wrong thirty or forty minutes ago must have been irrevocably bad, and so withhold forgiveness until the next morning, when you roll over and greet each other with a puzzled frown and vague memories of a impassioned high-street row over whether to purchase chips from Pita Pan or Abra-Kebabra.
9. One of you will work harder than the other
If, like I did, you opt to study a degree and choose a profession that is not particularly taxing mentally, then you will be required to prop up your more academic partner as they lurch from job to job, wilting ‘neath the cruel gaze of a thousand mean bosses called Gareth and/or Linda. They will weep in fear as deadlines loom; you will order you both a morale-boosting Domino’s. They will roll out of bed at 5am for the commute; you will wish them a pleasant day and contemplate learning how to poach an egg. They will sit up until 3am frantically typing up reports; you will sit beside them carefully fashioning a bong out of an apple.
10. You’ll sneak away from nights out together and piss everyone off
It’s three in the morning and your single friends are swaying around pretending to dance, desperately trying to work up the courage to talk to the hottie they’ve been angling themselves towards all evening. ‘Just one more drink’, they slur, ‘for the squad’. Don’t blame them too much; they are horny. That’s okay, everyone wants to do some shagging from time to time; it is fine, it is human.
You, on the other hand, you can do all the shagging you want right now if you just head home with your partner. You could even get a kebab on the way! But your single friends will never let you leave, not now. ‘Boring’, they will heckle. They will pull on your arm. They will buy you another drink. So, of course, the only reasonable thing to do is to slip away with your partner while nobody is looking, running away down the street, cackling like hyenas before slipping into an alleyway for a quickie.
Romeo and Juliet, eat your star-crossed hearts out.
