I was 17 when I started dating my first serious boyfriend. Over 9 months, that relationship had everything; breakups, makeups, mono, light stalking, and meddlesome exes.
You never know what’s going to have the biggest long-term impact on you until time rips through your memory and you look back at a situation and see what’s left standing. Strangely, one of my loudest memories of that time is of his ex-girlfriend- whom I’d never even met.
I’d been dating this guy for a few weeks when he decided to tell me that his ex was pregnant with his baby. (Side note: not the first time I’d be in that exact situation because (omfg you guys, MY CHOICES).
Learning about this was a HUGE RED FLAG. I was a kid, but relatively level -headed, so even though I already really liked him, I was like, ‘Hey look if you need to take some time to figure out things with her , then please do that.” But she had cheated on him or something and so he doubted he was the father or even if there was really a pregnancy.
I never heard anything more about her or this possible baby again, but one of the last things she’d told him was that she thought that I was a witch and that the only reason he was with me was because I had put a spell on him. And no, in case you were wondering, this did not take place in the 1600’s where that was maybe a normal thing to suggest as a reason for your BF breaking up with you.
I mean, sure, I wore a lot of black, but it was the 90’s and I also wore a lot of ripped jeans and flannels. Still, I guess something about me even then oozed Obvious Sorceress because how else could I entice someone to date me? I think this was the last time I took being called a witch as an insult though, so hooray for growth.
I tell this story because even if I’d ever had a magic spell for enticing a man, I certainly didn’t have one for keeping him. Keeping someone interested requires a different bag of tricks, so because it’s Forced Hand Romance and Overpriced Flowers Day, I’m once again pulling back the curtain to give some more insight into I do to keep my marriage fresh.
I keep things playful. Occasionally I would just drop to the ground and scream “Growing Pains!” or “Maaaash” in hopes that it would kick off a classic game from my 1980’s youth. It never did. Mark would just give me a curious, indecipherable look before stepping around me and walking right out of the store or restaurant or wherever we happened to be. Not one to be discouraged I kept this up for a long time before finding out that he had never even heard of TV Tag. I’ve since moved on to initiating impromptu games of hide and seek. I’ll hide for hours. He never finds me and it is so very dark.
I’m Spontaneous. AS demonstrated above, there are many ways to do this and I try to mix it up. Sometimes I will call to him frantically from the bath and when he flings open the door to see what’s wrong, he is met with sight of my enormous bubble phallus that I have molded over my body. Our eyes lock. I add two more handfuls of bubbles and shape them to the sides of my bubble dong. We do not break eye-contact. Our marriage is one long showdown to see who will blink first. He backs away and closes the door. We do not speak of this again.
I share wisdom. I like to work in proverbs that I’ve made up and say are things my dad used to say all the time like, “Well, every man makes his own laundry in life” and “Remember, you gotta fuel your car before you fuel your dreams” or “The first secret to success is knowing,” I tap my forehead. “How to spell it.”
Secret Bjork. I like to pretend I’ve secretly been Bjork this whole time. I perch on the couch and explain in my Bjork voice how colors smell and what feathers think about the wind. I tell stories in cloud language and tell him about the secret flowers that control time and the futility of pants.
These things may not work for everyone, but I will say that in the beginning, Mark just used those traditional 3 little words to carry the weight of his feelings for me, but over time those feelings deepened and became more complex,-too complex to be summed up with a simple, “I love You.” Instead, now he whispers five words softly, “What is wrong with you?” or “Why are you like this?”
Tenth anniversary this summer!
