It’s New Year’s Eve, and everyone is boisterous and merry, except for one rather glum-looking friend whose eye I catch across the makeshift dancefloor. She and her girlfriend of four years aren’t in a very good place, she slurs over the music, and she’s not sure how to fix it. She’s not sure if there’s anything left to be fixed. I put an arm around her shoulder and try to cheer her up as best I can, telling her it’ll all look better in the morning. Later, as the sun comes up on a frosty new year and the last remaining revellers pull on their hats and scarves and head out into the world, she gives me a hug goodbye before gesturing to my wife and asking, “How do you do it? What’s your secret?”
I’ve had this question a lot over the course of my 14-year relationship with Sarah and I’ve asked it myself on occasion, too. We’re by no means a perfect couple – no such thing exists, if you ask me. So why is it we’re still together when so many of the couples around us have gone their separate ways? I haven’t been to a single lesbian wedding (apart from my own) where the couple are still together, and people are often shocked to find out how many years we’ve clocked up. Even more shocked that we’re – gasp! – happy. Rewatching old episodes of The L Word recently, I realised with horror that Sarah and I had somehow become the Bette and Tina of our friendship group. That one couple everyone puts on a pedestal, proof of the existence of true love or something. In fact, on more than one occasion, friends have told us that if we were to break up, that would be their faith in love destroyed forever. Yikes, guys. Talk about pressure. Being held up as role models for long-term love is a weird one, especially when – for a time – I worried I wasn’t capable of making a lasting commitment. My first two relationships ended because I fell in love with someone else, leaving me feeling like there was something wrong with me. Why couldn’t I have the happily-ever- after kind of love you see in films?
While I’m still not convinced that kind of love exists outside of Ryan Gosling films, falling for Sarah way back when changed something in me. It made me want to try for forever.