Fairytales & Real Life

Prompted by Stephs post, ….

Let me tell you a story -

My sister was engaged to a complete a**hole - seriously f**ked up guy who, incidentally, is now dead as he got beaten to death by a group of bikers as he tried to scr*w them over (did I mention he was stupid, too?) Anyway, long before that bit happened, she left him & moved to Brisbane to join the rest of the family. I was in high school at this stage and she'd been in Brisbane for about 6 months & was looking for a real job as she hated modelling and wanted a normal life.

I got home from school one day and wandered into the living room, dumped my bag in the door way and said' how was your day?'

I knew she'd had a job interview that day & I guessed it hadn't gone well as she was sitting bolt upright on the couch staring off into space with an odd look on her face. When I spoke, she blinked, turned her head slowly and looked at me and said blankly 'I just met the man I'm going to marry' (Yes, that look was actually shock)
I looked at her and was like 'wtf??????'
And she said, 'I'm serious, I met the man I am going to marry'

She had gone for the job interview and as she went to open the office door, it was opened from the inside by a man (C), she made eye contact with him and she said 'it was like I'd been punched in the stomach - I couldn't breathe, I couldn't even speak - I just looked at him and thought 'oh my god, its on'

She went in for the interview and C was sitting there flicking through her resume going 'So do you like sport? What types of sport are you into?' M was still in shock and said 'Umm - shouldn't you be asking me about my qualifications?' and C said 'oh no - you've got the job... So what type of sport do you like?'

Up until this point, my future bother in law had been a total player - I wont even bother telling you the stories - we've all heard them before.

Anyhoo - C was seeing 3 girls at the time and he was so scared that M would think he was playing games that he simply refused to take their calls - so she was having to lie to them and in the end she cracked it and told him to get his sh*t together and get rid of them as she wasn't taking messages anymore, so he agreed to take the calls but only if they were on speaker phone and she was in the office with him so she could hear what he was saying to them.

Bear in mind that they hadn't even been on their first date yet.

One day, out of the blue, he said to her, 'So I guess I should probably meet your parents then' He met mum & dad before they had gone on their first date.

The day after they went on their first date ( couple of months after she started working there ) she called him the next morning as soon as she woke up - she said it wasn’t taking a risk or moving too fast – “ its on & we both know it, when it’s a happening thing it’s a happening thing”

The first time she made a move to sleep with him, he said no - it was going to happen, they both knew it was going to happen & that it was going to be great when it did, but that wasn't was this was about…...

They used to work together all day, go out to dinner after work then when the restuarant or bar closed they would sit in the car and hold hands and talk until they fell asleep and at about 4am they would wake up and drive back to their own houses (M was living at home at this stage and C was living with his grandmother as she couldn't live by herself & refused to go into a home) get ready for work & then go do it all again.

Fast forward a year or so later to their engagement and C is standing there, pi**ed as a newt, telling me about when he first met her -

'I knew I had to interview some chick (can you believe he used the word chick??) for the job but figured I had time to run across the road to grab a can of coke first, I opened the door and saw M standing there, thought 'f**k, she's hot' …. and then we made eye contact - it was like I'd been punched in the stomach and I thought, 'holy sh*t - it's on' and that’s the moment I knew it was all over and every day since then has been leading to this (vague gesture towards the engagement party). I rang R and asked him to be my best man when I married M. He was like 'Who the f**k is M??' And I said 'she's the woman I met today & she's the woman I am going to marry' ... if you ever tell your sister I told you this - I will kill you"

C, the ultimate player, knew as soon as he met her that she was the one and he didn't want to risk losing her so he didn't stuff her around, he was totally clear from the beginning where it was going and he never once risked playing games.

M, who after everything that she had been through (and let me assure you, she had been to hell & back) and had never believed in love at first sight - in fact, at that point, she didn't even believe in love - knew the second she laid eyes on him that he was the one.

I am not saying that they have lived happily ever after - they have 2 children now which is always a test of a relationship but even before that - they fought and they got shitty with each other, she’s punched holes in walls (she's an Aries & she's little volatile sometimes) and things were so bad between them at one stage that my parents begged her to come home to take some time out to think about what they wanted.

M just looked at them like they were crazy and said ' You just don't get it do you? No matter how bad things are, we are going to work through it because there is no other option for us, no matter how bad things are with him at the moment, they would be worse without him and at the end of the day, as much as I want to smack his head in right now, I cannot imagine waking up in the morning for the next 50 years and his face not being on the pillow next to mine - this is forever and we both know it. Why do you think when we argue and I walk out of the house and drive off, he doesn't come after me and vice versa? Because we both know that the other person is always coming back - no matter what has been said"

To this day, since they first met, they have never spent more then 48 hours apart.

They restore my faith in relationships.

Relationships do require work, but they shouldn't be hard. (I hope you understand the distinction). The point I making here is simple but at the same time, one that everyone finds hard to grasp - this is why I have told you about them - not because I feel the need to fill 2 pages with a story about people that you don't know, I do actually have some work to do today after all - but because we all think it doesn't happen in real life but it does. It exists. I have seen it.

It's not the fairytale we grew up on – fairytales don’t age or argue (and they never hesitated to argue in front of me, I can assure you of that), they don’t get sick or have mortgages or in-laws – this is better because this is real and it will happen to you one day.

You don’t have to believe it before hand - you just have to believe it when it happens. And when it happens, you will know it. In my sisters words "It picks you up and spins you round and slams you full body length into the wall - believe me, you know"

We all go into relationships looking for the 'one' - because if you are not looking for the 'one' then what are you doing? You are wasting your time and theirs and while you are wasting time, you might just miss your 'one' because you were too busy sorting some other sh*t out that you didn't really need to go through.

I do believe there can be more then one 'one' for each of us and I don’t believe it happens like this for everyone – I think some people will never experience what my sister & her husband have but you have to be open to it in case it does.

One of my housemates has just had it happen to her – she didn’t believe anymore and she’s just been nailed by it. Don’t give up hope but in the meantime, take time out for you, you need to know who you are and what you can bring to the table – what do you have to offer a partner? If you can’t answer that then you are not ready.