At the beginning of a relationship, we’re all like identical twin sisters. Our collars are starched, our curls are loose, our eyes sparkle, our heels click. We’re capable of admiring even the moth-eaten holes in our beloved man’s sweater. On the first try, we memorize the names of all his paternal relatives—including pets and imaginary friends. We obediently agree, even if he claims he went to the same school as Jennifer Aniston and lived in a comfortable hot air balloon until he was 22.
And how much grateful joy we see in our eyes when our beloved man accidentally spills thickly powdered cornflakes on the carpet in our room. With what innocent glee we marvel at the “surprise” red rose hidden behind his back. How fascinated we study the cover of his favorite book on acoustic emission testing of aircraft structures.
Our love editor, Vika Maltseva, discusses what happens to us after marriage, and why such metamorphoses are wrongly called pretense.
We get tired of loving.
Love is fitness for the heart. You can’t work out every day for years on end and still shed tears of joy at the sight of a drooping treadmill. One day, you’ll want to get into your pajamas, turn on “Amelie,” and eat custard tarts until one in the morning. You’ll go back to the gym, but today—shhh.
We are checking.
More than anything, we need to be convinced that this nice guy, snoring with a lisp on the opposite side of the bed in the morning, is our most important, fateful meeting. Because the only thing scarier than people accidentally falling into each other’s lives is the photos of lungs on cigarette packs.
Yes, we’ve already realized that it’s good to have him around when we’re happy, cheerful, and not thinking about the bad. But what about ordinary life, where winter temperatures are twice as long as the calendar year and every other news story features a death?
We are relaxing.
So, at that very moment when we begin to believe in unconditional love from our husband, we want to become as natural next to him as is possible in principle.
We begin to believe we have it. And that it’s there for life—like a second physical body or an extra layer of skin. We stop removing the ugly mustache above our upper lip, shaving our legs above the knee, applying mascara, smiling, watching our diet, curling our hair, keeping our back straight, painting our nails, reading books. All our shoes begin to resemble slippers, all our clothes become like oversized nightgowns.
But the most amazing thing is, having become ugly, fat, and surrounded ourselves with endless buns and Ugg boots, we become genuinely happy. For about three months. And then…
We are angry.
One morning, as languid as roses on March 9th, it dawns on us: the man we love doesn’t want to love us at any cost. His feelings are full of conditions. His tenderness is a lifelong loan.
At first we get angry, then we get really angry. Then we demand explanations, repentance, tripled attention. We retreat into ourselves, into visiting, into hibernation, into childless maternity leave, into reproaches and silence. And finally, when the last salvo is just around the corner, we suddenly see the light.
We begin to feel a strange, unhealthy euphoria at the nearness of loss. It’s the same feeling we had as children, catching Mom’s vase three centimeters off the ground. Or running into class a second before a threatening teacher.
