My Knight in Shining Armour

The other night, I read poetry to The History Boy...

Yes, I know. Yuck, yuck, yuck!

Pass the sick bag, pur-lease!

We also lay in bed this morning staring mushily into each other's eyes. Last night, he even used the L word. So did I. Then we both started laughing at how ridiculously sloppy we were being. But even whilst we were laughing, I felt as if something had shifted. Something momentous had happened.

Part of me is struggling against this new, mushy Siani. How can it be that I've gone from a cynical, independent person who would have been happy with Fuck Buddy status with Hot FB Guy to somebody's girlfriend? Somebody who stares dreamily out of the window at work thinking about him while her bottom set Year 9 boys rampage around the room throwing bits of chewed up paper and hitting each other with rulers?

Recently, I was reading an article in 'Marie Claire' about Dolly Parton. She has been married to the same guy since she was eighteen. That surprised me. Then I started considering why I should find this so strange. After all, what is so unusual about living happily ever after?

We live in a strange duality, an uncomfortable contradiction. As children we're read fairy stories about princesses who are rescued by their prince (dashing, manly and with piercingly rugged good looks) and then ride off into the sunset. We're conditioned to believe in that perfect ending. Then, as we get older, we realise that things aren't that easy. That the knight may have issues, or huge personal problems. That people disappoint us. And more often than not, we disappoint ourselves and make huge mistakes which we are prone to repeating over and over again.

Recently, I've realised that I consider divorce and unhappy, broken relationships to be the norm. In the media, and in real life, we are surrounded with images of stress and angst and stories of couple who are going through awful break ups. Much of my time with my girlfriends is spent discussing how unhappy we are and how hard it is to find a bloke who doesn't have issues, some kind of fatal flaw, or is in love with someone else. At every turn, I'm expecting something to go horribly, disastrously wrong with The History Boy. I know it's only been three weeks and there is still plenty of time for that. I also know that I'm projecting all my anxieties from past relationships onto him, especially the trauma that I went through with my ex-husband who disappointed me so badly that I find it hard to trust anyone any more.

But I have this feeling that I'm done with all that. I have this feeling that I've finished with one part of my life and I can never go back to how I was before. Granted, The History Boy doesn't have a white charger. I don't have long golden hair (It's kind of ginger at the moment after a traumatic visit to a hairdressers where they didn't speak English, but that's another story). And there are no evil dwarves or dragons to slay. But sitting in bed with someone on a Saturday morning wearing one of his T-shirts, drinking a cup of tea and just being quiet is more romantic to me than all that. It's more romantic than a Hollywood kiss under a waterfall. It's more romantic than a man in chain mail rescuing me from a tower where I've been held captive by the Black Knight.....

Actually, come to think of it, it's almost as if The History Boy has rescued me. He's done this by being honest, and kind, and straightforward about his feelings. It's as if he's held that castle door open and allowed me to step outside, shaking off all the restricting anxieties and issues that I had, and the persistent belief that I was totally unlovable and destined to die alone. I feel like I've just woken up from a hundred year sleep caused by pricking my finger on a large spindle of disappointment, confusion and unhappiness.

We've discussed what we're going to do in the future. We've discussed our feelings on babies, marriage and the kind of life we want to have. All hypothetical, of course. I'm still undecided on the baby front. I don't even know how I would cope with sacrificing my life as it is now to squeezing out a couple of kids and devoting the rest of my life to raising them. But it does look like I might not end my days in a grotty flat, surrounded by gin bottles and old copies of 'The Lady'. My future looks a bit different now.

Come to think of it, I think The History Boy would look hot in a suit of armour. I wonder if Ann Summers stocks chain mail?