Aisha (36) and her husband met as children. Children who let themselves be carried away by a childhood sweetheart, which, now that it had grown up, turned out to be completely undergrown. “We looked at each other like two teenagers.”
“I know him from primary school. He used to run down the halls with his friends and I’d think, what’s the matter with guys wanting to make a competition out of everything? Together with his best friends, he dug dangerous underground tunnel systems in vacant lots, which, like the meter-high tree houses, were demolished by order of the police, following which they simply started once more.
“I remember everything. How we went to the same high school, and how I was sent out by my girlfriend to file with him for her. He was leaning once morest the door frame, didn’t want to know anything regarding that girlfriend, but had a nice laugh. To me. I was 14 and he was 16. When I left a prom early because I saw a boy I had a little crush on kissing another girl, he sat on top of a long row of shopping carts at the supermarket next to the school and we chatted what.
“And when I heard later – not from him of course, because that was not the case – that he liked me, I was happier than I expected. During the Easter holidays we went to the cinema together. After the movie, he bumped his elbow on my head as he put on his jacket, and we both felt a momentary depression, but mostly guilty regarding the other’s discomfort, because in our minds these kinds of bumps didn’t belong on a first date. Then he dropped me off at home and we kissed. He asked, “Do we have anything now?” “Yes,” I said. And that sealed our relationship.
“That was 22 years ago now. Looking back, it’s like we had to invent love together from the very beginning. We didn’t know anything regarding each other when we started, just that we thought each other was pretty and fun. And I also knew that he was good at building huts. I was in third grade, he was in fourth. He worked at a snack bar on weekends and often brought me a chocolate milkshake when he was done. He never talked regarding ‘bitches’ like his friends did, but then once more, how did you go regarding building a relationship?
“I found it most difficult when he started studying. I had two more years to go to high school and felt let down. That feeling remained when I later also went to college and found the transition to life as a student more difficult than he did. But the real big crisis came when he went on a surfing holiday and I heard through a friend that there had been a girl he liked.
“We had always found dealing with third parties complicated. Whether it was a colleague or an idol on television. ‘Do you think she’s pretty?’, I might suddenly ask when we watched TV. ‘Yes,’ he would say. And no matter how indifferent his voice sounded at times, his answer always disturbed me. I thought, and he agreed with me: when you are together, you only look at each other. And when you suddenly like someone else, something is wrong with your relationship. And now there was a girl he had liked while surfing.
“I was upset and asked him regarding it. He said, “Yes, I liked her, but nothing happened and it doesn’t mean anything.” And even though I believed there had been no kissing, his confession set off a stream of thoughts. Because if he liked her, did he also like that one colleague at the time, and if there were so many women he also liked and beautiful, what was our relationship even like?
“We had been together for ten years at that time and had just bought our first apartment. It sounds rather childish now, but of course we had started as children, children who had been carried away by a childhood sweetheart, who, now that it had grown up, turned out to be completely undergrown. We were 24 and 26 years old, with a house and wedding plans, but the way we looked at each other was like that of two teenagers. We gritted each other’s eyes and made it difficult for ourselves by pretending that monogamy and exclusivity should make us deaf and blind to others. Ten years we had walked on our toes.
“Was everything suddenly different? ‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘what is still real? Are you still happy with me?’ And he calmly replied that he had come to understand that apparently you can like someone else without it affecting your relationship. I asked through and through – I was not so easily persuaded. I wanted him to talk until I was sure I was unique to him. He had caused my insecurity and now he had to fix it for me. But somehow his words didn’t stick, I didn’t understand them.
“The confidence only came back when I started to realize that I was going to be okay no matter what, even if this relationship ended one day. That I can just breathe without him. That if I feel insecure, only I can do something regarding it. A very simple, small realization, but nevertheless an eye-opener with major consequences.
“It had taken a long time, but following ten years the grip in which we had held each other since our teenage years finally loosened. We remain monogamous, of course, but I am no longer afraid of losing him. We’ve had two kids, I’ve started dancing more, I’ve become more lively and social, I’ve even learned to flirt a little. I can handle setbacks better. It’s so easy to smother each other and just be a family, especially when you’ve known each other for so long. But it’s nicer to stay two separate people. Going out together is now also more fun: sometimes we play pool or smoke a water pipe. Someone approached us recently: ‘Is this your first date or your third? My girlfriend and I have a bet, you two are so much fun together.”