In 2008, I was in my mid-20s and single. My relationships until then had all been fun, flirty and conflict-free – which was unsurprising, given I expended so much energy on male approval.
Depressingly, this seemed normal in the 00s and demanded a specific type of vigilance. As well as trying to look perfect for every date, there was also the effort of trying to be perfect: bright and funny and engaging and fragrant, but also vaguely unavailable. Endearingly kooky was OK; but I didn’t want to come across as weird. Misery and anger were off limits. I never risked showing I cared. No wonder love had failed to launch.
My relationship with Luke started differently because we knew each other already. For several years, we had worked on adjacent pages at the same newspaper; he had seen me on deadline, in my gym clothes and hungover. We were friends, but not close.
Then, during a snowy spell, he began giving me lifts to work. Our conversations, side by side in traffic, felt natural and then increasingly intimate. We started organising office nights out, where we would only speak to each other, and finally progressed to a drink “on the way” to a colleague’s birthday celebrations (spoiler: we never got to the party).
But, once we were officially a couple, I reverted to romance mode. My legs were silky, my flat was curated and my underwear matched. Because I really liked him, I was more careful than ever. I delayed responding to messages, and rarely sent the first text. A lot of the time, I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I didn’t know any other way to be in a relationship.
One morning, about two months in, after Luke had spent the night at my flat, he set off to work before me. We said goodbye on the landing, still in the sweet stage of protracted parting. As his footsteps retreated down the stairs to the front door, I walked into the bathroom, undressed, turned to open the shower and stubbed my toe on a new door stop.
For a split second, I couldn’t compute the pain coursing up my leg. Without thinking, I did what I’ve always done in moments of private shock and agony – I roared. Many people swear, but I’ve always preferred to unleash a kind of bellow of fury, somewhere between a Nadal serve and an outraged neanderthal.
The next thing I heard was Luke’s footsteps running back up the stairs. This time I did swear, internally. Clearly, he had not left yet. He would have heard my bizarre and, to my mind, wildly unfeminine reaction. To make it worse, when he appeared in the bathroom doorway, I was naked apart from a frilly shower cap.
But, from my hunched position between the shower and loo, I registered that he looked more alarmed than appalled. Once the pain abated, I was flooded with mortification. How odd my raw, guttural bellow must have sounded, especially amplified by the bathroom acoustics. How unlike the insouciant image I took such care to project. When I explained, he looked relieved – not repulsed, or ready to ridicule me, but reassured that I wasn’t mortally wounded.
“I thought you’d really hurt yourself,” he said, before tactfully acknowledging that a toe stub can feel apocalyptic. We hugged again, he left again, and that was it.
I stood in the shower, wondering why I had not wanted Luke to hear that noise. How had I expected him to react? And what did it say about me, that I thought I was only allowed to feel pain with a delicate, palatable squeal? Luke had never given me any reason to believe that he thought women should behave a certain way; it was me who held these adolescent notions. Somewhere along the line, I had come to believe that men were an intolerant bunch with Hollywood expectations of women as ice queens, manic pixie dream girls or damsels in distress.
I questioned why I was filtering myself and – if I saw us lasting – whether I really wanted to do so for ever. I can’t say I stopped immediately, but slowly I let the unedited version of myself break free. The roar served as a reminder that this relationship could be different, if I only let it. And I did – and it was. That summer of 2009 was one of the happiest of my life – we got engaged three years later, and have now been married for nearly 15 years.
When I mentioned the toe stubbing incident to Luke recently, he had no memory of it. And no wonder: he has now seen me give birth three times and stub my toe many more, so he hears my roar on a regular basis.
Still, that first time felt seminal. I stopped seeing relationships as a case of following The Rules. And these days I’m quick to correct my sons when they refer to something as being “for girls”. Even my frilly shower caps.
