ORDINARY LOVE

Field Notes: The Holiday Myth

I used to believe holidays were where marriages went to get repaired.

Photography: Luca Bravo

A pause. A reset. A chance to finally become the couple you thought you were supposed to be during the rest of the year. Except this time with a view and better lighting.

I loved holidays with determination. The more turquoise the water, the more hopeful I felt. Hawaii. The Seychelles. The Maldives. Mauritius. Almost every island in the Caribbean. If an airport lounge could stamp it, we went.

And yet, somehow, they often ended in tears. Not dramatic tears. Quiet ones. The kind you have in a hotel bathroom while someone you love is patiently waiting for you to “just come down to the beach.”

I prepared for holidays the way one prepares for an exam you cannot revise for. New dresses. Books I thought would make me seem relaxed. And, once, a very Brazilian bikini wax, entirely for the sake of romance, which hurt like a bitch and achieved absolutely nothing except making me resentful in a swimsuit.

I wanted connection. I wanted long walks, long talks, shared books, accidental hand holding. I imagined we would become softer versions of ourselves; sun-kissed and emotionally available.

My husband wanted peace, quiet… and activity.

He wanted to wake early, move his body, explore, read alone, and not have a scheduled emotional summit meeting before breakfast.

He was not wrong. But I was not wrong either. We were simply bringing different definitions of love onto the same airplane.

This year I surprised him in New York. It was, quite unintentionally, the first successful holiday of our marriage. For me, it was a holiday. For him, it was freedom.

He worked during the day; calls, emails, long purposeful walks with headphones in. And I wandered. I visited my old haunts: SoHo, the Meatpacking District, Bleecker Street, Washington Square Park, the Upper East Side. I went into shops I didn’t need to buy from and cafés I didn’t need to sit in. I remembered versions of myself that existed before I was someone’s partner.

We met in the evenings. Friends appeared. There was wine. There was laughter that went on slightly too long and stories that had already been told many times but somehow improved with age. No one was trying to extract meaning from the moment. No one was trying to turn the week into proof of anything. And something unexpected happened.

Without the pressure of togetherness, we found each other. Because we weren’t performing the idea of a couple on holiday anymore. We weren’t trying to manufacture intimacy simply because a beach demanded it. We met as two people who had both had full days and who actually had something to bring back to each other.

We connected in smaller, easier ways. A shared look across a table. Walking home at night. A quiet morning coffee without an agenda attached to it.

It turns out love does not always grow in uninterrupted proximity.

Sometimes it grows in the spaces people are finally allowed to keep.

Maybe this is the gift of middle age. You stop asking one person to be your travelling companion, your emotional translator, your best friend, your intellectual equal, your activity partner and your constant source of reassurance. All before lunch.

You start allowing them to be themselves. And strangely, that is when closeness arrives.

Love, I am learning, is not necessarily long walks on the beach. Sometimes love is agreeing to meet at 7:30 and actually looking forward to it.

Love hasn’t disappeared.  It has simply stopped performing. It has taken root in reality.

Three ordinary questions

• Are you unhappy in your relationship or in the script you thought love was supposed to follow?

• Do you want more togetherness, or do you want to miss each other again?

• What parts of yourself have you quietly asked your partner to carry for you?

Love did not become bigger. It became calmer. And somewhere between separate days and shared evenings, I realised:the marriage I kept trying to create on holidays was the one we were quietly living all along.