Adam proposed my life would be somehow more luminous, glorious and triumphant than it currently is. I know, I know, it’s an illogical thought. Since his inadequacies are stacking up like the interest on a credit card in January, it does not make sense that I want to shackle myself to him on a permanent basis. The fact that I am irritated he no longer looks me in the eye when he’s talking to me (what am I on about? He rarely talks to me!). The fact that the very sight of his favourite old baggy sweatshirt now brings me out in a rash (and yet I’d previously considered it to be cuddly and snuggly – right up there with my baby blanket in terms of offering comfort). The fact that the way he chews his food, cuts his nails in bed and leaves the seat up in the loo makes me want to hold his head under water and wait for the bubbles to stop surfacing ought to add up to something other than my desire for a huge, floaty meringue number. But it doesn’t.
No matter how annoying Adam can be I find I am irrationally besieged by a belief (which grips me with the same severity as religious doctrine grabs some folk) that marrying him will somehow change things for the better between us.
I know, I know. Once again the facts would point in another direction. I’ve never met a woman who can, hand on heart, say this is the case. The vast majority of women insinuate (or openly state depending on their level of inebriation) that marriage only leads to a deepening of cracks in a relationship. Where there was a hairline fracture, throw in a dozen years of matrimony and you find an enormous chasm, a veritable gulf. Even the very happily married tend to look back fondly at the days gone by, the days of dating, when the most monumental decision a couple ever have to make is which movie to see – as opposed to endlessly debating domestic dross. Can we afford a new mattress? Is it worth insuring the house contents? Is it stupidly irresponsible to go with the quote from the first plumber who turned up to look at the leaky radiator – after all, it’s taken six weeks to get a plumber to show, can we really wait for two more?
And yet I want a proposal.
I think I need to make it clear at this point that I am not one of those women who always wanted to get married. As a child I owned Airhostess Barbie, not Bridal Barbie. I had no ambitions to endlessly re-enact a marriage between said doll and her eunuch boyfriend, Ken. Nor did I dance around the kitchen with a tea towel tied to my head and a sheet around my waist singing ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come’ (although my older sister Fiona did this until she was about fifteen). In fact I spent most of my late teens and early twenties avoiding any sort of proper relationship. I thought a guy was being unreasonably controlling and presumptuous if he insisted on knowing my surname before making a dishonest woman of me. I was a good-time girl rather than a good girl. I never bought into the nonsense that sex was in any way tied up with responsibility, disgrace, doubt, guilt or even love. As far as I was concerned sex was all about hedonistic pleasure and fun – lots and lots of fun. I suppose sexist propaganda would have it that I ought to hang my head in shame, wear sackcloth and frequently beat myself rather than own up to the fact that in my past I’ve rarely dignified any relationship with longevity. But I won’t. I can’t be that much of a hypocrite.
Then there was Adam.
I met Adam in the same way I usually met guys back then (he was the mate of a bloke I was shagging at the time). It wasn’t love at first sight or anything really corny like that – it was laugh at first sight. Not that I was laughing at him, I wasn’t; I laughed right along with him, everyone did. He was a riot. He’s one of those walking bag of gags lads. He’s full of witty one-liners, bizarre facts and decent jokes. No one delivers a punch line like Adam. We flirted from the word go but Adam kept me at arm’s length until