So the other day while I was washing dishes, I was thinking about my relationship history before I married Chris. I didn’t have many long term relationships. Two that lasted over five years (Chris was one). Other than that the pattern seemed to be three months or a year and a half. And part of me always beat myself up for having so many short term relationships that I deemed somehow “unsuccessful” even though I was the one who ended them all.

It hit me the other day that the pattern exists because my first relationship was such a good fit. I had a really good template. So my expectations and standards were very high. And that helped me weed out a lot of potential relationships, because I already knew what a good fit felt like, and they weren’t it. I also realise that the further I got from that ideal relationship time-wise, the messier my love life got. Because the memory of what that perfect fit felt like got more and more blurry. Sometimes I wondered if it was even real, if it had even been that good.

Chris and I will have been together for four years in June. The time has flown by. It’s been mostly extremely happy with the occasional what-the-fuck-am-I-even-doing moments. I think I was so lucky, to find love, true love not just once, but twice. I see now that my track record didn’t mean I sucked at relationships. It meant I was discerning and I knew when to walk away from something that wasn’t working for me. That I was open to love but strong enough to stand on my own. And ultimately, I got my happy ending (insert massage joke here) so what does it matter how I got here? I’m really, really happy. It’s working out for me this time. Everything else was just training wheels.