‘I started to realize that if I feel insecure, only I can do something about it’

Aisha (36): ‘I know him from primary school. He was always running down the halls with his friends and I would think: what possesses boys to want to make a competition out of everything? Together with his best friends, he dug dangerous underground corridors on vacant land, which, just like the meter-high tree houses, were demolished by order of the police, after which they simply started again.

I remember everything. How we went to the same high school, and how my girlfriend sent me to ask for her to date him. He was leaning against the door frame, didn’t want to know anything about that girlfriend, but laughed very nicely. To me. I was 14 and he was 16. When I left a school dance 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 later – not from him, of course, because that’s not how it went – I heard that he liked me, I was happier about that than I had expected. In May we went to the cinema together. After the film, he bumped my head with his elbow as he put his coat on, after which we both felt equally depressed, but especially guilty about the inconvenience of the other, because these kinds of bumps in our heads were not part of a first date. Then he dropped me off at home and we kissed. He asked, “Do we have anything now?” “Yeah,” I said. And with that, our courtship was sealed.

Dealing with third parties

That is now 22 years ago. Looking back, it’s like we had to invent love together from the beginning. We didn’t know anything about each other when we started, just that we liked each other pretty and nice. And that he was good at building huts, I also knew that. I was in 3-havo/vwo, he was in 4-havo. He worked weekends in a snack bar and often brought me a chocolate milkshake when he was finished. He never talked about “bitches” like his friends did, but then again, how did you do that, build a relationship?

I found it most difficult when he went to study in Amsterdam. I had two more years to go to high school and felt abandoned. That feeling persisted when I later went to college and found the transition to life as a student more difficult than he was. But the real big crisis came when he went on a surf vacation 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 beautiful, I could suddenly ask when we were watching TV on the couch. Yes, he said. And no matter how indifferent his voice sometimes sounded, his answer always disturbed me. I thought, and he agreed: when you’re together, you only look at each other. And when you suddenly like someone else, there’s something wrong with your relationship. And now there was a girl he’d liked while surfing.

Not fully grown

I was upset and asked him about it. He said, “Yeah, I liked her, but nothing happened and it doesn’t mean anything.” And even though I believed there had been no kissing, his confession sparked a stream of thoughts. Because if he liked her, he would have liked that one colleague back then, and if there were so many women he also liked and liked, what was our relationship even like?

We had been together for ten years at the time and had just bought our first apartment. It sounds quite childish now, but of course we had started out as children, children who had let themselves be carried away by a childhood sweetheart, who, now that he had grown up, turned out not to be fully grown at all. 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 threw ourselves into each other’s eyes and made it difficult for ourselves by pretending that monogamy and exclusivity should make us deaf and blind to others. For ten years we had walked on tiptoe.

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 realize that apparently you can like someone else without it affecting your relationship. I asked through and through – I was not convinced that quickly. I wanted him to talk until I was sure I was unique to him. He had caused my insecurity and now he had to solve it for me. But somehow his words didn’t stick, I didn’t understand them.

Eye opener

The confidence only came back when I started to realize that I would be okay anyway, even if this relationship ended one day. That I can just breathe without him. That if I feel insecure, only I can do something about it. A very simple, small realization, but nevertheless an eye-opener with major consequences.

It had taken a long time, but finally, after ten years, the grip we had held on each other from our teens loosened. We remain monogamous, of course, but I am no longer afraid of losing him. We’ve had two children, 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 suffocate each other and be just a family, especially when you’ve known each other for so long. But it’s better to be two separate people. Going out together is now also more fun: sometimes we play pool or smoke a water pipe. Recently someone approached us: ‘Is this your first date or your third, my girlfriend and I have a bet, you two are fun together.’