ARE you in the honeymoon stage of a relationship and love doing everything together? That will soon change. Here’s when, and how annoying your true love will have become.
Six months: holding hands
When you first started dating you couldn’t let go of each other, even if it meant taking up the entire pavement and forcing other pedestrians to walk in the gutter. Six months in, you’ll snatch your hand away as soon as they try to grasp it in their own cold, clammy fingers, triggering a hurt expression and several passive-aggressive comments.
Three years: the big shop
The first year of big shops after you moved in together were opportunities to show off your happiness in public: whispering sweet nothings and giggling as you perused the oranges, clogging up the aisle with your trolley as you discussed what to buy for a romantic dinner. Fast forward three years and you do it separately on alternate weeks, grateful for an hour and a half to yourself.
10 years: socialising
At first you adored hanging out with each other’s friends, and were the sort of group who irritated everyone else in restaurants by laughing incredibly loudly at each other’s jokes. But now that everyone is middle-aged and bitter about it, you can’t be arsed making an effort for anyone apart from your own mates. And even they get on your tits, if you’re honest.
15 years: having sex
Even couples who bang five times a week at the beginning eventually tire of their partner’s familiar, rapidly-sagging flesh. After five years you’ll be down to once a month and by 15 you’ll both have realised you haven’t done it for 18 months. After a brief and excruciating attempt to ‘spice things up’, you’ll silently both admit defeat and only ever see your partner naked when they leave the bathroom door open while examining their skin tags.
20 years: sleeping in the same bed
The received wisdom is that not sleeping in the same bed means your relationship is effectively over, but 20 years in you’re basically housemates anyway, so what does it matter? The bliss of not having to put up with a snoring, farting lump every night will briefly make you feel like you might rekindle some passion for each other. Only briefly, though. Once you’ve acclimatised to a solid eight hours sleep a night, sharing a bed will be like sleep deprivation torture.
40 years: sullenly watching TV together
By the time you’re pensioners, the only activity you’ll still do together is watching five hours of TV every night. You won’t be able to agree what to watch, so you’ll compromise by choosing things that are utterly dull and sit there wondering if you’ve wasted your life on the mouth-breathing moron next to you. This shared activity will eventually cease too, but this time due to death. Which is depressing, but preferable to another series of Great British Railway Journeys.
