Working Wives & Bachelorettes: 50 Shades of Reality

Someone bugged me the other day about my Prelude to 50 post and asked where the actual 50 Shades of Grey post was. I finished the books, so it fell off my radar. My self-diagnosed ADD has a way of doing that. If it isn’t in front of me, happening right now, I tend to forget and move on. Unless it is on a list, in which case I will tend to it because I have to cross said item off. But I digress.

I read 50 Shades of Grey. Being a long-time lover of literature and classics and an avid reader, I avoid fan fiction. One, I pretend that my not-so-sophisticated self is better than mediocre writing. That coming from someone who has never written nor published a book! Two, I prefer non-fiction to most any other type of writing. Three, and most truthfully, I don’t want to HAVE to read more than one of anything. One book, wrapped up by the end, all nice and neat.

With all of that being said, I read all three. I got sucked in. I actually took my time because I didn’t want the books to end! Though my husband benefited, ahem, from me reading the books, he also paid a price.

The books focus so much on the physical, just-met-you, wanna-do-everything-to-make-you-happy, crazy-in-love, can’t-keep-my-hands-or-mind-off-of-you, it makes the reader yearn for that again. The sweet email saying you miss them. The random flowers for no reason. The just-between-you-and-me comment or compliment. The I-have-to-be-next-to-you-always feeling. After 13 years, two babies, multiple degrees, houses and jobs, that goes away. And, in reading the books made me very, very sad.

Let me preface this with—my husband and I have a wonderful relationship. One that neither of us takes for granted. We work VERY hard at keeping things together, when, if you knew our personal situation and setbacks, would and have ruined many relationships. However, I still pined for that “just started dating” feeling again with him. I wanted some of that back. So I talked to him. We each tried a bit harder to hold hands, kiss each other for no reason, tell one another daily why we love each other. I even made a sign for our bathroom that said “I love you because….” and put it in a picture frame. Each day we would write back and forth in dry erase marker to one another what we loved.

I was a little less sad about what slowly changed throughout the last 13 years. Until I realized, and I guess I knew this, but never articulated it, even in my own mind, that what we have worked for and sacrificed for and built and created together is so much more awesome than merely having googly eyes for each other or not being able to keep our hands off of one another.

Mitt Romney’s wife recently said “We don’t have a storybook marriage, we have a real marriage.” True or not for them, it’s a good point. Story book relationships are just that, story book, made up, ficticious. Maybe this is why I typically read non-fiction. Reality is so much better than make believe!