I miss my future husband

The quiet comfort in yearning for something that may not exist

“In another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you” - Everything Everywhere All at Once, 2022

"Love is a quiet, reassuring, relaxing, pottering, pedantic, harmonious hum of a thing; something you can easily forget is there, even though its palms are outstretched beneath you in case you fall." - Dolly Alderton, Everything I Know About Love

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I was rejected by my ex in a dream last night — a humbling experience to say the least. I woke up sweating and parched, reaching for the luke-warm glass of water I’d left beside my bed to nurse my two-day hangover. It was around 5am. I’d fallen asleep to the quiet yearning of The Buccaneers in the background, placing myself in false scenarios in which I feel wanted in a way I haven’t in my actual life in many months.

It’s in this moment that I reach behind me into the empty span of space that I’ve grown so accustomed to, tracing my fingers across the few inches of the single bed that bridges the gap between me and the wall. Having slept and woken up alone in this bed almost every night for the last year, aside from a few blurry evenings scattered haphazardly across the days and months that have past, I know the intricacies of the space and how and where I fit perfectly. I’m scared that it’s now too late to transform it into a space where another could even lay beside me.

We Live in Time (2024)

In the space of this year, I’ve held relative strangers in that sweet spot between consciousness and sleep, creating a false sense of closeness firmly entrenched into my psyche with every kiss placed gently on my forehead, every forearm lazily laced across my torso. I’ve found myself fantisising about nobody in particular, longing for my future husband (who for all I know may not actually exist), missing him on heady Sunday’s when I’m hungover, wishing he would pull around the corner in some safe and convinient car when I’m stuck inside a club I don’t want to be in on a random Friday night, pretending to enjoy a night out I feel far too old for.

I miss lazy Saturday’s spent in and out of sleep, only waking up to whisper to each other between soft sheets we picked out together in Ikea, plan for a future in which we solidly see one another as the central characters, no ifs, no buts.

The Buccaneers (2023)

I miss folding laundry together after a long day at work, begrudgingly pulling the sheets over the duvet until he rolls his eyes and comes to finish the job for me, because he knows how much I hate it. I miss not actually finishing making the bed before we tumble onto it together, giggling like teenagers, kissing like we’ve only just met. I miss cups of tea in bed on weekday mornings, bickering about where I left my shoes as we slam out the door, rushed kisses before we jump on different tube lines to work, his name on my coffee cup, my picture in his wallet.

I miss comfort and security and safety, planning surprises and quiet pints. I miss dancing and drinking and laughing and talking and feeling understood. Flowing conversation without an ounce of force. Gentle hands on the small of my back as we worm our way through crowds in central London. His hand on my thigh as we drive back to the countryside to visit my parents. The warm greeting as we arrive. The “you look so happy.” And not only believing it, but truly feeling it. That sort of humming happiness that you only feel when you are truly in love; the one that shows on your skin without you even having to mention it, putting any ten-step beauty regime you may have had in the past to shame.

About Time (2013)

I miss all these things, yet more than half of them, I’ve never even experienced (aside from in my imagination). I miss things that may not ever happen to me, experiences that I may not ever be able to call my own. I miss a person who I’ve never and may not ever meet. Maybe the thoughts and feelings I feel for this fantasy are reserved for the romance novels I plan to write and have no place within my actual lived experience.

But, how do I stop them? How do I decenter my deep desire romantic love from my life?

I think I find a quiet comfort in these fantasies, in the idea that, if my brain can conjure them up, surely they exist somewhere — unwritten scripts laying calmly in a desk drawer waiting patiently for me to come along and pick them up.

Or perhaps I am well and truly delusional.

I don’t have the answer, but I don’t think I’ll stop writing pretty things about the idea of it in the meantime.

All my love,

Char x