#87: Relationship Status: Unfiltered – No. 04
‘Ms. LMN’ is 36 and has been married to her husband for 12 years and together for 18 years; they met in sixth form, were friends for two years before becoming a couple, and became inseparable
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‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ is bold, yet gentle interview series speaking to people across the spectrum of romantic and sexual experience, from high school sweethearts and solo polyamorists, to swingers, co-parents, serial monogamists and asexual folk. Each conversation follows the same of questions, revealing what people really think about love, commitment, dating and desire; from the inside of these relationships themselves.
These ‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ take place as informal chats over videocall, and I record the audio so that I can pull the responses together for the Q&A format below.
‘Ms. LMN’
Describe your current relationship status (be specific e.g. married for [x] years / co-habiting with partner(s) for [x] years / single and dating for [x] months).
‘Ms. LMN’: I’ve been married to my husband for 12 years, and we’ve been together for 18 years. We met at school in the sixth form, and we were actually friends for almost two years before we became a couple. So, I guess you could say we’re ‘childhood sweethearts’!
Are there any labels (e.g., monogamous, polyamorous, queer, traditional) you identify with in terms of relationships? How do you relate to those labels?
‘Ms. LMN’: So, we’ve never actively described ourselves with the use of a label, but we are monogamous. I suppose you could describe us as ‘traditional’ in the sense that we’re a monogamous, married, heterosexual couple. As I say, we’ve never really discussed labels. We just see ourselves as a couple, and we both agree that for us, specifically, that means only having a romantic and sexual relationship with each other. So, for us, monogamy is part of the definition of marriage. But we also respect that this isn’t the case for everyone.
What’s the story behind your current situation (e.g. please describe how you got together with your partner(s) / decided to open things up / start dating again after a big break-up)?
‘Ms. LMN’: We actually met many years ago at school, during sixth form. We were in the same year group but ran in completely different social circles, so we didn’t really connect at first. That changed when we were both cast in a school play. It was a comedy, and during rehearsals we just laughed constantly. After that, whenever we bumped into each other around school, we’d always stop and chat.
A few months later there was a bit of a turning point. I’d had a few drinks and got a little flirty, nothing too serious, just for fun, but it shifted something. I think we both suddenly realised there might be more there. We started seeing each other in the final months of school and very quickly became inseparable.
After finishing school, we both took gap years, travelling separately. I went away with a friend for four months, and he went volunteering, but we stayed together throughout. On either side of those travels, we spent almost all our time together. We went on to the same university, and he proposed during my final year.
From quite early on, we knew we wanted to spend our lives together, and for us that meant marriage. We talked about it within the first few years of our relationship. We lived together in our final year of university, then rented flats in and around London while saving for our wedding and our first house. We got married two years after graduating, and, many years later, here we are.
It does feel quite uncommon now. We’re the only people in our friendship groups who met that young and stayed together. There are a few couples we know who met in their early twenties and are still together, but when we meet new people, they often seem genuinely taken aback when we say how long we’ve been together. It feels like something quite special that belongs to us, and, if I’m honest, I think I get a bit of a kick out of telling people!
Have cultural, familial, or societal expectations shaped your relationship choices in any way? How?
‘Ms. LMN’: That’s a really interesting question. Because I met my husband so young, it’s sometimes hard to tell exactly how much cultural, familial, or societal expectations shaped my choices.
I know that I was initially drawn to his warmth. He made me laugh, and I felt very comfortable around him. That mattered a lot to me at the time, because I didn’t have much confidence, as I’d been bullied at my previous school. Feeling safe and at ease with someone was really important.
I’ve also noticed a pattern in who I’ve been attracted to. From a young age, I was always drawn to boys with darker features than my own, darker skin tones, dark hair, dark eyes. He very much fits that description. I’m very pale, freckly, blue-eyed, and I’ve always seemed to be attracted to people who look almost the opposite of me. I don’t know whether that stems from anything deeper or if it’s simply the way I am.
Personality-wise, though, we’re very similar. We both have quite a dark sense of humour, share many of the same interests, and struggle with similar things. We also both identify as neurodivergent. I think we were naturally drawn to each other because we could recognise ourselves in one another.
When I met him, I’d only ever been attracted to people of the opposite gender, and that attraction to boys felt very natural to me from the moment puberty hit. I do think that was influenced, at least in part, by my environment. Before I went to the school, where I met him, I actually attended a performing arts school where there were more openly queer people than you might find in other school settings. Because of that, I feel like if I had been drawn to other genders or different relationship structures, I probably would have recognised that fairly early on, as I was already moving in those circles.
That said, I do come from quite a traditional family. As I’ve got older, I’ve realised that I don’t necessarily agree with or support all of their views. Sometimes I wonder how they would have reacted if I’d gone down a less conventional route in my relationships or lifestyle.
I don’t know whether I consciously chose a more traditional path because of that, or whether it just happened naturally, and at this point, I’ll probably never know. But I like to think that if things had been different, I would have had the self-confidence and strength to stand my ground.
Looking back, are there patterns in how you typically form romantic and/or sexual relationships?
‘Ms. LMN’: I don’t think I’ve been in enough relationships to really know if there’s a pattern. I sometimes wonder if I’d had more time in the dating world what would have happened, and what kind of pattern might have emerged, but I don’t think I’m really able to offer much insight there.
The boyfriend I had before my husband was also someone I went to school with. We were at boarding school, so it was a very different dating setup to what most people experience, because we were living on the same premises. For us, ‘dates’ were really just going on walks around the school grounds, or sneaking into classrooms after hours to snog. During the school holidays, I went to his house once and we went to a rugby match together.
Other than that, I had a few brief things on holiday. Mostly it was just kissing boys at parties or under-18s nights, that kind of thing. And that was great fun.
After how long did your current relationship become sexual?
‘Ms. LMN: As I’ve said, we knew each other for nearly two years before we became a couple, but once we started seeing each other, things became sexual almost instantly. We were both inexperienced teenagers, full of hormones and wanting to try things out. I’d say we went from kissing to exploring lots of different things within the space of a week, maybe even a few days. We slept together after about two weeks, and in the run-up to that we’d basically done everything else.
I think we were both just a bit over-excited. Exploring someone else’s body for the first time is so good. And because we were at school together, especially boarding school, we spent a lot of time together. We saw each other every day. So even though it was a short period of time, it was a very intense period.
Boarding school was a very sexual environment. I don’t know whether the staff were aware and turned a blind eye, or whether they didn’t quite realise, but there were definitely known places that people would go. The geography classroom, for example—it was known that the teacher never locked the door, so you could always get in there at night or at the weekend. The school also had extensive grounds, so there were places you could sneak off to.
Pretty much all of my peers were doing things in a really, safe, consensual way, in the same way that a lot of people that age would have been doing it outside of school. We were 16 and upwards, and because we were living there, that was where we were.
How do your friends or family view your current relationship, and how does that affect you?
‘Ms. LMN: Some of our friends have commented that they see us as an inspiration, or as something they would like to have themselves. People have said they can see how clear it is that we’re meant to go down this path together, which is really lovely to hear. I think there are some friends who might be envying what we have. There are others who can’t really get their heads around how we’ve been together from so young, and who think they wouldn’t have liked not having so much freedom. They enjoyed having those younger years unpartnered.
I do sometimes think that we’re seen as a pair by some friends, rather than as individuals. Because we’ve been together for so long, a lot of our friends have only ever known us as an item. Because of that, I feel it’s really important for us to do things separately as well as together, and to maintain some separate friends, so we don’t lose ourselves. We are individuals, even though we are together.
Those closest to us know that we’ve tackled a lot as a couple like losing loved ones, infertility, a cancer diagnosis, and various other health conditions. Some people have commented that the fact we’ve been through all of that and are still together really shows our resilience. They’ve compared us to other couples they’ve known who went through similar things and didn’t last. So I think people do see us as very solid. But those closest to us also know it hasn’t all been smooth sailing, and that we have ups and downs like every other couple.
I think what our friends and family really see is that there’s a really deep-rooted friendship between us. More than anything else, that’s what’s kept us together, because we are best friends. I think in a relationship, some of the passion and lust is going to fade over the years, and if you don’t have that really close friendship connection underneath, that’s when you’re going to struggle.
At university, I did live with other people apart from my husband. In my first year, I was in halls, and in my second year I lived with friends I’d met at uni. Then we moved in together in third year, just the two of us. So I did have a brief experience of living with other young adults, which was nice and important. We always knew we wanted to live together at some point, probably quite early on, but at the same time we didn’t want to look back and feel like all our experiences had only ever been shared. We wanted to carve out our own friendship groups as well.
What does commitment mean to you in the context of your current relationship(s)?
‘Ms. LMN’: Commitment is another interesting one. For me, commitment means supporting each other and standing by each other in both the good times and the bad. It means not giving up on a relationship, as long as you still want to be in it and you’re both willing to put energy into it.
I think we’re committed to being each other’s best friends and being a space each other can go to. In the context of our own relationship, commitment also means monogamy. And I like to think that both of us would speak up if we were ever to have second thoughts.
How many significant relationships have you been in (if particular casual sexual arrangements were significant to you in some way, please do include those types of relationships here!)?
‘Ms. LMN: I’d say I’ve really only had one relationship, and that’s the one with my husband. I haven’t had other significant relationships beyond that.
Before him, I did have one high-school boyfriend. It was quite a superficial relationship. He was the captain of the rugby team, my friend set us up, and I thought he was absolutely gorgeous. But the conversation between us was really stilted. There was physical attraction there, at least on my part, which meant in the beginning it was exciting, because it felt quite full-on. But as time went on, we couldn’t really find any common ground.
I remember being absolutely devastated when we broke up. At the time, it felt like the end of the world. Looking back, I think that was mostly because I’d been dumped at sixteen or seventeen. I didn’t have the emotional intelligence then to realise that I didn’t actually want to be in the relationship. It only dawned on me afterwards how much more fun I was having on my own, how much more myself I felt, and how much more my personality was shining through.
I suppose that experience ended up being really significant, because when I chose my next partner, who went on to become my husband, it came from friendship first, and from laughing a lot. As I’ve said, that’s really what’s seen us through.
Other than that, my experiences were very limited. It was mostly snogging lots of boys at parties, going to under-eighteens nights, and the occasional fumble.
Previous posts in the ‘Relationship Status: Unfiltered’ series:
‘Ms. ABC’ is 36 and came out of a relationship a couple of months ago. She’s been using the dating app Hinge to get some dates but is bored of the whole process:
I share some more content from the interview with ‘Ms. ABX’ as verbatim audio clips and more transcript text where he answers the question: ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’. ‘Ms. ABC’ has lived and dated in both Manchester and London, and notes differences in how people date in the North versus the South. Paywalled: To gain access to this post upgrade to paid:
‘Mr. EFG’ is a 45-year-old married man who’s has been with his husband for 17 years in total and married for seven:
I share some more content from the interview with ‘Mr. EFG’ as verbatim audio clips and more transcript text where he answers the question: ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’. ‘Mr. EFG’ and I talk aboutand I talk about his fetish for lads in sportswear, which was influenced by the film Flash Gordon. Paywalled: To gain access to this post upgrade to paid:
‘Mr. XYZ’ revealed how the impact of media portrayals, particularly romcoms and lads mags influenced how he saw the cultural expectations of being in a relationship as an adolescent. We also chatted about the role of labels and the balance between personal freedom and relationship stability:
I share some more content from the interview with ‘Mr. XYZ’ as verbatim audio clips and more transcript text where he answers the question: ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’. ‘Mr. XYZ’ and I talk about the influence of romcom tropes on how he views relationships. We also touch on how the current ubiquity of smartphones means that people look at their screens while on the street, rather than looking around them, or at other people. Paywalled: To gain access to this post upgrade to paid:
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The ‘POSTSCRIPT’ segment for paid subscribers will drop on Wednesday 4 February and will feature extra verbatim text and an audio extract where ‘Ms. LMN’ answers the final question, ‘Anything else that you’d like to add, please do share!’ and
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I’m Almaz Ohene, a Creative Copywriter, Freelance Journalist and Accidental Sexpert.
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Please do ‘like’ this post via the heart icon (❤️) that appears at the very top and bottom of this post, as it’s the best way to help others find my work.
If this project is something that you value, and want it to continue, readers are encouraged to upgrade to paid. With a paid subscription you’ll gain access to the content beyond the paywall and unrestricted access to the full archive of this newsletter.
Paid subscriptions are either billed monthly at £3.79 (less than a coffee ☕️) or annually at £34.99.
If you would prefer to make a one-off donation, feel free to send a contribution via PayPal.
You can also show your enjoyment without spending £££, by liking, commenting, restacking via Notes, or by just generally sharing 😃