What makes relationships last (and the missing undies and shorts case)

My shorts and underwear were nowhere to be found. I searched all over the unfamiliar bed, looked under it, searched cupboards and eventually phoned Marion. I had slept over at her home and had only met her two nights before. I was on my own and she had gone off to work. She made a few suggestions and I could hear the merriment barely suppressed in her voice. I was not to find those shorts and began to eye towels to make good my escape down the driveway of her house in Bloubosrand to where my car was parked in public.

From these humble, comical beginnings Marion and I actually went from strength to strength to what is today in Shanghai a solid relationship with very little in material possessions to our names (though we do just make a point of sticking money away most months).

I am inclined to think it is the non-romantic beginnings to relationships that are the ones which last. Quite simply, in a romantic relationship, the starry-eyed lovers often keep presenting to the other the person what they want them to see or who they think the other person wants to see. The ideal person is painted before the other’s eyes. Then the serious relationship begins, the couple move in together or get married. And soon it is who does the dishes and the laundry, putting up with different moods … and, “how many times have I asked you to stretch the socks before putting them in the wash? Stre-etch them like this pu-lease. Then they wash properly, silly.”

And …

“Why can’t we go and visit Pam and Steve this weekend? It’s been a long time.”

“Don’t be silly, we saw them two weekends ago.”

“But that was just in the shopping mall, and stop saying I am silly … ”

“But you call me silly … ”

The endearments turn to gentle insults like silly to much harsher terms and yelling matches, yes I mean it, and the honeymoon period is over and all too often, these days, the marriage ends in divorce. One member of my family was divorced twice by the age of thirty-three and with two very young children divided between two households.

The reason why Marion and I have “worked” as a couple for about seven years at this time of writing (an insignificant period compared to other relationships ) is because, from the beginning, there was no romance or sugar-coating or trying to be something we were not. She was divorced, I was nearly forty and still single. We had both given up and, from the beginning, there were virtually no illusions in our relationship.

On this note, to get back to those blasted shorts and underwear which seemed to have disappeared off the planet that day in Bloubosrand.

Eventually, as I wandered around Marion’s unfamiliar house I stopped just eying the towels and took the biggest one, which wasn’t large, after phoning Marion and telling her what I had done and that I would see her for dinner. She was silent a moment and then came that mischievous chuckle I was to get to know very well in the years to come. We had met in a pub at the beginning of the weekend and had hardly been out of each other’s sight since. It was now a Monday morning and there was no rush for me as I ran my own little business and had no set meetings for the day.

With only a T-shirt and a smallish towel wrapped around my waist I hurried down the driveway and got into my car — with a bold flash of cheek — and roared off. As I turned into the first road my car jerked a little and I looked at the petrol level. Oh bugger. With some alarm I saw the orange light warning me I was perilously close to empty. The alarm was more because of my attire and I absolutely had to stop for petrol on the way home. I was almost certain I could have made it home and put on decent clothing … but what if I didn’t and I was stranded somewhere on lonely Witkoppen Road with merely a towel between me and decency? Never mind the trucks roaring past and the drafts which could easily lift my towel like a dress as I tried to hitch a ride? I pictured all the Leon Schuster possibilities. No ways. At least I had my wallet, which had somehow separated itself from the phantom shorts and undies, and I had my car keys and cell phone. I went straight to a petrol station and resolutely stepped out the car, whisking along to the ATM in the towel and drew some cash. Hastily I went back to the car and hopped in, primly trying to keep my cheeks to myself whilst the amused petrol attendant, matchstick rolling about in grinning mouth, asked me how much petrol I wanted.

Marion came round to my home that night to cook dinner with the shorts and underwear with her. “Here you are!” she said with that wicked cackle. They had been hanging on the bedroom window’s bars, behind the half-closed curtain.

In fact, there was a lot of humour, bare honesty and very little money in the beginning of our relationship. I think that is what has made us “work”. Oh, there has been some hellfire and brimstone to work off all my selfish bits … but that has just made us stronger. Time to give the Chook a ring on her mobile to see how she’s doing at work, and to hear that chuckle.

The above is the draft form of an extract from my sequel to Cracking China (due out February 2010), tentatively titled The Gift by the Vase of Flowers.