Okay, so it’s summer in Britain and we all know what that means: it’s hot and already tired relationships can become still more fractious.
But please, can everyone stop telling me how much easier it must be to have a relationship with a woman?
Men have been moaning about women for years. So why would a woman find a relationship with another woman any easier?
Sure, there’s the sweet notion that two women will always be better off together because, supposedly, a woman knows what another woman likes. Well, sort of, but the notion that women and women are more compatible than women and men ignores the fact that every relationship is as different as the couple who make it.
When straight girlfriends complain about their male partners, I listen and nod sympathetically. But when they tell me how much easier it must be to be with a woman, I realise they have no idea.
It’s not about gender, it’s about what happens to people in a relationship. People lie and cheat. People get on each other’s nerves. People are hard work. And while the Mars/Venus conjunction makes for an easy soundbite, in reality it’s just relationships that are difficult.
In my own relationship there are two different orbits. One is the love/succour round. And yes, in our case, the myth is true: we are loving and nurturing. We’ve been through some ghastly times and are stronger for it.
But the other relationship trajectory is the practical one. The path of ordinary daily life. And that just doesn’t suit the stereotype of lesbianism as handy alternative to annoying boys.
Girlfriends praise each other’s legs/thighs/cheekbones, while simultaneously envying said legs/thighs/cheekbones. Girlfriends want their partner to be successful, while not wanting her success to eclipse their own.
My partner of 12 years is my wife, my girlfriend and my best girl friend. Which is perfect. Except that it falls down horribly in the most girlie of areas. She’s got better legs than I have — no amount of best-girl supportiveness can make that go away — and there’s nothing more likely to underline one’s own girlie ”failings” than living with another woman.
And what about those times when her work is flying while mine’s in crisis, and I don’t get to say she’s doing better than me just because she’s a man? Or when I’ve cooked for the past two nights, yet when it’s her turn she suggests we get a takeaway? Or when her map-reading leaves a little to be desired?
Or simply when any one of those daily imbalances occurs that people in straight relationships blame on the gender divide — after all, men and women are so very different, how can they ever be expected to make it work all the time? Which is a convenient excuse because, of course, if there isn’t a member of the opposite sex to blame, you might just have to consider yourself to be part of the problem.
So no, I don’t want to swap my wife for a husband, but sometimes both of us could do without everyone else having such high expectations of our relationship.
Occasionally, the idea of my partner being just some bloke who could take the blame for my problems, simply because he is a bloke, is appealing.
Sometimes the ideal partner isn’t a loving, beautiful, passionate woman. Sometimes the ideal partner is Homer Simpson. — (c) Guardian Newspapers 2002