What If This Were Enough?: Essays

by Heather Havrilesky

We think romance is a mystery in which you add up clues that you will be loved. Romance must be carefully staged and art-directed, so everyone looks better than they usually do and seems sexier than they actually are, so the suspense can remain intact. You are not better than you are, though, and neither is your partner. That is romance. Laughing at how beaten down you sometimes are, in your tireless quest to survive, is romance. It’s sexy to feel less than totally sexy and still feel like you’re sexy to one person, no matter what. Maybe suspense yields to the suspension of disbelief. Maybe looking for proof yields to finding new ways to muddle through the messes together. But when it’s 10:00 p.m. and you crawl into bed like two old people and tell each other about the weird things that your kids said that day and crack stupid jokes and giggle and then maybe you feel like making out or maybe you just feel like playing a quick game of Candy Crush, all the while saying things like “This game is stupid, it sucks” and “Your feet are freezing” and “My ass hurts”—that’s romantic. Because at some point, let’s be honest, death supplies the suspense. How long can this glorious thing last? your eyes sometimes seem to ask each other. You, for one, really hope this lasts a whole hell of a lot longer. You savor the repetitive, deliciously mundane rhythms of survival, and you want to keep surviving. You want to muddle through the messiness of life together as long as you possibly can. T...