If you don't call your man a man

Do you feel lonely? Google finds 53.5 million results for you when you search for ‘love’. Within 0.43 seconds, no less.

Love isn't just about a partner, as the singles among us know. It's also in your best friends, those real friendships, those people who truly know you and still want to see you despite everything: that's also love. Coming home every evening and being happy to see your dog or cat: love. Being super proud of the salary you earned last month, that new job you landed, that promotion you arranged for yourself: self-love. Not being able to miss your parents for a week even though it's already late and you're already very, very grown-up: love.

Yet, strange things also happen in love. Of course. I used to quite enjoy being a bit single, well, not on Sunday nights, I find that uncozy. But otherwise, I could really handle it. I quite liked having to think about myself alone. I lived for a while with friends, with my sisters. Golden years. I threw weekly house parties and invited the entire men's team from the hockey club. Fun. I went out, I partied, I was there, in my city, in those ‘trendy’ pubs, where you wanted to be seen back then (Bubbels, Joop, Kleine), and not anymore now. I experienced everything I wanted to experience. But over the years, I let myself be caught by true love. Actually, it was already there, but I didn't see it yet. And now I'm married and becoming a mother of our children. That's how life has gone.

Still, I don't really call my husband my husband yet. That's because it has gone quite, yes, quickly. Sometimes I still feel like that 21-year-old who orders shots at the bar and doesn't want to go home until it's light. ‘A single only goes to sleeeeeep when he has seen all the stars.‘ I'm so glad I don't have to do that anymore. I'm so glad I'm married, that I can experience festivals through my Instagram, that soon I'm going to take a step in my life, maybe the biggest step: becoming a mother. But that doesn't change the fact that it's all getting used to, so after all these years I still just call my boyfriend my boyfriend, because that still feels so comfortably familiar. It feels nice. A man, come on, you only have one when you're 43, right? Otherwise, I already feel so incredibly old.

Big changes take a lot of time. We often talk about negative events, like mourning. But positive changes also need time. Because no matter how happy you can be with your life, you always need time to get to know the new situation. How does it go from now on, eh... Now that we're married? Is there a manual for that? What do we do differently now? Do we have to be more serious or can we still dance drunk from the red wine in the living room on Friday night? How will it be when we have two kids? Will we then get stress, irritations towards each other? Will we ever sleep again? In those pubs, I always knew how to find my way flawlessly. And now, in adult life, it's just a bit more searching. But I know very well: this is the right path, where the autumn sun shines pleasantly and where those 53.5 million times ‘love’ is exactly based on.