Romance loves Drama.

During a recent conversation with someone who shall remain nameless (you know who you are) it was suggested to me that us girls love drama and can't have a relationship without it.

I was about to stick up for my fellow female form and protest that we hate the drama just as much as you guys do but then something stopped me...flashing back into my head came the memory of an ex (we'll call him Tom*) showing up at my door looking tired and wounded after a very long train journey a week after he had stormed out of my flat in a hissy fit and then later text me to say it was over. Tom was sad and sorry and I was intially frosty but when I saw that he had arrived with no clothes or overnight things and was willing to sleep on the floor or get on a train straight back to where he had come from my resolve melted and because I still loved him we worked things out. We broke up a few months later and that's where it ended but the point is Tom made the grand gesture, he turned up at the door in the rain (yes, it was actually raining I didn't make that up for effect) and said he couldn't know that I was right there and that he hadn't tried to apologise and get back together.

Just like the movies and television we watch and the books we read Tom had made the big romantic gesture and I, being the girl that I am (slightly niave), was so blinded by it that I forgot about the drama that had come before it. The shouting, the accusations and the tears, oh, AND the accidental flooding of my bathroom, were all forgotten. Does the big romance really go hand in hand with drama?

It took Carrie moving half way around the world for Big to realise that she was 'The One' before he chased her to Paris and it took Noah building Allie's dream house in 'The Notebook' for them to end up back in each other's lives...and in that steamy sex scene! And it took Tom slamming out of my flat and me not ringing him begging him to take me back for him to realise he'd messed up. I'm not denying that it must have taken some serious balls for him to turn up at my door, particularly considering the savage friends I have, but should it really come down to...'You never realise what you've got until it's gone?"

After that I went through all of the romantic gestures I'd ever had the pleasure of being a part of and over half of them were follow up's to drama, arguments or false accusations, this wasn't the result I'd been hoping for, believe me, but have we become addicted to drama in our relationships because we hope the romance afterward will be good enough to make us forget about the disagreement that caused it?

Deciding to investigate further I turned to my friend Rachel* for answers, Rachel and Mark* have been together for years, gone through school and different universities and are still together (hats off to them!). Asking her about whether Mark makes a big romantic gesture after they've had a fight Rach said, "No, we just tend to shout at each other, stay away from each other for a couple of hours then we'll leave a note on the mirror saying sorry or make the other a cup of tea and that's it."
No romantic declaration of undying love and no tears.

And that's when it hit me. It wasn't all the grand gestures that I linked so closely with arguments that mattered to me, it was the little things that I cared about, like the guy who bought me low-salt bacon for breakfast one Sunday morning because I had high blood pressure or the time a guy made me slow dance with him in the street one night under the stars, all the little things that had so much thought behind them, no expense, nothing grand...just thought...and absolutely, positively, 100% NO DRAMA.

You see...it can be done.

xoxo