Premature Love-Declaration.

When is the right time to say: ‘I Love You’? When do you know that you actually do? Are there different kinds of love at different points of a relationship?

Now I am not saying I am a Ted Mosby and declare: ‘I Love You’ on the first date, but I have been known to make drunken declarations to boyfriends that I perhaps haven’t been with long enough to justify such an outburst. I blame this, and most of my social problems, on musicals. In musicals you either have love at first sight like Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron in ‘American in Paris’ or indeed Michael seeing Stephanie for the first time in ‘Grease 2’ (don’t judge me on that second example). I used to call musicals ‘those marrying films’ when I was little, I had a love of MGM Golden Era musicals rather than heavy going plots. This fact has coloured my view of the speed of a relationship – you had to meet, fall in love, have a few hiccups (you know, like a crazy farm hand trying to set you on fire in, ‘Oklahoma’, or being incredibly underage in ‘Gigi’, or falling in love with a girl that is really hundreds of years old and living on a magical floating village in Scotland that only appears every 100 years) then reconcile and marry within 90mins. Of course I jest, it’s more like a week in the timeline of the plot (unless it’s ‘Showboat’ where everyone is screwed for decades). But needless to say I have always loved the idea of a whirlwind romance and I do get swept up in my own emotions.

I asked some friends how long they waited until they said they loved their partner and I had a range of answers, one said it took 3 months, another 6 and one was more like 8 or 9 months. I did have one friend say that their partner said it after about 6 weeks and he was surprised but not put off, but that he told them: “as long as you really mean it, say it all you like, although I’m sorry I can’t say it back yet” – it took him 3 weeks more.

What was also interesting in getting people to think about when they first said: ‘I love you’, they then thought about how their feelings had grown and developed since that point – that although the initial lust and excitement that makes you want to declare your love fades into comfortable coupledom, their feelings were now deeper and different to the first time they said, ‘I love you’. One even questioned if they had in fact ‘loved’ the person at the time they first said it because their feelings were so much deeper now.

My Mum used to upset me as a little girl by telling me she wasn't 'in love' with my Dad any more but she did love him. She equated being 'in love' to 'soppy, romantic feelings' that 'can't last' but it fades to a stronger love, a love of friendship and companionship for your partner in the truest sense of the word. In other cases when this first flush of love fades sometimes the rose-tinted glasses come off and you are left with something, sadly, not quite as beautiful.

I love you, maybe

So, how do you pin-point it; when do you know that you truly love that person? Do you love in different ways throughout your relationship? Is it when you realise you can’t stop thinking about them, or when you realise they are the ‘the one’, or only when you think you would die for the person?! My musicals background should make me think it is something you only realise and declare in dire circumstances, after overcoming great obstacles and always done with a huge romantic gesture. But upon hearing one friend tell me she declared her love for the first time quietly as a whisper to her half-sleeping boyfriend mid-cuddle, there are perhaps better ways to do it than as a result of a near-death experience covered in sweat and tears with an orchestra playing in the background.

It is hard to know when to tell the other person too, you may know them very well, but it is the one area that you are never 100% of how they will react and what impact that may have on the status quo of your relationship. I have sometimes found myself swallowing an ‘I love you’ to a partner, even when I have just meant ‘ahh you’re amazing, I love you!!’ as an exclamation of happiness that I may say to any friend. Is this perhaps going a bit far just to not rock the boat?

When I was a teenager I used to test the waters with boyfriends with the good old: 'I luv you' - 'Luv' didn't seem as intimidating as it's properly spelt cousin and they couldn't get weirded out by you saying 'love' as it would be them over-reacting as you didn't actually say it...?! Now wonderful smart phones give us the ability to use emoticons to express how we feel without committing to strong feelings. I have friends that test the waters with little pictures of hearts rather than saying 'I love you' or indeed '*picture of a heart* you' - this can be made even less threatening by turning the 'you' into a 'u'. Just never put an 'I' at the beginning, that is going too far obviously - that is the line clearly. PLUS, if they get weirded out you can just saying you were doing the Paris Hilton type thing where they literately say 'I heart' such and such. Stops them in their tracks. Starting to think that I over-think this stuff.


I don’t think I can form any answers to my musings but I know whenever I get a bit tiddly I will profess my love again to whoever is nearby; I just hope at some point I mean it and that the other person says it back. And that it isn’t a lamp post.

Why I Wish Life Was More Like Musicals Part 2

If life was more like musicals we would all look like this on our wedding day:

Why I Wish Life Was More Like Musicals Part 1

If Life Was Like Musicals: Cowboys would have colour coordinated shirts and long, silky scarves:

But alas they look like this:

The Book of Faces

So today I, against my better judgement, put my relationship status on Facebook. 'Why does this qualify for a blog post, especially considering you haven't blogged in so long Marinda?' I hear you cry. It just got me thinking about how social media has turned relationships into this weird status symbol - pun intended. For years I have refused to even show the relationship status bit on my profile feeling that, not only did it not sum up who I was, but also it is private information that shouldn't matter to my friend's mums and that person I worked with once on a promotion. There is also one big reason not to have your status on there though...what if it all goes wrong? Breaking up is a horrible thing let alone to have the added pain of changing your Facebook status so some person you worked with once can console you with a colon and an open bracket. Don't even get me started on the nasty people that break up with people by changing relationship status - this blog is not for them, stop reading if this is you. They probably can't read anyway. People do think it is odd if you don't update your status though, 'are you ashamed of him?', *knowing look* 'are you not sure about it?' *knowing look* or when indeed they find out you have a boyfriend, 'oh I didn't see it on Facebook?' *upward inflection and hurt tone*. I have noticed a trend for announcing engagements on social media, perhaps even with just a picture of a ring on a hand - I am not sure how I feel about his but I guess it is cheaper than 'save the date' cards. 'So why have you done it, Marinda?' Yes well...now that a huge picture of my face has appeared on his profile and vice versa with huge lettering announcing our coupledom with many people 'liking' his fact I am wondering what possessed me. I guess I just feel sure of our relationship after being together for a few months, and I did wonder if it bothered him that we hadn't put it up on Facebook as it does seem to be the done thing; maybe he was one of the people asking if I was ashamed of him although he would never say so. I am slightly flattered people have bothered to 'like' this happening, but I realise I am small fry considering the amount of engagements being announced every day by my friends. Despite this, I am happy with my little achievement. Even if every time I go on our 'timelines' it is there for all to see stretched across the page as breaking news. Ah well a couple more updated statuses and 'shared' memes and it will be yesterday's news, pushed down into the ether of 'Timeline'.

Branding your face...

...not with a hot poker or anything.

I am currently on a course that is covering everything you need to know about marketing yourself. This has resulted in my trying out every font imaginable to really see what encapsulates 'me' to the point where I have written my name out so many times it neither looks like my own name nor even recognisable words anymore.

This is one of the things I hate about being an actor: how incredibly self involved and pretentious is this whole process?! I have been staring at my CV and headshot all week looking at layouts and I keep thinking of all the writing I could have done during this time - I have a whole host of sketches eating away at my frontal lobes giving me a comedy lobotomy at the moment.

It's all so expensive too. I have been out of work for a while, so I need to focus my career and in turn perhaps make money, but I need to spend money on marketing material to hook perhaps a new agent and definitely show myself to casting directors - I refer to this as the Vicious, Impossible Cycle of the Entertainer - or VICE - which is what I'm gonna have to turn to soon just to pay for fricken business cards and headed paper...

Impro

Last week I played an impro game called 'Yes Let's' with a group of 5-7 year olds. The game is quite simple as you shout out somewhere exciting to go, for instance, "Let's go to the moon!", everyone shouts "Yes Let's!" and we mime going off to the moon etc. After a few goes I started taking ideas from the audience as it were:

"Johnny, were do you think we should go next?!"
Johnny's 6 year old face turned from pleasure to surprise to constipation; "...er...." "never mind Johnny I will come back to you. Hannah, where are we going next?"
"Let's go to the land of sweets!"
"Yes Let's!" everybody chants and off we go on our mime to eat some sweets.
"Johnny got any ideas yet?"
"....oh...ummm..." the pain of his brain trying to think of something exciting coming across his face.
"It's okay Johnny I will come back to you! Brandon where shall we go?"
"Let's go swimming!"
"Yes Let's!" And off we all go swimming around the room.
"Right Johnny do you have an idea now?"
"...ummmm....Let's all....get in a box?"
"...yes...let's..." the class utter, confused but compliant.

Now you could argue that considering the imaginative premise of the game that Johnny was actually thinking "outside the box" metaphorically speaking; but from the look on his face I could see that the pressure of being creative on the spot was enough to reduce him to wanting to get into a mimed box and rock there.
And that is what he did.

I wonder if politicians were like Johnny at 6...

TFL

The F does not stand for 'For' as I discovered this week.

I don't mind trains normally. They are a reasonably less stressful alternative to driving around the city and they get you where you want to go...most of the time. Last weekend was a small exception.

The Met line had work on between Harrow and Baker Street but, ya know, all was okay as the blessed Chiltern Line was on and even running extra trains as that's the kind of stand-up organisation they are. They are normally my salvation after a long day auditioning, or taking classes rather than taking the bumpy Met line surrounded by grammatically challenged graffiti.

On this particular evening I had enjoyed some comedy by Adam Buxton on the South Bank and I was making my way back to Marylebone when I received a text alert letting me know Chiltern Railways had severe delays so "don't travel unless you have to". Well I had to. And 'delays' just means they are going but delayed right? Oh no, this is not the definition currently held by Chiltern Railways; when I got to Marylebone the trains were all cancelled. Bugger.

A grumpy, vocationally challenged Customer Service Assistant stood advising people that if they needed to get back to Gerrards Cross, High Wycombe, Beaconsfield etc then they were paying for taxis to get you home. However if you were wanting Amersham or Chesham, plus any of the stops along the way, to hold on there in the station as they were going to run a solitary train to Harrow for us to pick up the Met Line. Apparently all the signals looked like disco lights and kept flicking between red and green, hence knowing they could now run just the one train on the tracks.

I decided to hedge my bets by flitting between the taxi rank and the station concourse, thinking if a taxi could get me as far as I could go for free I would pay the rest - I just wanted to get home by this point.

As I reached the taxi queue, I say queue I really mean 'bunch' quickly turning into 'mob', it was close to going tribal as they certainly weren't appreciative of the man with the clipboard as their leader. A woman desperately shouted at the man that she needed to get to Seer Green; as if none of the 30-odd people around her wanted to get to their home.

A taxi finally approaches as the group of men, women and children grows to 40 strong. The driver tells the man with the clipboard that he is destined for Gerrards Cross. "Seer Green!" shouts the woman from the middle of the crowd as if the driver got it wrong, I suspect she is a fan of the persuasive techniques of Derren Brown.
Several people silently, with daggers in their eyes, place their hands in the air for Gerrards Cross, climb in the taxi and leave us mere mortals. Another comes along: "Anyone for Beaconsfield?" "That's next to Seer Green!!" Several more hands go up and reach the car before this mad lady can push through. She is about 40, well dressed and I would hazard a guess she would refer to herself as a 'Yummy Mummy'. I leave for the station concourse, not wishing to hear any more.

I am walking up to the platforms when I half hear a, slightly jollier, Customer Service Representative defusing a hostile take-over. He is explaining to some grumpy commuters about the situation before leaving to find out the latest news.

I was stood by a smug-looking, bespectacled 50-something year old man who was apprehending a slightly confused looking South American girl. "Where do you need to go?" he enquired loudly and clearly as if she were a deaf, 70 year old.
"Oh um.. Rickmansworth" she replied in almost accent-less English.
"Ah...you need to ask the man with the clipboard"
"Yes it doesn't look like my train is running any more"
"Yes you need to talk to the man with the clipboard" he said loudly and slowly, this time accompanied with a patronising mime. "I'm going back home to Aylesbury"
Silence from the girl.
"Have you ever been to Aylesbury?" the man continues.
"Er no I don't think so..."
"Oh you should it's just lovely. A beautiful place is Aylesbury" he tells the exotic beauty who is probably from a place that is so beautiful it would have bullied Aylesbury had they been to school together.

Who actually says that about where they live? And about somewhere that is a big development building site at present and for the next few years? Yes a lovely new theatre has been built there but without a car park and next to a building site for Waitrose. Rio it is not.

I am ashamed to say I had a certain amount of pleasure knowing that if this girl held on a few more minutes for the train I was to get on, she would easily get to Rickmansworth on the Met Line. Mr Smug Aylesbury was screwed.

We eventually made it onto the train towards Harrow and whilst sat there I remembered a conversation I had overheard on the way in where the man sat in front of me actually said the word 'Width' 24 times in one minute. I kid you not.

"It's like a length but shorter. Wid-th. Wi-d-th. No not 'with'; Width! W, I, D, T, H." And on the hilarity ensued.

I couldn't tell if he was on the phone or talking to the poor girl sat in front of him, but the conversation then went onto him explaining the wonders of buying vegetables on the market:

"Honestly it is the most economical way to get your vegetables. My friend has a big family, and he buys them on the market for not just his family but another family too and you wouldn't believe what he gets for £20. You can get carrots and onions and broccoli..."
Already I am wishing I had investing in noise cancellation headphones. Is this man really going to slowly recall every vegetable he knows?! Oh yes he is. Luckily for all of us on the carriage he ran out after four types and went back to carrots. Carrots came up three more times in this conversation. I could feel myself start to rock.

So back to my late night journey home and I have made it to Harrow on the Hill. An hour later than I had expected, but I was halfway home. I am told to go to platform 2 where the next train that will get me back to my car isn't for another 20 mins at 23:47. I sit reading my SFX magazine for a while and a guard comes up to me and asks: "Are you waiting for a train to Amersham?"
"Yes Amersham" I simply reply.
He looks at me, slightly concerned and asks: "not any further along the line then? You don't want to go to Aylesbury?"
It took every fibre of my being not to say: "I've heard it's lovely"
What is with people and Aylesbury?!!

Finally the train rocks up and we sit in the cold carriage awaiting our safe return home.
And time ticks on...we are still sat there.
The driver announces that this is the 23:59, which granted is only 12 minutes later than we had previously been told by the guard on the platform, but it is the last straw when you hoped to be home an hour before and it is freezing sat on a train with all the doors open for 12 minutes.
A confused lady makes her way past me to the driver's open door and asks:
"What time is this train going?"
"It's an eleven fifty-nine train" he said in a very hostile tone and standing to his full height over this diminutive lady.
"Sorry I was only asking" replied the lady;
"Humph!" growled back the driver.

We surely have a transport system second to none.