Team.

Buckle up beauties, because today I’m here to bust some myths. Big ones. In fact, ‘myths’ maybe too gentler a word because what I’m actually talking about today is the metric fuck tonne of lies we have been sold regarding love, relationships and marriage.

I’ve spoken openly about the struggles Jimmy and I have been through. We were lucky enough to come out of the other side after 3 years of therapy, but I honestly don’t believe we would have got to the point of crisis if we hadn’t been operating under the biggest lie sold to us all: that of true love.

Let’s be clear, in its infancy, marriage was a contract. Nothing more, nothing less. They were arranged for economic or political reasons and designed to join families strategically. Since then, marriage and relationships have undergone a serious brand overhaul. Hollywood, fairy tales, TV and music have PR’d the shit out of it and now it’s seen as the bastion of ‘love’. A symbol of an unknowable, unseeable magical force that can only exist between the two exactly right people.

And we say we don’t believe in fairy tales.

Sure, this makes for cute movies and enthralling tales, but it does nothing to support us as real humans living in the real world. Hollywood has sold us up the river, burned our paddles and hammered a hole in the boat, that’s really a raft heading rapidly towards a raging waterfall.

Ready for the unpopular opinion? Marriage and relationships isn’t about love. It’s about being a team. If you want to call that love, then great, but love, in the Hollywood-sense of the word, doesn’t sustain a marriage. It may start with love, that’s what will probably get you down the aisle, but one those vows are signed, sealed and delivered, love is out the window. That’s already there, it’s done…now it’s about building a team.

It may not sound romantic - but remember it’s only Hollwood that tells us it has to be - but ask yourself this: if you’re feeling unfulfilled or unhappy in your relationship it’s probably not because you don’t think he or she doesn’t love you; it’s more likely because you don’t feel like they see you or hear you or recognise the things you do. It’s not a love problem, it’s a team building problem. That can make you think they don’t love you or, perhaps, that you don’t love them but imagine how you’d feel if they suddenly stopped to hear you vent about something and rather than telling you what you ‘should’ do, they just held you and asked, ‘What can I do?’

Love isn’t roses and passionate sex. It’s not insta-worthy date nights and fancy holidays and being able to know what the other is thinking at any given time. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you’re relying on telepathy as a reliable form of communication, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Marriage isn’t all the things that Richard Curtis wants us to think it is - they’re grown up fairy tales with as much reality in them as Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs.

So, if you’re wondering how you find yourself in a relationship in which you feel alone, promise me one thing. If it feels lacking, check you’re not measuring it against the bullshit, movie version of love. Measure it against what you want. Make sure you know what you’re missing, what you need, what you want because you can have all the sex and flowers and insta-moments, and still feel like you’re on your own without a team mate in this bonkers game of adulting.