“You know what’s funny?” I asked Bree. I then pulled my jacket tighter around my chest.

“What’s that?” she asked. She then blew on her hands to warm them.

We’d just finished seeing ‘Gone Girl,’ (which is an awesome movie to see if you’re having any problems in your relationship, as when you leave you’ll feel like, ‘well, at least we’re not as fucked up as those people’). Initially we’d hopped into a cab after the movie, but the traffic had been so bad we’d abandoned that plan once we hit our neighborhood. This was a wise idea as we were now moving faster, but also an unwise idea because it was freakin’ freezing outside.

I continued. “So after I posted this morning about My Boyfriend and I deciding to move forward, everyone was so excited and happy and congratulating me and all that, but the truth of the matter is, we’ve been in a big fight since last night.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh yeah,” I said and waved my hand in front of my face, dismissing the idea. “It’ll be fine. We have a short-list of deal-breakers and the topic of this fight is not one of them. We’ll figure it out later this evening.”

This is what we did now. If a fight was continuing too late my time or was getting too emotional to be productive, we’d put a pause on it for the night and just plan on a time to resolve it later. The next day we’d still check in and send pictures of our day and say we loved each other. Business as usual. And by the time we reconnected on the argument, things had usually settled down enough that we could resolve it pretty quickly.

“Oh, that’s good,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “I just thought it was weird that the day I’d announced I’d gotten my Happily Ever After – that behind the scenes, we’d already gone back to Real Life.”

“Hmm,” she said, and we both quickened our pace as the wind picked up around us.

One of my favorite musicals of all time is, “Into the Woods.” If you’ve never seen it – it’s about a number fairy tale characters whose plots intertwine with each other as they go about trying to get their wishes fulfilled. Act One is how their desires lead them to go into the woods to get their wishes – which they all do. But what I love about this musical is that Act Two is all about what happens after they get their wishes. It’s what happens After Happily Ever After. And what happens is – they still keep wishing. Just for other things.

And after thinking it over these past few weeks and looking over the feedback I got from last week’s post – I think that’s what I’ll now write about. As I said to McKenzie, if this was a novel, it would be the end. I got the dream job, I got the guy. I got what I wished for. But in my Real Life, it’s not over. Not by far.

There is still the challenge of committing to a long-distance relationship. Still the insecurities of a continuing-to-evolve new career path. Still bad habits to be addressed. And still the ever present question of – should The Cat get her own Instagram account? So. There are still woods to go through.

So that’s what I will write about now.

What happens After The Happily Ever After.

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