Love at first sight. Happily ever after. Boy meets girl.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

Hollywood and Disney create certain expectations about love.

But they never tell you about all the hair.

How it’s everywhere.

How it’s all over the shower walls and clogs the drain in the bathtub.

How it’s in the most random places. Like stuck in your beard, or woven into the threads of your socks, or wrapped around the dish cloth.

How leaving stray facial hairs in the bathroom sink pisses her off—a catalyst to the dumbest arguments. (Or how those arguments are furthest from your mind when she tells you to pull it.)

Or how the smell of her hair is the most comforting thing in the world. 

They also don’t tell you how often you have to groom it.

How you have to shampoo and condition it, brush it and style it. Every. Single. Day.

Because if you don’t, it gets messy and greasy and can lead to split ends.

And some days, it still doesn’t look perfect. Even after you wash and blow dry it. No matter how much hairspray, mousse, or pomade you use.

They don’t tell you how it falls out, either. Or, purposefully or not, you pull it out.

How sometimes it gets ripped out. How sometimes it grows back and sometimes it doesn’t. How scary it is and how much it hurts.

They don’t tell you how some couples wear wigs, pretending their hair is always on point. Or why you shouldn’t compare your hairstyle to theirs.

Because you never know what’s underneath, what it looks like behind closed doors.

They definitely don’t tell you how long it will grow—how long it will last.

Or how everyone’s hair changes colour over time. How you can dye it so it always looks the same, and how that’s only a temporary fix.

They don’t tell you how to accept things that change. How we change one another, or how to change together.

No, they don’t tell you any of this. They don’t talk about hair at all.

But they should.

Because if their hair wasn’t everywhere—if you didn’t find it on the walls, in the sink, or stuck to your clothes—you’d miss it more than anything.

You’d miss the reminders that they’re here, stitched into the fabric of your life.

The truth of true love is it’s tangled.

It’s wild yet clean cut. It comes naturally but takes a lot of work. It’s perfectly imperfect.

And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

No matter how hairy it gets.