I went on a cruise with my partner of four months — here's what happened

Times

4 days ago

It's a rite of passage to think you know love too young. First at 15, maybe, then again and again if you're lucky and optimistic and can keep piecing your experienced heart back together. I was 34 when I boarded the 394-passenger Club Med 2 in Rome last summer with my new boyfriend and love was an old, if slightly distrusted, friend by then.
It was our first cruise together and that morning my excitement had turned into doubt that it would be as romantic as I'd hoped. The night before, we'd arrived in Rome and checked into the dreamiest hotel I'd ever seen. The First Arte was so close to the Spanish steps that Cupid could have passed his arrows to the couples that lounged there. Upstairs, things got even better. There was a private hot tub on the huge balcony of our suite— love bubbled as easily in the water as the bubbles in the glasses of prosecco in our hands. How could anything compete, we wondered as we stepped onto Club Med 2 the next morning.
I didn't know how much I was about to learn about love while we sailed. Our Mediterranean Campania to Sicily route set off in typical Club Med 2 tradition, departing each port in style. As Vangelis's Conquest of Paradise blared, I realised love was a lifejacket. A small round eightysomething (I guessed) was parting the passengers near me like Moses did the Red Sea. The huge, red U-bend of a lifejacket we'd worn for a safety demonstration two hours previously hung around her neck and shoulders like a python, increasing her orbit threefold. Under one arm was a second lifejacket, cord trailing and tripping up half the passengers she passed. I followed her path and saw a disgruntled man of similar vintage sitting near the pool: her husband, who'd obviously refused to wear a lifejacket any longer than necessary. She'd decided to carry it with her, just in case something happened on night one. Love, I smiled, was buoyant. Love was a lifejacket.
After that I started to feel like Richard Curtis, seeing that love was everywhere in 100 different forms. The truth was, I'd been so put through the mill in my twenties in my search for love that I doubted by 30 that I was made for love in the long term. The first time I'd ever been on a cruise was earlier that year. My plus one, the guy I was seeing, dumped me two days before departure. Love could also come in friendship form, and his predecessor, Marco, came with me instead. Marco put up with a lot of early, upset bedtimes on board that ship as I cried over someone else. He let me get drunk and get over it, while always being there, a strange crutch but a lifejacket either way. Commitment wasn't for me, I'd decided, but Marco had become a good friend. Maybe friendship was all the love I was good for?
Then I met this guy — Scotland, we'll call him — and my belief in love, real love, was returning. 'How long have you guys been together?' we were asked by our new friends on board. 'Not long,' I'd say, self-consciously. 'Four…' 'Four years?' someone would usually cut in. 'Months,' I'd correct them. Apparently we already looked like a married couple and for the first time in my life the idea of being one didn't feel like something I'd dislike. Not if marriage looked like it did for the other couples on board Club Med 2.
One night on the dancefloor, after dinner, Scotland and I met Frank and Tomas, who lived in Paris and had been together for more than 20 years. Frank, tall and tanned and with a mischievous shut-mouth smile, was a night owl. Tomas, ever-Ralph Lauren flannel-shirted and with round glasses and a bursting laugh that looked as if it surprised even him, danced and drank champagne too. More introverted than Frank, he wanted to go to bed earlier and get up earlier for other things like scuba diving. Love was letting your husband dance all night and nurse his champagne head the next morning. Then sharing a glass of rosé at lunch and planning that day's excursion. Love was two personalities slotting together and letting the other come alive in the way it needed to, knowing it (they) would always come back to you. 'Did you see any fish?' I asked Tomas, after his dive each morning. 'Not a single one,' he said happily.
It turned out even the Clinton's cards stuff was true and Roger, the ship's jester, knew it before I did. Roger and Nikki, his brilliant wife, had left the UK for Australia almost two decades previously, Nikki told me late one night as our newly formed crew of couples, drunk on wine and sun, danced like wind socks in front of us. 'Two young children, a job offer in Australia — he said, 'What do you think? Shall we have an adventure?'' Nikki said. That's love, I agreed. Halfway through the week, Roger gave Nikki a card that just said 'I love you'. 'She's still the person I want to spend all my time with,' he told me. 'She's the best company of anyone I know, even after all these years.'
As we sailed from Rome to Santa Manza in Corsica and then the island of Ponza, without even stepping foot off the ship, I wondered if Scotland and I would reach dry land at any point on the trip. It was a floating honeymoon and we had our first couples massage in a spa overlooking the water and ate lobster opposite a live volcano somewhere, which luckily failed to erupt into any kind of fireworks display. Scotland wasn't carrying my lifejacket under his arm like the lady we'd met on the first night, although being together was making me feel more buoyant by the day.
During our last few days on one of the biggest sailing ships in the world, its five masts stretching above us as we lay on the top deck to watch the glittering Italian coastline become clearer, we decided that Amalfi would be worth a stroll that day. Why Amalfi in August seemed a good idea, I'm not sure because despite always wanting to go, it wasn't long before the temperatures and the tourists were simmering a tension between us and Scotland and I found ourselves bickering in the heat. We sat down in the shade for water and wine and the familiar relationship nerves returned. Was I wrong again? Was this not love at all but just something that I hoped could be?
Then I remembered everything I'd been taught on board. I'd learnt that love was a lifejacket. That love was resilient. That love was ups and downs, because I'd seen those on board too — those moments when spending every minute with someone made a little space a necessity. I'd learnt that love was two people choosing to spend every day with each other because they thought the other was the best company in the world and understanding that they'd continue to choose the same thing the next day and the one after that. As Phillippe, another new French friend of ours, also married for more than 20 years, put it: 'Love is taking one day at a time.' I reached through our wine glasses for Scotland's hand in this overcrowded Mediterranean town. 'Let's go back to the boat,' I told him. The only thing all at sea here was Club Med 2. Lucy Holden was a guest of the First Arte, which has B&B doubles from £463 (pavilionshotels.com) and Club Med, which has an all-inclusive two-night cruise from Nice to Portofino from £712pp, departing on September 11 (clubmed.co.uk). Fly to Nice