The Relationship Is Lovely, So Why Are You Still Looking for the Upgrade?

You finally meet a man who is kind, steady, affectionate and genuinely pleasant to be around, which you would think would allow everybody to relax for five minutes.

But once the relief settles, a rather inconvenient little thought slips into the room: what if this lovely relationship is not quite lovely enough?

Not bad. Not troubling. Not even disappointing, exactly. More like standing in a beautiful hotel suite and suddenly thinking, Yes, but was the terrace a little larger in the brochure?

The bed is wonderful, the view is lovely, everything smells expensive in that reassuring hotel way, and yet part of you has already picked up the glossy folder to check whether the dream was meant to include a second balcony.

Somehow, a perfectly good relationship has become a very elegant inspection tour.

The Suite Is Quite Nice, Thank You

At first, none of this occurs to you. You are simply pleased, which is rather refreshing. The man is thoughtful, he calls when he says he will call, he remembers things, and he is not creating emotional scavenger hunts for you to complete in the dark.

Dinner is enjoyable, conversation flows, and nobody has vanished, gone vague or developed a sudden spiritual devotion to “needing space.” After some of your previous bookings, frankly, this place deserves five stars simply for having doors that open normally.

So for a while, you settle in. The towels are soft, the room service arrives hot, and you begin to think you may finally have found the sort of place where a woman can put down her handbag and stop wondering whether the ceiling is about to collapse.

And just when it seems you might actually leave well enough alone, the female imagination — both a gift and a public menace — finds the brochure.

Not a real brochure, of course. The inner one. The fantasy edition. That glossy little catalogue of what your dream relationship was always supposed to look like.

In this version, the chemistry is just a touch more cinematic. He says one outrageous thing in the moonlight that becomes your line forever. The holidays feel more European. The eye contact has slightly more voltage. The bathtub, in some vague symbolic sense, is freestanding.

Five minutes ago, the suite was beautiful. Now you are looking at the room, then at the brochure, then back at the room again.

A dangerous development.

The Upgrade Department Is Open

Because once you start comparing, the room begins to change before your eyes. He is wonderful, yes, but is he quite as witty over breakfast as your imaginary husband in the deluxe package?

He is reliable, certainly, but should he also be reading your soul somewhere along the French Riviera? And suddenly even being liked this calmly begins to look a little modest. Should it feel less like excellent mineral water and a little more like champagne being opened somewhere in the distance?

You see how quickly things can get out of hand. The woman who was perfectly happy half an hour ago is now wondering whether the Presidential Romance Package came with a fireplace, deeper passion, a grand piano and a man who instinctively knows she wants to be kissed immediately after making a mildly mysterious remark by a window.

Meanwhile, downstairs in reality, the relationship itself is getting along beautifully. It brings fresh coffee, asks how your day was and then listens to the answer.

It is not dazzling you with imported chaos or requiring three girlfriends and a detective novel to understand what happened after dinner. It is simply being good.

Naturally, the brochure now has you curious about the rest of the hotel. So off you go, wandering the emotional hallways and wondering what might be behind the other doors.

Maybe this is “very good,” but is “soulmate-level” upstairs? Could there be a penthouse feeling you are somehow missing? Have other women been quietly upgraded while you stand here complimenting the robes?

By now, the whole thing has become rather undignified. The relationship has been quietly lovely to you all along, and here you are peering around as though somebody forgot to mention the rooftop terrace.

You are standing in a beautiful room muttering, “Yes, but where is the sweeping staircase?”

The Brochure Was Always a Slightly Wicked Document

The trouble is that dream relationships are terribly well photographed. Nobody includes the moment when the imaginary soulmate is tired, distracted, mildly annoying or expressing an opinion about dinner reservations that absolutely nobody requested.

The brochure gives you moonlight, of course. It is less interested in the evening when both of you are exhausted and nobody can remember where the charger went.

In its world, intimacy is effortless, timing is perfect, and the man somehow understands exactly what you need before he has even walked into the room.

Very luxurious.

Also entirely fictional.

The real man, meanwhile, is still downstairs getting on with being quite lovely. He has moods, occasionally misses a cue and may fail to transform an ordinary evening into a sweeping romantic sequence involving candles, violins and excellent tailoring.

One begins to see why the brochure had an unfair advantage.

Nothing inside it ever has to survive ordinary life. The imaginary suite remains immaculate because nobody has ever checked in; yours has been lived in by two actual people, which is rather different from being photographed before anyone has touched the bedspread.

And once you have wandered far enough through this imaginary hotel, the whole spectacle starts to look rather funny.

A lovely man sits across from you being kind, interested, affectionate and emotionally available, while somewhere in your mind a woman in a silk robe is still roaming the corridors asking whether a better suite exists.

Maybe somewhere upstairs there really is a larger terrace, a better view and a man who has never once misunderstood anything in his life.

One begins to suspect, though, that paradise has simply moved up another floor.

And if you follow it long enough, the penthouse may turn out to have a brochure too.