Sven's life in Oz

Last week I announced on Twitter that I neither relished nor resented Valentine’s Day this year. I have been working so hard and avoiding the shops lately, so it has rather flown under my radar, but as the big day approaches it is slowly seeping in through the virtual windows of my life: updates are appearing on Facebook, tips on buying flowers are dropping into my email more regularly, and the Valentine hashtags are becoming a permanent feature of my TweetDeck. The day itself, thanks to the wonders of time differences and universal connectivity, will last about 36 hours on Twitter as the sun rises on 14 February around the world, long after it began to shine on Australian lovers.

This will be my first Valentine’s Day as a single man in over a decade. I keep my old Valentine cards – not as an ego trip, but to remind me when I’m down that people have cared. It’s good to remind yourself that your are lovable, especially when you don’t feel it. And if this post sounds melancholy, it really isn’t: I’m actually quite chipper. Things are going well – work is good, I’m making new friends all the time and laughing more and more each day. I’ve been on a second date with the blind date – Dr Lego, as he has become known – and the latest one (last night) was great. So why am I sitting in bed, typing paragraph after paragraph about a date on the calendar I really care nothing about?

I was pottering about, doing things that needed doing, when I caught myself wondering if Dr Lego would call. Of course I knew he wouldn’t, but sometimes these thoughts just pop into your head. It’s frustrating and distracting and after a while it can drive you crazy, but underneath all the “will he, won’t he?” and the “I’m not thinking about it”, there’s a tiny light of excitement, a little glee in your heart that says “this is what it is like to be alive”.

Now, I’m not mad enough to think that two dates is any kind of basis for a relationship – he might turn out to be an axe murderer or seal clubber or a mime artist – but the beginning, the trepidation, the exicitement and the unknown are all the things that Valentine’s Day celebrates. Even when I check my postbox on Sunday morning and find it predictably empty, and even if he hasn’t called me back because he’s drowning puppies in a sack under a bridge somewhere, I won’t mind too much. Landing on your ass with egg on your face is the tails side of the coin, and sometimes it comes up heads.

As I eat my french toast alone on Sunday morning, I will remind myself that I can feel the things we all feel, that they are waiting for me when I least expect it, quite suddenly, without warning, and not just on one day but on any day; and they are all just wonderful.

Heart like a swinging brick? Whoever heard such rubbish?

I’m back! I decided that connecting up my internet was daft since I was leaving the country for three weeks, so upon my return I set about getting myself back online.  This week I finally received my new modem and got back online, meaning I can blog, tweet and browse from the comfort of my sofa again! (I could do all that with my iPhone, in truth, but the keypad is RSI waiting to happen if I tried serious browsing on that tiny device.)  More importantly, I can get back onto feedly and catch up with everyone else’s blogs…

…erm, maybe not.  I might just have to scrap the lot and start again.  If you read me maybe you could leave a brief summary of your past couple of months in the comments, or pick one or two posts that could bring me up to speed? Thanks so much.

So, my sojourn in the UK is over and there isn’t time to write up everything that happened – it was non-stop from the moment I arrived to the time I left.  Much fun was had and the photos are up on flickr (several of me looking trashed and disheveled, you’ll be delighted to know), but more than that, I learned a few lessons about myself which I think I needed my friends to remind me I already knew.

1. I must write. The number of friends who gave me a serve for not having moved my novel on at all can’t be counted on my fingers.  Having a job where I get to write is good, but it’s not enough for my friends who, for some crazy reason, have faith in me and get disappointed when I’m not fulfilling my potential.  I know, unreasonable, right?  However, it’s not all bad news – this month I am researching my MA options properly, so hopefully I can start study in February.  I need someone to beat me into completion, so I figure an MA is a good way to do that whilst also networking for a future career.  I’ll keep you posted.

2. Being single is nothing to fear. I haven’t really been alone before in my life. Obviously I’ve been on my own, but I’ve never been properly on my own – I’ve always had my family, flatmates or a partner to keep me company. When I visited Liccy and Robin in London and they headed off to work on Monday morning, I think it was the first time I have ever been truly left to my own devices. Nothing depended on my achieving anything that day: I had only myself to please and the whole world to do it in. I went around St Paul’s Cathedral, and walked to Hyde Park Corner, Buckingham Palace and St James’s Park before heading back to meet my hosts for dinner. Some of that was new, some was well-trod, but all of it was my choice – no stopping to eat when someone else was hungry, no going somewhere or missing somewhere else as a compromise.  At the start of the day I was almost paralysed with the prospect; by the end I was pleased with what I had done.  Being alone is no big deal, and certainly nothing to fear.

3. I am a catch. When I discussed with my good friend CaroMel how I was a bit intimidated by dating someone who was older and more successful than I was, she practically jumped down my throat.  “You are brilliant and anyone would be lucky to have you,” she roared vehemently, “don’t let anyone make you feel like you aren’t.”  This is exactly what I say to others in my position but sometimes you need to hear it from someone else to remember that it also applies to you.  (I remember telling my self-deprecating friend Al: “Oh, I’m not having any of that” when he tried to suggest his now wife might be out of his league.  “You’re fantastic. Now get over there and talk to her.”  I’m nothing if not direct.)  No one should intimidate you: we’re all just muddling along as best we can, hoping people see that we dressed for the party and don’t notice our fly is open.  Confidence is sexy: if you’re intimidated by your date, he’s not going to be your date for very long.

4. Friends are food for the soul. No matter what, there is always someone who would be thrilled to hear from you. Good friends give so much, even if you feel like you have so little to give in return.  Even though my holiday wasn’t restful in the traditional sense, being with people with whom you “need be neither brave nor reticent” is a rest in itself.  Starting a new life in another country takes stamina and perseverance, so going home to familiar faces and being able to share the bad stuff as well as the good without seeming to whinge is a relief.  Listening to friends fills up your soul; their stories, their care, their advice all help you to grow.  So long as you have friends, you can do anything.

Leaving England was harder this time, perhaps because it was not the big adventure it was last time, but more likely because I better appreciated what I was leaving behind.  The flight itself was uneventful and I slept most of the way so my jetlag only lasted a couple of days.  Within a week things were back to normal and it was like I had never been away.  My Australian friends were as thrilled to have me back as my English friends had been to see me, and they were keen to fill my diary with all manner of parties and events.  Of course I took them up on the offers, such as tonight’s Sleaze Ball.  I’m still a big bag of insecurity and overconfidence and arrogance and doubt, but I’m damned if that’s going to stop me having a good time.  I am who I am, and life is too short.

When James and I broke up I swore blind that I wouldn’t get involved with anyone else for at least a year – maybe two – and that I would do whatever I wanted with that time. Surprise, surprise, that plan hasn’t entirely worked out as I envisaged. Now, completely by surprise, I appear to be seeing two guys at the same time. How did I manage this? Allow me to explain.

In the latter days of my relationship with James, I allowed myself to forget that I was a gregarious, outgoing guy who will talk to anyone. It’s no one’s fault – you just get comfortable with what you know. The danger of being all those things is that you meet people and, being single and moderately attractive, they aren’t all in it for the simple love of making friends. I’m not complaining, I’m just pointing out where my train went off the tracks. Over the past month or so I have met a few people who made me reconsider my “no dating” hard line and, well, one thing leads to another and so on and so forth.

Last weekend, when I wasn’t baking muffins or cleaning or doing my laundry I managed to spend the entire weekend out on dates with the two main candidates for proper dating. When I say ‘proper dating’, I want to be clear: I do not mean ‘big relationship’, I mean a kind of ‘preferential booking privilege’. Even if the perfect specimen of a future husband were to walk into my life tomorrow I would still be stuck in the “let’s take it practically-in-reverse” lane because that’s all I have to offer right now. I’ve said this to both of them (or variations thereof – “I’m not ready for a relationship”/”this is just for fun” etc), but I just can’t shake the feeling that this is, well, a bit naughty.

It’s not really a problem and I know I can call it off at any time, but I’m not used to seeing two people at the same time. I’m also not used to going out with someone just for fun – in the past I’ve only dated people when I thought it was going somewhere. Everyone is telling me to just keep doing what I’m doing (it’s obviously working) and change it when it stops being fun, which is something I just never done before. Sometimes it feels quite stressful to stay carefree, at other times liberating.

It’s all brand new, fun and kind of strange.

Well, dear friends, I have some bad news and there’s no easy way to tell you this, so I guess I had better just come right out and say it: James and I have decided to split up.  I know this is going to come as a shock to you, so I prepared some FAQs for you to help you deal with the news and prevent you turning to drink, losing your job and winding up in the gutter.  Obviously this all my point of view and I can’t speak for James, but I think we are both of a similar mind and he read this before I posted so anything really egregious has been taken out already.

What happened?
Certainly for the past little while something has been amiss and both James and I have not been happy with our relationship.  Everyone has their peaks and troughs and we dealt with ours like anyone else, but the peaks were getting shorter and lower, while the troughs were getting longer and closer together.  There comes a point when you have to say to yourselves that perhaps another round of “we must try harder” just isn’t going to cut it and there might be something more to what you are feeling.

I confess that I felt this more keenly than James, so last Friday I decided that the time had come to have the awkward talk where nothing is off the table.  Previously it was just not an option – splitting up was simply not on the cards – but this time things were different.  I didn’t go into the conversation planning to end everything, but in times like these all you can do is say how you feel and see what happens.  So that’s what we did.  I said everything that was on my mind, exactly how I felt, and what I thought the options were.  Then I waited for James’s response.  For the first time since I have known him, he gathered his thoughts.  He agreed with me.  We talked about what we should do, what we would do afterwards in each case, and how we felt about each one, and then, twenty minutes after we started, we finished.  It was all very amicable – sad, of course, desperately so – but we opened the good wine we had been saving and enjoyed a quality drink together.

But you were such a good couple!
Well thanks for saying so.  James and I are great friends, and we have great friends; how could we not all have a great time together?  This was one of the reasons that breaking up was so hard to identify as the right thing to do.  We have a whale of a time with our friends, we have great jobs and prospects, supportive families and good health: how could anyone possibly be unhappy with all of that?  The problem was that day to day we simply weren’t making one another happy.  What to do? Stay together for potential future you have, or consider the actual happiness you are feeling?  Clearly, we chose the latter.

So what happens now?  Are you coming back to England?
No.  I love it here.  I love my British friends to death, but I have a great life in Australia and I’m certainly not giving it up less than a year after I arrived here.  I’m sure James feels the same.  Things are pretty much carrying on as normal for now.  I have moved into the spare room, but like it or not, James has been my best friend for three-and-a-half years and that was never the problem.  We get on famously and with a few changes to the domestic arrangements things are going just fine.  We have some joint debts to pay off (like the flights to the UK in three months!) and once that is done, I suppose we’ll assess what we should do next – move out, divide up the stuff, move somewhere else with more people, or just carry on as flatmates – but for now there’s no awkwardness or hostility and we both have our own lives.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

So that’s it.  Just what Sydney needs: another two single gays. But with all the great friends we have made together over the past few years, at least we’ll never really be alone.