Читать книгу The Bumpy Road to Married Bliss - Chris Dicken - Страница 9

Donny – 2 December 2011

I thought I would add in my piece about how Chris and I got together, so that you can hear both sides of the story.

As an American living in London, one of the most common questions I have been asked during the past eight years is, ‘How did you end up in the UK in the first place?’

And as with most things there is always a short answer – that work brought me over on a secondment – and a long answer – which was always best left for a second date, or an evening with friends and wine. Lots of wine.

And it was the long version that I decided to share with Chris while we hiked together on the Isle of Wight, because something told me he was someone that I could trust (even though it wasn’t a date!) and that this was someone I needed to share with, even though we had just met.

And because we’re all friends here, I’ll share the longer version with you too.

I grew up in California within the city of San Francisco, which I still think of as home, since my family are all there. But I left home and went to college in Boston on the east coast of the US when I was 17, intending to go for just four years and then return to San Francisco (because Californians and east coast winters don’t typically mix). And those four years turned into fifteen in the blink of an eye … all because of a guy I met during the summer just before my second year of college.

Growing up I never fully realised or accepted that I was gay, and I always thought I was just going through a phase. Only the phase never ended, and I found myself increasingly thinking about guys and having crushes on male classmates. So that summer I was determined to meet someone, in part to figure out once and for all if I really liked guys or not. These were early days for the Internet and there was barely even email, so I posted something on an Internet bulletin board and soon had a date lined up with someone I’ll describe as the Tall Handsome Swimmer (I’ll refer to him as THS).

From that first kiss I shared with THS at the end of our date, I was hooked. I was 18 and in love, and I very quickly found myself in a relationship with THS that ultimately lasted 14 years before it ran its natural course. All my ‘growing-up’ years were with THS, and although there was a lot of love shared during those years, there was also much heartbreak at the end. And so I volunteered at work for the transfer to London in order to get a fresh start, not ever thinking I would be in another relationship again anytime soon, and not at all thinking that I would ever find love again like the love I shared with THS.

I came to London not knowing a soul – having left behind a tight circle of close friends in Boston and two cats that I shared with THS – carrying just two suitcases and what felt like a lifetime of memories stored in my heavy heart. And slowly, with the newfound freedom that comes with being young, single and carefree in a new city, I slowly rebuilt my life.

So I was in an interesting state just before I met Chris. I had been in the UK for less than a year, and after a period of single life and casual dating, had found myself in another relationship – this time with a neurotic workaholic I’ll refer to as the CEO. I never thought I would find love again like the love I had shared with THS, and at some level I stopped looking for that type of love, or even caring whether or not I would ever find it. So this casual relationship with the CEO was enough for me, and because I wasn’t looking for (and certainly wasn’t ready for) any kind of deeper commitment, the CEO ticked the boxes for what I needed and for what I was emotionally ready to face at that time. And marriage itself was the furthest thing from my mind, since I had become very cynical, convinced that every relationship would ultimately end horribly anyway.

So yes, I was a bit damaged, and what I really needed when I met Chris was a friend more than anything else. And that’s exactly how Chris and I had our start during that hiking weekend on the Isle of Wight.

The years since the day that Chris and I first got together as a couple flew by, just as the years flew by when I was in my first relationship with THS. That’s when you know you’re in a good place – it’s like when you’re watching a good movie: you become so engrossed in what you are seeing on the screen that you become oblivious to time.

We had a bit of a commuter relationship in the beginning, because Chris lived down in Surrey, to the south of London, and I lived in Clerkenwell, near the city centre. It took over 90 minutes to get from my door to his, so we pretty much only saw each other on weekends for the first few years of our relationship.

Chris and I have a lot of happy memories from this time. Even early on, I knew there was something special about Chris and that I was on to a winner. In fact, during one of our earliest dates, when we had only been together for a month or so, I surprised Chris by inviting him to accompany me on a business trip to Japan that I was planning for the summer. Mind you, this was March and we were just a few weeks into our relationship, and the trip wasn’t going to happen until July at the earliest. And although we had just started dating, I already knew then that the relationship would last at least through the summer, and that he was someone I wanted to have at my side to explore Shinto shrines and climb Mount Fuji under the light of the full moon.

Other highlights and adventures during this time included trips to California to meet my family, and to explore the natural beauty of places like Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. On one trip that coincided with Chris’s birthday, we visited San Diego and I surprised him with a special tour of the San Diego Zoo, where we got to sit with flamingos, feed a rhinoceros and pet a kangaroo.

But the major turning point in the relationship was when I purchased a small flat in the borough of Islington in north London. This was a bold move for me, and it was a sign that I was taking positive steps towards establishing my own roots in London. But Chris wasn’t prepared to move in with me yet and, perhaps wisely, he wanted to take things a bit more slowly. This was the autumn of 2009, and we had only been together for 18 months, so I could understand his hesitancy.

It wasn’t until a year later that Chris finally took the plunge and moved in with me, and that was probably the biggest life-changing event for us both. Moving in together is the step where a life for one becomes a life for two, and every step you take from then on needs to have the couple’s best interests in mind. Also, this is when a couple needs to address more grown-up and unglamorous, but necessary, practical issues, such as paying the mortgage, figuring out a cleaning rota, and money for groceries and utilities. This was a much bigger change for Chris, since he had only ever lived with housemates before. But for me, it took me back to familiar ground, since I have spent more of my adult years in a relationship than being outside of one. Nevertheless, it is a defining moment in the evolution of any relationship, when you transition from being boyfriends to becoming partners.

And now we are ready to take yet another step forward – from being partners to becoming husbands!