christine

Losing the language of love

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Given with love

I’m working through the article that I’ve saved to Pocket over the past few weeks and came across a poignant piece called Losing the Language of Love (Web Archive Link). It’s about how you develop a special dialect when you’re close to someone for a long time, whether it’s a partner, friend or family member, and how it feels when that person is no longer a part of your life anymore.

It reminded me of the almost three and a half years that I spent with Hari, my first girlfriend. Over the years we developed our own dialect between us, much of it derived from gamer speak – we’d call each other ‘noob’ if we did something wrong, or use ‘zomg!’ as an expression of surprise. And, like in most relationships, we had pet names for each other that made no sense to anyone else.

We split up in March 2009. As well as losing a partner, I also lost a reason to use those words – they didn’t really mean anything to anyone else. And I’d feel uncomfortable using them with Christine – after all, I see them as relics from an old relationship that didn’t work out.

But then Christine and I also have our own words. Like most couples, we have our pet names for each other, which in both cases is ‘Squishy‘, because we’re just that sick-inducingly cute. And, by extension, our pet name for our unborn child is ‘the Squishlet’, even though we’ve basically settled upon a name for it based on its presumed gender. Plus, there are other words and phrases that we use that are probably meaningless to others.

When a relationship with someone close to you ends, it isn’t just the physical things that disappear. It’s also the less tangible things like words and phrases, that meant so much to you and your significant other. To others, they are just that – words and phrases with no context.

Five years on

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It’s been five years to the day since Hari and I ended our relationship. Though mostly a mutual agreement that things weren’t working, it was still a very difficult time for me, exacerbated by being unemployed and having recently lost my grandmother. It was pretty much the lowest point of my life so far.

The end of any relationship is hard, but particularly so when the relationship was with someone that you had been with for several years and were living with. The following few weeks were a struggle, not at least because I had to organise moving back home with my parents, cancelling utilities and so on.

Thankfully, things started to turn around soon afterwards, and around 6 weeks later I was back in a job. My friends were brilliantly supportive during that time and helped me greatly. And, later on, I met Christine, to whom I’ve now been married for almost a year now.

Hari has also moved on, and started a relationship with someone around the same time as I met Christine. We’re still in contact over Facebook but have only met in person once since the split, mainly because she now lives in Scotland. I’m sure we’re both happier now, and though it hurt at the time, breaking up was the right thing to do. And, with hindsight, I’m glad we called it quits when we did, rather than trying in vain to revive our relationship.

A year out of the city

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Rochdale Canal

It’s now been a year since Christine and I moved in together in Sowerby Bridge. It’s also therefore a year since I moved out of Bradford, where I’d spent most of the previous 8 years. We like the town – it’s small, relatively quiet (apart from the main street) and full of interesting pubs and restaurants, of which some we still haven’t been to yet. It’s also an easy commute for both us to get to walk, and has good public transport links with regular trains and buses, so we haven’t felt isolated.

Although the first flat we moved into didn’t work out, we’ve had no problems with the second one that we moved into in April – and it ended up being cheaper, larger and generally nicer than the first one, all things considered. We’re hoping to stay in the flat for some time to come, after which we’ll probably look at buying a house rather than renting as we do at the moment.

This year has also seen us build upon our relationship, going from being 65 miles apart and generally only seeing each other at weekends, to living together and ultimately becoming engaged last month. Living together has worked well – Christine’s a great cook, and so whilst she does most of the meals I’m happy to do other bits of housework.

So here’s to another year of living together.

Making a Mess in the Kitchen

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Food

Christine, the amazing woman that I’m planning to marry sometime in the near future, also happens to be a very good cook, and luckily for you, she’s decided to start a recipe blog called Making a Mess in the Kitchen. I’m hosting it, and it sits in its separate installation of WordPress (I had considered enabling Network mode on WordPress, since I now have 3 WordPress installs on here, but decided it was too much effort).

There’s a few recipes, and some other general cookery-ness, on there now, and I’m sure she’ll continue adding to it as she continues to experiment new things. I’ll just keep on washing up after her.

Tumbleweed

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Looks like I’ve been a bad blogger and not posted here for a while. Oops.

Here’s what I’ve been up to:

  • The slightly cryptic last sentence in my Blackpool post last month refers to the fact that my new girlfriend lives in Blackpool. Her name is Christine (that’s her actual first name, not a pseudonym), we’ve been seeing each other for about 6 weeks and I’ll probably say more about her as time goes on. It’s a distance relationship but we’ve managed to make time to see each other most weekends.
  • In October I went to see Ash when they played a gig at Bradford Gasworks. They were awesome. They’re also releasing a new single every 2 weeks over the next 12 months, the first 3 of which are out. You can buy all 26 for £11 which isn’t bad.
  • I’ve recently bought some noise-cancelling headphones, which actually do seem to work – my walk to work on a morning is now quite tranquil as I don’t have the noise of cars and the rain in the background, and can instead have my iPod at a lower volume. I only bought a relatively cheap Philips unit for £20 – the sound-cancelling unit is almost as big as my iPod nano – and bar some minor sound distortion they’re good for outdoor use.
  • I visited Halifax on Saturday – another local place that I’ve never really been to before. The Piece Hall is well-worth a visit for the small, independent shops. The rest of the town is nice but mostly full of typical high-street shops, so not worth spending much time visiting. And I’m a bit old for Eureka!, even if it is made of wall-to-wall awesomeness.
  • Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 is out. It’s noticably quicker than 3.5, although on my Mac it fails to start if Nightly Tester Tools is enabled. So right now I’m running with barely any extensions enabled.