Dear Roe,
I have recently returned to Ireland from New Zealand after spending a year and a half working over there. About a month before I came home
I had a very brief romance with the most amazing woman. Now that I’m back in Ireland, this is the only thing that I can think about to the point where it’s driving me mad. I think I may have found love but it’s also possible that this obsession is further compounded by me being deprived of any form of human intimacy since I returned (I live in an isolated rural area). Personal circumstances mean I am not in a position to go back to New Zealand, and even if I could, I have no idea if this woman would be interested in a relationship.
I fear that I will never again meet someone that I have the same emotional, intellectual and physical connection with. I also fear that this experience may impede my ability to develop deep relationships with other women.
I’m a big fan of short romances. We live in a society that tends to place a hierarchy on romantic relationships, with marriages that only end when one or both people die held up as the epitome of romantic success, and respect and recognition being doled out in varying degrees to relationships that stray from this model.
Relationships that end badly are deemed to be failures, no matter how loving and important the rest of the relationship was. Long-distance relationships are often deemed to be less “real” than other relationships, despite those in them remaining committed through all the obstacles and logistical hurdles facing them. And short connections – even if they are utterly transformative – are barely acknowledged at all.
Don't spend your time grieving the loss of this relationship, but embracing and growing what you learned from it
It’s easy to default to this hierarchal mindset, to convince yourself that others are right, that your short relationship wasn’t important, that you should forget about it.
Don’t forget about this relationship. But don’t limit yourself to it, either. Your challenge will be to take all the best parts of this romance and move forward with them. Don’t spend your time grieving the loss of this relationship, but embracing and growing what you learned from it.
You met someone glorious with whom you had an intense connection. It may have even been love – another concept we tend to put into a hierarchy and ruin by piling it high with rules and expectations.
What if, instead of mourning that the relationship couldn’t go on longer, you celebrate that you made such a transformative connection with someone in such a short space of time? You didn’t do what a lot of people do, and hold back your emotions in fear of getting hurt. You invested in this person, you wore your brave, wide-open heart on your sleeve, even though you knew you were leaving, even though you knew this couldn’t last. You didn’t let your emotions be ruled by fear or rules or expectation or convention, and you found love.
That’s amazing. So now, take those beautiful qualities that this relationship brought out in you, and emulate them in your life. Right now, you’re missing this woman, so your longing for her is natural. But don’t let this mourning period fossilise in such a way that you, ironically, close yourself off to other possibilities and other connections.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “I found this amazing person once, I’ll never find another, there’s no point in trying.” Stay open-hearted and brave and hopeful. Think “I found this amazing person once – and now I get to find another amazing connection, with other incredible women, possibly over and over again.
One of the unique joys of brief flings is that they don't require that much from us. Short-term romances – like short adventures to new places – get to remain in the honeymoon period
“And because I know that it’s not the length or structure of the relationship that makes them special, I can appreciate people in whatever way they come into my life. I can appreciate brief flings, long relationships, great friendships. Now that I know that these incredible, unexpected connections are possible, I can remain open to them whenever and wherever they occur.”
Apply that sense of openness and excitement to your life here, now. Leaving a place you loved is not unlike leaving a person you loved. It’s easy when we live abroad to embrace a sense of adventure, to embrace the freedom that comes with not having expectations foisted upon you, to become the best version of yourself – and easier still to fall into old, cynical, isolating habits when we come home. Returning home from a great adventure can bring with it an unwelcome sense of familiarity, and we can get stuck thinking that good things only exist in the place you just left – or the person.
One of the joys of brief flings is that they don’t require that much from us. Short-term romances – like short adventures to new places – get to remain in the honeymoon period. You never have to struggle to keep the excitement alive, never squabble over the boring stuff, never have to have the big, difficult conversations about how to make a partnership work in the long-run. You’ve proven that you can be open-hearted to new places and new people.
Now that you’re home, challenge yourself to also love the work of love, as well as the initial novelty; to embrace life and its endless possibilities here, the way you embraced it there. Not because of any hierarchy, but because doing so will keep you open to all different types of connections.
I believe you when you say this woman was wonderful, that your connection was unique, that you loved who you were with her. She is not the only wonderful woman out there. She is not the only woman with whom you can experience a wonderful connection. She does not own the best parts of you, she did not create them, did not keep them with her when you left. Those parts – the adventurous, the brave, the romantic, the loving – are all yours. Embrace them now.
Living in a rural area isn’t an excuse. You got a plane (or two) out of this country to find love and adventure. You can hop on a bus to find it now. Or the phone. Or a dating app. It isn’t a lack of amazing people in this country preventing you from meeting anyone right now, it’s your willingness to try.
Your trip away and this relationship was transformative. You’ve loved, and grown. So re-introduce yourself to Ireland, as you are now, with everything you’ve learned. There are a lot of glorious people here waiting to meet you.
Roe McDermott is a writer and Fulbright scholar with an MA in sexuality studies from San Francisco State University. She is researching a PhD in gendered and sexual citizenship at the Open University and Oxford.
If you have a problem or query you would like her to answer, you can submit it anonymously at irishtimes.com/dearroe. Only questions selected for publication can be answered.
