New Year’s Eve, 2016. My partner, Simon*, and I, were celebrating with friends on the beach in Sydney, having flown back from our adopted home in the UK to surprise our families. It worked – they were thrilled – but it was not the only surprise I had up my sleeve.
With a bottle of wine in my system I had all the Dutch courage I needed. I asked Simon to walk with me down to the water. He was immediately and obviously disinterested, keen not to leave our friends, but finally joined me to look out at the waves and stars.
I kicked my toes in the surf. He glanced over at the party. I grabbed his hand. ‘Look, the ripples are reflecting, like tiny bugs living under the sea,’ I said. ‘It is such a romantic night tonight.’
Then, shaking with nerves, I blurted out: ‘It’s even romantic enough for me to ask you to marry me”.
Simon bristled. ‘What?’ he exclaimed and without hesitation added: “You can’t ask me that… No. No. I’m not ready.”
‘Oh… Forget I asked. That’s fine,’ I said, desperately trying to disguise the humiliation and aching sadness rising rapidly inside me. ‘It’s totally OK. Don’t worry. Let’s just go back’.
But ‘we’ didn’t go anywhere. Simon went back to the party and I walked up into the sand dunes, praying that I wouldn’t feel this rejected forever.
Simon and I met through a mutual friend. He mentioned he had a mate staying who he thought I’d get on with and passed my number on – Simon called me the next day. I chatted away my hangover, giggly with endorphins, and we went to dinner that same night.
We talked about our desires to travel, our joint desperation to make a living from our creative dreams. Tipsy and flushed with excitement, I cut Simon off mid-sentence, leaning across the table and instructing him to ‘give me a little kiss’.
After that, we were inseparable. Simon was my wedding date, my movie buddy, my best friend. I was an actor, he worked in film. On paper, we were a perfect match.
We moved into a tiny flat in a trendy area of Sydney and started to build a life together. We discussed marriage, not setting concrete plans but in quiet whispers late at night as we dreamt up our futures.
Simon would say things like ‘When I am a cinematographer for Spielberg I will turn to him and say “Hey Steve, meet my wife, she is your next star”’.
These comments were flippant but I took them to heart, adding another notch to my mental scoreboard – another silent contract that obviously, one day, we would be married.
When monotony started to creep into our lives and jobs, we decided to travel: 10 months of no responsibilities that eventually led us to settle in London. It was the most exciting time of my life, but London pushed us both in directions we did not expect.
Simon didn’t get the work we immediately thought he would, taking job after job on film sets that paid the bills but pigeon-holed him in roles he didn’t want. I was the same, getting auditions for acting jobs without ever landing a role. We grew tired and frustrated, and more and more lonely.
We continued to play house, buying new bathroom mats and going for walks on Sunday afternoons, but where once conversations were endless, they felt stilted, forced, and filled with nostalgia for what we once were, not what we were like now.
But I had come up with a secret plan. We would travel back to Australia at Christmas, and I would propose. It would re-energise us. We’d been together four and a half years, we were right for one another, he was bound to say yes (my confidence was one of the many traits my partner loved about me).
Except he said no.
In the cool, dark air in the sand dunes, I messaged my mum. Her reply was instantaneous. ‘WHAT! Really? Are you okay? I am so sorry my beauty’.
That’s when reality dawned on me. ‘It’s OK,’ I typed back, tears slipping down my face. ‘It was a dumb idea anyway. Happy New Year, Mum.’
The rest of our trip was a blur. Simon spent most of his time with his family, as I did with mine, watching rom-coms on Netflix in the stifling heat.
We didn’t talk about it. I was humiliated, and so it seemed, was he – embarrassed at how quickly he had said no. I buried my pain and shut down, plastering a smile on my face.
Back in London, Simon and I started to float apart. I took on extra shifts at work, staying out too late and getting too drunk. It became painful being around him, and, subconsciously, I was waiting for him to leave me.
The break up, when it finally came, was messy and sad. We were nasty but also kinder to one another than we had been in months. Bags were packed, loose ends tied up and we said a sobbing goodbye. One of the last things he said to me was ‘I wish I had said yes that night’. I don’t think I will ever forget that. Perhaps he meant it, but it was too late to go back.
It has taken me a couple of years and a brilliant support system to come to terms with what happened. I tortured myself wondering how I could have read him so wrong.
But it was much more complicated than that. I had spent too much time projecting an idea of what we were instead of accepting what was actually going on. We were both seeking some kind of ideal fairytale life that didn’t exist.
I am so glad Simon turned down my proposal. If he hadn’t, I suspect I would still be living in limbo as someone’s wife, not giving myself a chance to be anything more.
We all have so much love in us that true love does not need to be the kind that goes on forever. The years Simon and I shared defined a part of me, helped me grow and understand love and life in a new way. I learnt to value myself, and that in itself is a gift.
Perhaps this sounds sad – it definitely makes me feel sad, especially for a relationship that still beats somewhere in my heart. But it says so much about the love we shared and proves it can never completely disappear.
That’s what makes the pleasure of giving love to others so much more selfless and special.
*Names have been changed
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