Lifestyle

When we emigrated, my girlfriend and I had to prove our love


Marcy and I started dating in January 2015. It was my second year at the University of York, and her first. She’d made it her new year’s resolution to ask me out and did it in the middle of exam week, right after we’d watched The Princess Bride in her cramped room. 

We watched anime, played old video games and made elaborate Nigella Lawson brownies. When I went to summer school in Japan that year, Marcy flew out to meet me in Tokyo and we spent a hazy three weeks travelling by train to tiny mountain towns and huge festivals. It was paradise.   

Two years later and I was applying for a Master’s degree. Brexit had happened. Hate crimes were rising. People had started to stare when Marcy and I held hands in public. People yelled at us in the street. I wanted to yell back but Marcy would stop me, not wanting a fuss.

I wanted to leave the UK, but only if we left together. ‘How do you feel about me applying to Master’s degrees far away?’ I asked. ‘I’m looking at programmes in Melbourne, Toronto and Vancouver.’ 

She thought about it for maybe 10 seconds. ‘I’ve always wanted to live in Canada.’

Aside from my summer in Tokyo, we’d both lived in England our whole lives. I knew my great-aunt had moved to Canada in the 70s, but I doubted immigration would be that easy anymore.

I was accepted into the University of British Columbia, and that’s when the paperwork started. The good news was Marcy was eligible for a visa as my common-law partner, which meant that she would have the same rights as if we were married. The bad news: we had to prove our relationship.

The border agency gave us a strict list of what counted as proof that we were truly in love – and we had none of it.

The countless photos of us counted for nothing, the art we decorated our walls with had no weight, the friends who referred to us as ‘Marv’, like we were a single entity, didn’t factor in (Picture: V Wells)

Despite spending every night together for two years, complete with couples’ Interrail trips and shared Sainsbury’s orders, we had no financial assets or legal recognition of our coupledom. We didn’t share a lease or own any property together — we had never officially lived together. 

The countless photos of us counted for nothing. The art we decorated our walls with had no weight. The friends who referred to us as ‘Marv’, like we were a single entity, didn’t factor in. It was crushing to realise that our relationship had no paper trail. So we made one.

We opened a shared bank account (that we haven’t touched since) and I combed through our bank statements to prove we split groceries. I submitted all our shared expenses as part of the visa application. 

Crucially, we visited a notary and signed a statement swearing our common-law status. It was weird to give a stranger money to have them rubber-stamp a document that ‘proved’ our relationship, but it made the Canadian government happy and we could have been charged with perjury if it was false, which was quite a compelling reason to be honest. 

In the end, it didn’t matter to us: you can’t quantify love and devotion with a piece of paper. 

Canada’s immigration process is terrifying. You pay a fortune and upload your documents to a website, and they disappear into a void. There’s no way to contact anyone to ask for updates and no way to know if you did everything right. 

I was worried that, after everything we had been through to be together, my shy girlfriend was destined to spend her days waiting for me

Marcy and I spent a lot of late nights figuring out contingency plans. Long distance. Six-month visitor visas. I even jokingly suggested getting married, aged 22, to see if that helped our chances. I was that certain that we’d be together forever (I still am). 

After a couple of months of anxious waiting, our visas came through in the summer around the same time Marcy graduated… we had qualified. There it was, in black and white: ‘common-law spouse’. We didn’t need to get married – Canada thought we were as good as wed. I was too relieved to feel anything else.

We landed there at the end of August 2017, a week before my 23rd birthday and four months after applying for visas.

In Vancouver, you can stand on the beach and see ocean and mountains, skyscrapers and mountains. It’s beautiful – and sometimes lonely. I had my friends from my course; Marcy didn’t know anyone. 

She spent the first week overwhelmed by the wide roads and weird supermarkets and unfamiliar measurement systems. I was worried that, after everything we had been through to be together, my shy girlfriend was destined to spend her days waiting for me.

Marcy chose me, and I chose her, and we chose to move together (Picture: V Wells)

I was concerned Marcy might resent me for upending her life for nothing and worried that she might want to break up with me. Her visa was attached to mine: she could only live in Canada so long as we’re together. What if she was only staying with me so she didn’t have to leave?

But Marcy thrived. She started our Dungeons and Dragons group that still meets every Saturday. She attended technology and video game meet-ups and got to know local creators. She started working at Lush, and brought home squashed soap and vegan perfume. 

Canada has become somewhere safe where Marcy gets to be herself and where we get to be us, together. Moving here meant we had to build a whole new support system from scratch but I’ve always been her biggest fan, and she’s always been mine. Five years later, we’re still as in love as ever.

I cherish the little things: explaining the heteronormative core conceit of Love Is Blind while we cook curry; playing video games together on the sofa. One day, we’ll probably get married. I’ve already got an engagement ring for her, hidden in the back of my underwear drawer. 

At night we lie awake in bed and worry about our future in Canada: the permanent residency we have yet to obtain, the citizenship tests we have yet to take, the hoops we have yet to jump through. But love isn’t in signing pieces of paper that say you’re in a relationship. It’s in the little moments spent in each other’s presence. 

It’s making each other tea in the morning without being asked. It’s holding hands automatically when you leave the house. It’s supporting each other’s far-fetched ideas — like cooking 28 roast potatoes each for Christmas dinner, or getting really into growing houseplants, or agreeing to move to another country together. And there’s nobody else in the world I’d rather be eating potatoes or growing plants or living in a three-room apartment with. 

I don’t believe in fate, or miracles, or soul mates. There are thousands of people in the world who any one of us could connect with at any time. But Marcy chose me, and I chose her, and we chose to move together.

Taking that risk proves our love and devotion more than any document could. And I promise to keep choosing her, over and over.

Last week, in Love, Or Something Like It: When sex became too painful, I learnt to love without it



Share your love story

Love, Or Something Like It is a new series for Metro.co.uk, covering everything from mating and dating to lust and loss, to find out what love is and how to find it in the present day. If you have a love story to share, email rosy.edwards@metro.co.uk

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