Hard decisions
Jan. 9th, 2012 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livMy joint birthday party with jack at the weekend was great fun. Lots of lovely people, including people I haven't caught up with in far too long, including ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
deborah_c and hobbitz. It was my first experience of having a party that included small children; they were wonderfully entertaining and not at all destructive. But it also felt like a life milestone: I've reached the stage where several of my peers have kids. Also, purplecthulu pointed out that I have now reached the age of majority in hobbit terms. When it got to the late night stage, the thing that seemed like a really good idea was to impose a fairly formal structure, with a conch and points of order, on a discussion about government mandated traffic-light labelling on food.
On the negative side, though, my asthma was bad enough to scare me pretty much throughout, and not responding to drugs. This led me to accept the reality I've been in denial about for some years: I am allergic tojack's house, and it's an absolutely classic pattern of sensitization, not just a series of coincidences. So I need to stop spending time there before it gets bad enough to be actually dangerous rather than just annoying. Unfortunately struggling to breathe makes me less good at thinking clearly, so I forgot all the rules of good communication and told jack about this decision at about 3 am. Much to his credit, he took it really well, but still, not my proudest moment.
We had a proper discussion when we were more awake, which covered a few difficult issues that really did need confronting. The decision was reaffirmed: I'm not going to be spending time at my fiancé's home until it's safe for my lungs, which might mean major work to deal with the mould and damp, or might mean moving house. Neither of those is going to be a speedy process, especially not when we have a wedding to plan in the next few months. I'm not pleased about this at all, and not least because it means no more lovely houseparties like Saturday's. But I really need to stop endangering my health. It's more inconvenient than a disaster for the relationship; I have plenty of options for places to stay in Cambridge (including my parents'), andjack can come and visit me here, and we can use the excuse to go away together and visit somewhere interesting instead of just defaulting to me hanging out in Cambridge.
In the course of a somewhat painful conversation, we acknowledged that we have no real prospect of being able to move in together any time in the next 18 months to 2 years. We sort of knew that already, but perhaps weirdly I feel better for knowing it's off the table. The discussion removed the emotional block I was feeling whenever I tried to contemplate any medium-term plans or decisions, because I kept having to second-guess myself by thinking, but how will that fit in with perhaps living withjack? We haven't given up the intention of living together eventually, but it's more a long term life and career decision thing, than something we're actively working on. And I do think we'll be ok long-distance for a while longer, even with the awkwardness that I'm not visiting jack's house any more.
Feh. Lots of couples have worse issues with illness or career stuff or geography getting in the way of the relationship. We'll be ok, but celebrating milestone birthdays is somewhat dampened by this situation.
jack at the weekend was great fun. Lots of lovely people, including people I haven't caught up with in far too long, including deborah_c and hobbitz. It was my first experience of having a party that included small children; they were wonderfully entertaining and not at all destructive. But it also felt like a life milestone: I've reached the stage where several of my peers have kids. Also, purplecthulu pointed out that I have now reached the age of majority in hobbit terms. When it got to the late night stage, the thing that seemed like a really good idea was to impose a fairly formal structure, with a conch and points of order, on a discussion about government mandated traffic-light labelling on food. On the negative side, though, my asthma was bad enough to scare me pretty much throughout, and not responding to drugs. This led me to accept the reality I've been in denial about for some years: I am allergic to
jack's house, and it's an absolutely classic pattern of sensitization, not just a series of coincidences. So I need to stop spending time there before it gets bad enough to be actually dangerous rather than just annoying. Unfortunately struggling to breathe makes me less good at thinking clearly, so I forgot all the rules of good communication and told jack about this decision at about 3 am. Much to his credit, he took it really well, but still, not my proudest moment.We had a proper discussion when we were more awake, which covered a few difficult issues that really did need confronting. The decision was reaffirmed: I'm not going to be spending time at my fiancé's home until it's safe for my lungs, which might mean major work to deal with the mould and damp, or might mean moving house. Neither of those is going to be a speedy process, especially not when we have a wedding to plan in the next few months. I'm not pleased about this at all, and not least because it means no more lovely houseparties like Saturday's. But I really need to stop endangering my health. It's more inconvenient than a disaster for the relationship; I have plenty of options for places to stay in Cambridge (including my parents'), and
jack can come and visit me here, and we can use the excuse to go away together and visit somewhere interesting instead of just defaulting to me hanging out in Cambridge. In the course of a somewhat painful conversation, we acknowledged that we have no real prospect of being able to move in together any time in the next 18 months to 2 years. We sort of knew that already, but perhaps weirdly I feel better for knowing it's off the table. The discussion removed the emotional block I was feeling whenever I tried to contemplate any medium-term plans or decisions, because I kept having to second-guess myself by thinking, but how will that fit in with perhaps living with
jack? We haven't given up the intention of living together eventually, but it's more a long term life and career decision thing, than something we're actively working on. And I do think we'll be ok long-distance for a while longer, even with the awkwardness that I'm not visiting jack's house any more.Feh. Lots of couples have worse issues with illness or career stuff or geography getting in the way of the relationship. We'll be ok, but celebrating milestone birthdays is somewhat dampened by this situation.
