Along with putting on an already damp swimsuit, writing a list down of all my past relationships and why they failed is one of the least enjoyable tasks in life. Normally if anyone tried to pry into my business this much, I would push them off with a dismissive “who’s asking?!”.
But in this case it was the Australian government doing the asking. We were finalising the end of the partner visa application and I had to fill out my side. I was getting the paperwork done on my big culchie I imported from the west of Ireland. Everything was fine until we hit one last question at the end of the 60-plus page application. The one that asked me to list all my previous relations and the reason they ended.
Logically I could understand why. They want to make sure the relationship is genuine and that I’m not a serial sponsor of partners. I have to prove I’m not running some kind of black market importation of Irish people to fill the GAA teams of Sydney.
But on the other hand, surely this must be the work of some nosy public bureaucrat desperate to liven up their day by reading about the intimate failings of others. It’s exactly what I would do if I had that job.
I wrote down all my relationships and why they ended: ‘I cheated’, ‘he cheated’
I am the victim of the most middle-class crime ever committed
As my life got easier, I got angrier. Things should not be so hard for the working class
There are things Australians do better than the Irish. Death isn’t one of them
If you are the type of person who skips to the “personal life” section of Wikipedia profiles, you are my people. Learning about someone’s contribution to a historical event or the modern world as we know it is great and all, but I need to know how many wives and lovers he had.
You could excuse this as advocating for women who are so often the footnotes of history. But it’s just me excited to find out the whole tea on the situation. I cannot separate the art from the artist. If a writer or painter immortalised his love in art but acted awful to her in real life, I will be judging accordingly.
For example, I was delighted when Rory McIlroy won his Grand Slam, I really was. However, I’m also the kind of buzzkill who will ruin the moment by whispering “Caroline Wozniacki” along with “and the invitations already out and all”. I’m sorry.
Now, in a case of live by the sword die by the sword, I have to lay all my dirty laundry out on the line for a public servant to read. What choice do I have? I can’t have them send my beloved back down into the bog to toil in a life of hardship, I cry.
“I work in tech,” my ever patient boyfriend replies, “I grew up with an indoor swimming pool, I have softer hands than you.”
That may be true but I would like to have him live in the same country as me. So I sat there and wrote out every relationship and where it all went wrong. Which is much harder than you think. There are no explicit rules but I imagine it would be frowned on to write “was a bit of a prick” and call it a day. You have to really examine all the heartbreak and sum it up in a sanitised answer that makes you look semi-sane.
One ex got “long distance”, which covered up all the underlying surface issues we’d had for years before I moved away. Some “I cheated” or “they cheated”. Another got “mutual decision” when in fact he tried to win me back by singing Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones blind drunk to me at a steelworker’s pub karaoke night.
[ I am the victim of the most middle-class crime ever committedOpens in new window ]
Then came the realisation that the common denominator in all this heartbreak was me. I imagined the public servant looking through the answers and surmising I was in fact, the problem. They wouldn’t be wrong.
That’s the thing about having to face up to all the painful parts of your past. Maybe sometimes you were the arsehole, as they say on Reddit.
Strangely, I couldn’t remember the “why” of some break-ups. I could remember they involved fighting in the streets and all kinds of dramatic declarations of love like return flights to London. They ended for reasons that seemed complex and philosophical. But 10 years later, for the life of me I can’t remember them at all. Other than that, we were silly and immature and didn’t know how to love properly yet, which is something
I wish I could go back in time and tell myself in my 20s. That it will all be okay and while this will teach you something, none of it matters in the end. Only to the nosy bureaucrat reading your forms.
