A Year of Dan & Jo: May

What’s a good story without conflict, am I right?

May started out well enough, we were both trying to manage knowing we wouldn’t be seeing each other for at least four weeks and looking at possibilities for June. All in all, we started out as positively as possible and were working on keeping our spirits up.

However, time + distance + text only communication (neither of us likes talking on the phone) = breeding ground for misunderstandings. Also, I have a touch of depression sprinkled with paranoia which always makes for a misunderstanding waiting to happen.

When you can’t hear someone’s voice say the words and you can’t see their face and they aren’t next to you to reassure you with a touch or a hug, everything you read gets filtered through your own voice, your own insecurities and your own, often incorrect, interpretation. If you’re already upset, chances are pretty good that everything you read will be in that “voice” and everything will read as antagonistic, unwilling to understand and distant.

Which is what happened to us in the second week of May. Dan made an off-hand comment that was 100% meant to be flirty and complimentary and I read it as something that didn’t fit into our conversation which made it suspect (hello, paranoia). When I re-read the conversation today I can’t even see my own frustration in the answers that I wrote which means that Dan most likely didn’t see it either when he read it at the time. I can clearly remember being upset and frustrated and unsure what to make of what he had written and I went to sleep hurt and sad even though none of that was visible in my answers or messages. We wished each other sweet dreams like we always do and outwardly there was no way of telling I was gutted. The next morning everything was jokey and fine again. I did tell him that his comment seemed really out of place and that it weirded me out and he was very understanding about that and said he’d try to pay attention to what kind of flirty comments he used when. However, in my head it was still a really unpleasant interaction, even though it probably didn’t even register as odd on his end.

This wasn’t an isolated experience and some of our other misunderstandings did actually result in very lengthy, very exhausting, conversations to try to hash out exactly what we meant and where the communication was breaking down. As awful as it is when you misunderstand each other, or you understand perfectly and you’re hurt by what they said, I do feel very lucky to be with a guy who honestly wants to figure out why I’m upset so he can either reassure me and at the same time make sure it never happens again. Not once has he made me feel like a “crazy” woman who needs mollifying or humouring. He really wants to know and he takes it seriously when I’m upset.

Even so, not seeing his face can sometimes be very hard when we’re talking about things that bother us (me, usually) and that’s when the distance feels the farthest because it would help me so much to hear him and see him when he says he gets it and it’s all fine. In my voice in my head, he still sounds doubtful, which makes it hard for me to let things go.

As a result of some of our miscommunications we (finally) came up with the idea of date nights on Skype. We had our first date night on May 12th and half of it was still him typing because he couldn’t get his microphone to work. The “conversation” is delightfully one-sided in our chat log but what’s really obvious was that we were having fun.

Dan punctuates with 😛 emoticons – hahaha

We had quite a few technical difficulties on both ends which meant there were a lot of freezing screens, lost sound and sometimes even no visual at all. It was a different kind of frustrating and when we “hung up” I missed him even more than I did before but at least I could see his face and it made us both smile a lot. The overall effect was a positive one, mostly because we could see each other and smile at each other again with actual faces instead of with smileys. There is something about his goofy yet dark and mysterious face that makes me grin my fool face off.

On a sadder note, just after I got back from visiting Dan in April, we found out that my Uncle Joe had died. Joe was my dad’s best friend and my Auntie Gay’s ex-husband. He wasn’t a blood relative but that made no difference. He’d known me my whole life and losing him was devastating. There was no question that my parents, my sister and I would be at his funeral in England later that month.

If you want to talk conflicting feelings and emotions, try this one on for size: going to your uncle’s funeral in England, where your boyfriend lives, only he’ll still be 300 miles away from you so you won’t be seeing him at all but you feel bad about feeling sad about that because you’re not going to England for fun, you’re going for a funeral [side note, why does the word funeral have the word fun in it?].

Also, how messed up is it to fly an hour to another country and still be exactly as far away from him as when you’re sat at home? On the bright side, we’d be in the same time zone for 48 hours (she said, with mild sarcasm).

As with most funerals, this one was a lovely send off and a giant reunion of friends and self-appointed family that had moved to all corners of the globe and many times it was noted that we should have done a big get-together while Joe was still alive to enjoy it. I feel that you know someone’s had a good life when people shed a tear or two during the service (damn you, Carlos Santana) and then they are smiling and happy at the wake, sharing stories and memories, glad to see each other and sad the deceased isn’t there to enjoy it. Joe had a helluva life with many travels and adventures. It was good to be there to celebrate it with his family. As always, Dan was there in my pocket ready to send me a funny text or to chat in a quiet moment. Even though it was a “so close, yet so far away” trip, his support reinforced just how amazing he is.

Towards the end of May I had a mini mental break down. Everything was doom and gloom and the sun would never shine again. I got really stuck in my own head and couldn’t find the silver lining at all. Instead of doing what most people are inclined to do when dealing with someone who is feeling down (“chin up, there are loads of people who have it worse” or “you’ve got nothing to be sad about!”), Dan did that magical thing that people like me need: he listened. He didn’t trivialise or try to diminish. He didn’t change the subject or get angry that I wasn’t just snapping out of it or that I wasn’t being fun. He listened and he let me rant or he just let me be quiet. He let me know he was there if I needed to talk and he didn’t pretend like there was nothing wrong. Within a day or two I was feeling a lot better and he was definitely a big part of that.

May was also the month that saw us talking about the L word. Right from the start we’d been very vocal about all the things we Like about each other and we would often name the characteristics that we were falling for but the Other L Word wasn’t really mentioned. We had a lovely talk about how that word has gotten such a loaded meaning from film and television shows and that we’d actually already been saying it in a hundred different ways without actually saying it. What was very clear was that we cared a whole lot and we were both very serious about living together here in The Netherlands in the (near) future. The When and How was still in the works but the If was no longer a question. It’s going to happen.

By the end of the month Dan had a flight booked to come see me for a long weekend in June. May, the longest month, was coming to a close and we’d made it without seeing each other.

Only two more weeks to get through and then we’d be together again. 

( … to be continued …) xJI

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Also in this series:  January // February // March // April