Category: social

Setting: Open space office pod, just before lunchtime.  

Dramatis Personae: Me, Team Lead, Manager, Director

It is worth noting that Team Lead, Manager are quite older than me, and the Director is twice that. All of us come from different socio-economic backgrounds.

The Director came up one day for a casual pre-lunchtime chat and the discussion turned to motorbikes, because he wanted to get one. So naturally, we looked at some models, and Manager asked: “Why don’t you get one?” and the Director sighed and said: “The Boss says no.” (meaning his wife). Both Manager and I nodded and went like ‘ah ok, that makes sense’, but Team Lead got very quiet. The conversation ended but as soon as Director ambled away, Team Lead hesitantly asked Manager “Can his wife really forbid him something? That sounds ridiculous. I’d say fuck off if my girlfriend forbid me anything.”

The manager explained this as something along the lines about trusting your partner’s decision and listening to their opinion. I sat quietly because I really wanted to watch this explanation.

I didn’t think much of this conversation for a year or so until recently I stumbled on a podcast about embittered men who are bad at relationships. And for some reason this conversation just *puff* materialised in my memory.   

Both Manager and Director have long term wives, and kids (about my age actually). It is worth mentioning that Director really hates his ex-wife (I don’t know what she did exactly, but she wasn’t very stable by the sound of it) and Manager, well, it’s interesting because his wife is his first-and-last relationship? The story goes is that they met when they were younger, but split apart, didn’t keep in touch for years, had couple of kids from different partners, until one day they randomly met in a shop and decided they actually wanted to be together. According to him, they quarrel horribly from time to time but he can’t imagine being with anybody else. Team Lead’s previous relationship turned rancid after a long time, but he was never married because marriage is a trap and governmentally ordained commitment is for losers or something. He does currently have a long-term partner whom…drumroll….

He bitched about constantly. To the point that I once said “Why don’t you break up with her? You’re not going to marry her anyway.” and mean it. The reason I mentioned marriage is that I knew she wanted to be married from gossip and stories, but because of his pressure it’s highly unlikely they ever will marry. His opinion forbids her achieving something she wants.

Deferring judgement to your partner for a major decision doesn’t make you weak. It just makes you a human in a relationship. But I guess they don’t understand that.

I’ve met Grace in January. We’ve met in a sports club at our university. As per tradition the club went out to the pub after the training session: for chat and banter mostly, not for drinking. Grace was captivating. She was chatty, open minded and I found that attractive. She later told me that I was rather quiet and had somewhat uninviting air about me, which is something I wanted to change. Then we discovered we were in the same lecture course, so, we’d started hanging out together. Thanks to her I met new friends and started involving myself socially.

Roll on February and after attending a Chinese New Year Gala we did something that neither of us are allowed to ever talk about ever again, but I smile when I think about it. Soon, little by little we got to know our past stories and way too much information about ex-boyfriends. At the time Grace helped me to get over a close friendship that went down a spiral by listening to my tear strained face and feeding me ‘medicinal’ chocolate. One of the side effects of the friendship is that I was making way more innuendoes in conversation, even in front of strangers. It was especially fun when we got to play it off each other. We pulled all-nighters to finish our essays together, I made dinners for us, we hangout together at awkward parties if either of us had to be present, had gaming nights and practically lived together. We hang out a lot. A lot. I think I was in love with her before we went home for the summer.

Summer came by and went, and then it was time to go back to university. Big surprise – we decided to move in together: the move was tedious and stressful but in the end we did it. I was really happy to move in with Grace: it was an upgrade to have one flatmate instead of four and with a concrete history of fun we had, you’d think, as flatmates we’d get up to no end of different shenanigans. So we started living together. And then I found out: she had six wives. Well, no, not really. I found out that sometimes, what you want to see in a person isn’t all there is.