Sverige
Well, here goes. This story may get a bit confusing, all names are real and it makes me look like a bit of a twunt (because I am). I offer no apologies. It’s long, it’s boring and I want it out of my system.

Back in 2005, I was working in my gap year to save up some money for uni and signed up to work for two weeks to work on the tech crew at the National Student Drama Festival. Was great fun, had my first proper same sex shag (more than a kiss and a quick fumble), made loads of friends and generally just had lots of fun.

A little while after a small group of us were chatting over IRC when a person who had been to previous festivals signed in and asked for some help with her PC. We entered private chat and found ourselves chatting more and more, moving over to MSN and then phone.

Around this time some workmates and me had arranged to go to Ibiza. Jody offered me a spare bit of floor where she was staying in London to save me having to get a bus at 4am from Oxford down to Gatwick. I never quite made the floor, and the rest as you could say, is history….




Or maybe not. 16 months down the line, a few things have changed. I had quit University at the behest of my mother to save me from a course that I really, really didn’t like which had driven me to the combined releases of cheap whisky and self harming (I’m much better now. I prefer expensive whisky and you can hardly see the mess on my leg). I was living back at home near Oxford with a job in the delightful nearby town of Didcot. Unfortunately, Jody was at this point living in Scarborough, but we still made the effort to see each other as much as possible, usually every other weekend and occasional weeks.

I had stayed with her for a couple of weeks over her birthday and while we generally had a good time, something just wasn’t ringing true. Her attitudes towards things were changing, and not in a way I particularly wanted to do, in addition to finding the way she treated her mother just… well, embarrassing (very rude and obnoxious).

I decided to make my feelings known, as Jody was always ready to chat about the relationship – we were very open with each other, with few secrets. It’s the only way you can do long distance. I told her my feelings, she sat and listened, we discussed and I said I’d take in to consideration how she had been brought up and how her life was changing, and she would try to be a bit more understanding of me and other people.

Sadly, nothing really changed and I decided that I wanted to get out of this relationship. This is where the twuntary begins. I am very very very very very bad at breaking up with people. I mean really bad. I have no self confidence to be able to say the words, compounded by the fact I truly hate upsetting people. Enter Karen – a Liverpudlian dance teacher who was also my guild leader within World of Warcraft. She was like the big sister I never had – helping me with people, offering advice and just generally being a really good friend. She was also friends with Jody at this point, and knew of our differing views on the status of the relationship.

Karen herself was having relationship troubles with her partner, Phil. In truth, the only reason she was staying with Phil was because of their daughter. One night while we were both chatting to each other about our difficulties, I made a slightly risqué comment – nothing new from me – which she followed up with another one. To cut it short, I have never had cybersex before, and I’ve never had an affair before. I don’t want to again, it made me feel like the dirtiest, cheapest bastard you can imagine, and then doubled.

For some reason, it did have one positive outcome – I got up the courage to split up with Jody. She never found out about the affair, which I’m glad of from a purely selfish point of view as it meant I didn’t have to deal with all the recriminations. I continued with Karen for a couple of months, occasionally going up to Liverpool until I had a night of soul searching, and realised what I was doing. Instead of helping my friend, I was slowly driving her to split up with her partner, in the process hurting a very young innocent child. I called it off with Karen, left that guild and decided to enjoy being single for a while.

Almost as soon as I left, I got whispered by another friend, Amy. I’ll get it out the way – nothing had happened between us. She had been in that guild in WoW, but had left a few months before all this for reasons I had never really discovered. After chatting, I did discover the reason… Amy had also been having an affair with Karen. After doing a little digging, we discovered that Karen had had affairs with at least two other people before Amy, and had been having one with another guy, Andreas, while her and me had been having some fun. Gutted wasn’t the word.

Fast forward about a month later. I’m enjoying being single, chatting with friends new and old. Out of the blue came an MSN message from a person who was in my old guild, a young Swedish lass going by the name of Elisabeth who I had added to send her a couple of mp3’s. She was clearing out her contacts list, and wanted to check who people were before deleting them. For some reason we just hit it off, and were chatting every day, both and WoW and out. Turns out she was having some boyfriend troubles… and her boyfriend was Andreas. It was very, very hard for me to bite my lip and not say anything about what I knew – Karen and Andreas were still having their affair. I tried as hard as I could to help her win him back, a sort of payback for how I’d screwed other people over. Nothing happened at all between us except becoming firm friends and me trying to help her win back her boyfriend. Sadly, she found out another way, and was fair pissed off.
I stayed up most of the (work) night talking to her, trying to calm her down and not instantly phone Andreas up and dump him but to think about it and sleep before making any decisions. She finally took my advice about 3am and went to sleep, as did I.

I went to work the next day as normal, hoping she thought things through before doing anything. I left my phone at home so I couldn’t text and ask. I think it was because of this my mind started to run in circles. I couldn’t think anything else but Elisabeth and how she was doing… and then I realised I had fallen for her. I couldn’t tell her though. I couldn’t spoil her chance to get back with Andreas if she wanted. With a heavy heart I got home and checked my phone. New message.

“I don’t want Andreas. Throughout this trouble there has been one person who has stood by me and helped me. I want you.”

My stomach flipped. My heart stopped. I remembered to breathe before I began resembling an overly hairy plum. And so that I how I got together with my girlfriend.



18 months later, here we are. Well done for sticking with this tale – I can make even the finest Jasper Carrott feel like stale bread in the mouth. I generally fly up there every 4 weeks. I know Stansted airport backwards, and I think EasyJet have eaten about £1500 from me over the last year and a half, but it’s worth it. Once my college course has finished and I actually have some qualifications, I intend to move over there. Long distance is hard, but it’s worth it to see every time I see her smile when I step off the train from Copenhagen.

Thanks for having a read. Apologies for the boredom.
(Potty Jag har smör i min rumpspringa, Tue 2 Sep 2008, 10:32, Reply)