Happy Valentine´s Day to all!
Valentine´s Day, 14th of february, El día del Amor. Growing up I thought it was stupid, because well.. I´m Dutch, and we think we are way to down-to-earth for these kind of ´American comercial stupidities´ as we called them. Luckily, I am a (little bit) more nuanced nowadays. I still wouldn´t live just for Valentine´s Day, but hey.. any day to celebrate love, I´m all in! And I also thought it was a nice excuse to write a little bit about how it is to be in a relationship and nonmadding at the same time. No, this will not be a blog with tips and how-to´s. I definitely have nót figured it out yet, this is more of a personal sharing of things from my side. If anything.. I would love for your thoughts and input.
How it all started
Ok, this is kind of my favourite part thought because we do have quite a cute beginning to it all. Image, a Danish cyclist who thought it was a great idea to cycle the world (and so he did, 6 years, 58.000 kilometers, 58 countries). One of those countries was Colombia and as he was cycling by Cali he was in need for a rest, had some friends living there and took a two months break. Very unfortunately, I was actually not there during those two months. My friends kept on telling me about this Danish cyclist and I was definitely a bit intrigued, I mean.. that is quite an adventure to be on. At the end of those two months I was in Ecuador for work and one of my friends asked if this Danish guy could stay in my apartment for a few days since it was empty and he already had to give up the room he had rented for the two months. We had not met, but any cyclist, I trust 😉 So the very final day of his two months, we actually met as he gave me back the keys to my own apartment. We chatted a bit about cycling and travelling (he had noticed the many portrait pictures of far-away travels and cycling gear laying around in the house) and then he took off.
Over the 1.5 years to follow we had occasional contact, but this kind of grew a bit out of control in the end. With longer and longer messages about Peru (where I was travelling with my old car at that point and he had been cycling before) and Ethiopia (where he was cycling and I had travelled before) I decided to take the big step. I had plans to cycle the summer of ´16 anyways and changed my plans and took my bike (ok, my cousin´s fancy touring bike) on a plane to Morocco. My mum asked me how long I thought I´d be cycling for and I said, I need a week to figure this out. If it´s nothing, I´ll be back in a week. If it is something, it might become 2 months. And of course it become 2 months 🙂 We had só much in common and complemented each other in the weirdest ways that there was no doubt that this would work!
And after that he moved across the world to Colombia for me, and well.. followed me to some other continents after that as well 😉 I do can tell you though, starting a relationship by cycling 24/7 together on nice days, tough days, days with belly problems, days with extreme heat, days with knee issues, days with ridiculously high mountains, makes you really get to know each other very, very quickly, and all intention to be beautiful and elegant quickly disappears when you cannot shower for days in a row and you have to wear the same cycling shorts and socks for a week. People asked whether it wasn´t a bit risky when we moved in together only after 4 months of dating, but my answer to this is that a little apartment with two rooms is só much more space than a 2-person tent that it doesn´t even feel that we are sharing a house 😉
So yes, that is how it started. But, as you can guess… Thomas is as much a nonmadder as I am, even though he says he really is travel burnt-out and wants to ´live a quiet life in one place´, he´s not doing a great job at it. He partially blames me, which I do have to admit he is right. Partially, because that is who and what we are.
Accepting the distance
However, I have been having a very hard time accepting this. That we are always living and spending time on different continents. That the longest time we´ve spent together in the past 19 months is 8 weeks in a row and about half of those 19 months we have been living minimum 10.000 kilometers and 7 timezones apart. And yes, nowadays, Skype, Whatsapp and Facebook make everything so much easier. On the other hand, when I compare with my grandparents who also did the long distance thing back in the ´50´s (Indonesia-the Netherlands for 5 years!!) they just knew a letter would take 6 weeks to get there, and 6 weeks back. I am very impatient now. I want to talk a bit every day, otherwise I am afraid the communication will go down. Otherwise I am afraid we have to stop sharing our every day lives and maybe even stop caring.
Followers
Something else is the ´who follows who´. I guess back in the days this was a bit easier, before women had their own opinion I mean 😉 At this point, I am the one who has her own business and who has had to travel for extended periods of time. And luckily enough, Thomas joined me for parts of that. Which of course is a very big step from his side, but sometimes, secretly, I think that it´s even bigger for a men (in his opinion), because people still somehow think it´s more ´common´ when a women follows her man because he has to be relocated for work, instead of the other way around. Would I follow him?? Absolutely!! If I could, I would definitely do it. I did tell him thought that I might have to think twice if it would be for a very long period in a very cold country (let´s say, Greenland) or a country where I feel that it would be a bit more difficult to live my relatively independent life as a woman (I once turned down a three year long job offer in quite a dangerous area on the border of Honduras with El Salvador, for this exact reason). If it would be for a short term, I would follow him to wherever.
Routining
I am secretly looking forward to a ´normal´ routine in which we are not on distance all the time, and a routine in which we do not feel that we have to make up for it the times that we are actually together. The routine in which we can join each other for the special and not so special days.
But then again, not being able to do this, and make time to chat on Skype and tell how the day has been also has it´s charm. We need to put so much more effort into our communication, because it is all we have when we are on distance, that it also teaches us how to properly communicate. Than again, we are definitely learning by falling, and we have quite some to improve still there.
I know there is a very easy solution to all of this. For me to stop moving around and slowing down and settling down. But is that the real and only answer? Will everything indeed be better when I don´t move around so much anymore? Wouldn´t we prove the be much stronger is we survived this, despite the distances, just becáuse we can do things separate from each other, and still share on some level? Would giving up and settling down not just be the easiest way and not necessarily be the best way?
64 more years to figure it all out
Like I said, this post is not about me having it all figured out, because I am far away from that. The only thing I know, is that if you really want something, and you are willing to work for it, it will find a way somehow. And at this point, I still want to explore some more and adventure some more, ideally with Thomas of course, but even when he cannot or does not want to join, this does not mean our relationship would not work. And exactly that, is our strength. That, and of course knowing that that person deserves fighting for. That this person deserves the best way, and not the easiest way. That with this person you still have 64 years to figure stuff out (yes, my grandma lived until 94, so I´m just gonna follow her example) and we don´t have to have it all figured out right away.
For now, we just go with compromises: I won´t get mad anymore if he doesn´t reply within 4 hours, but then I dó want one quick Skype a day. I won´t pressure him to tell me when he will travel back to Colombia, but then he should also not decide last minute. I won´t ask him to be all romantic on distance cause he says he can only do that in person, but then he has to make up for it afterwards. You know, diplomatic compromises 😉
So there you go. Honest, personal, full of doubts, but with a will to fight.
Anyone out there having experience with this? What are your thoughts? Challenges? Solutions?
