Rule Five Self-care isn’t selfish make time to make yourself the best possible person
The Big Move
Jack
I’ve lived with other people plenty in my life. My parents spent all the money they had on sending me and my brothers to a cheap boarding school, which is still an insane amount of money to spend on anything. So from thirteen to eighteen, I shared a dormitory with other boys. At university I lived in halls; after university I lived in a houseshare with a load of guys from school who still called me Jacko and talked about the Old Days all the time. I’ve shared space with a lot of people and, generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed it. But I’ve never lived with a romantic partner until now.
The decision that we should move in was made, like all great romantic gestures, on the basis of our finances. Initially when we all got to London, Jessica lived with her friends Grace, Sophie, and Katie (known collectively as ‘the girls’) in a very damp house in Clapham. Only, they all had deposits to put down on their own flats, and therefore found themselves buying various Victorian ground-floor conversions, to fill with fairy lights, ornamental gold pineapples and neon signs.
Jess, on the other hand, wasn’t in line to get a nice big 15 per cent deposit like the rest of the girls, who had rich parents or dead grandparents. So she went to look at various squats with available rooms to rent before coming to stay at my shared house with mascara under her eyes. ‘It’s fine,’ she says, as we make carbonara in the kitchen. She grates Parmesan with a grater so blunt it’s barely making shavings. I wash up the pans which are sitting in the sink, filled with grey water and marbled with soapy fat. ‘I’ll find something. There’s got to be a houseshare of non-psychos in an okay area for less than half my salary.’
She opens the fridge to get something and does a strange sort of whimper noise.
‘What?’ I ask, across the kitchen in a second.
She points into the fridge. There’s a half-smoked cigarette stubbed out into the packet of bacon we’d bought at the nice supermarket over the weekend.
‘Maybe we should move in together?’ I ask.
And so we do.
Initially Jessica was talking about us finding a mews house on a cobbled street, somewhere more central so that we could save money by walking to work.
‘I’m going to grow sweet peas and tomatoes on the balcony,’ she’d announced.
This idea was very short-lived when we realised that our budget wasn’t going to stretch to the garage of a mews house.
In the end we found a bedsit on the top floor of a big family house in North London.
It has a bedroom, a little kitchen with a sofa and space for a telly, and a tiny bathroom.
There are skylights in every room, and while it’s a long walk from the Tube and the family who own the house made us swear never to have more than two people over, it’s ours.
For the first few weeks, we lie in bed watching the sunset through the hole punctured in the roof and hold hands.
We sleep in jumpers to save putting the heating on and all our saucepans are from Poundland, but we’re happy.
So happy that we stop doing anything other than going to work, coming home and being together.
Being together becomes an activity.
We no longer put things in our diary or ask each other what the plan is for the weekend.
The plan is Jack and Jessica.
Living together is the activity.
I talk to Jessica as I wake up, as I brush my teeth, as she makes us breakfast, as I get dressed, as she gets dressed, swapping over because there isn’t space to both be in the bedroom at the same time.
We walk to the Tube together, text each other throughout the day and sit down together in front of the TV at night before we fall asleep next to each other.
It was nice, until it wasn’t.
Now it feels like the sloping ceilings are getting lower and lower.
Every noise she makes feels loud.
She puts Gilmore Girls and Friends on her laptop in the background while she’s pottering around, and the chatty, cheerful dialogue drives me insane.
There’s no silence and nowhere I can stretch out.
Her clothes are strewn across the bed and on the floor like a sort of fabric salad.
She has dozens of bottles in the bathroom, splayed paperbacks on the kitchen table and leaves as many glasses and bottles of water on her bedside table as it can accommodate.
Within three weeks, the woman who I once said ‘wasn’t capable of being annoying’ is irritating me like I had never dreamed possible.
I get home from the office, throw my keys on to the table and within seconds, Jess has bounded from the bedroom. She leaves on the dot of five because she hates her job. She’s wearing pyjamas and she’s got some kind of goo on her face.
‘Hello,’ she says, throwing her arms around me. ‘I love you. How was your day?’
‘Fine.’ I start putting my things away, hanging my jacket up behind the door, placing my shoes in the shoe rack.
‘Any gossip?’
‘Not really.’
‘Oh, boring. I think Amy is pregnant again, and she literally just got back from mat leave so Sharon is going to be fucking fuming...’ She pauses. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Still fine. Just like I was two minutes ago.’
‘Someone’s grumpy. Do you want—’
‘I’m not grumpy,’ I hear myself snap. Shout, if I’m honest.
She looks taken aback. ‘Yeah, doesn’t sound like you’re grumpy at all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, slumping a bit.
‘What’s going on with you?’
‘I just—’ I swallow, knowing that what I’m about to say is going to ruin the happy, lovely bubble that she’s inside, that she’s so happy and I’m going to take that away from her. ‘I’m struggling a little bit. With living together.’
‘Okay,’ she says, going to the fridge. ‘What do you want to do about that?’
I don’t really know how to process this because I was expecting her to shout at me, or cry, or do something befitting of the news that I’m not finding our blissful life totally blissful.
‘Did you – you realise – I just said that I’m struggling. With us. Living together.’
‘Yeah, obviously,’ she says.
‘Sorry?’
She pours herself a glass of wine and offers me one. I shake my head and she gives me a pitying look. ‘Jack, this is a massive adjustment; we’ve totally changed the whole nature of our relationship. I swear, men really need to read more magazines.’
‘Wait, are you finding it hard too?’
‘Of course I am. I love you. I love living with you, but like, more in theory than in practice right now, you know? Like you’re great, love you, but having someone else around the entire time is a lot. And you’re really easily irritated by my very normal living habits. And there’s all this stuff I can’t do when you’re here.’
‘Me too!’ I say, equal parts shocked and delighted by where this is going. ‘I just want to sit and write for a while, and there’s nowhere to do that. I can’t sit in front of you and just not talk.’
‘Okay, so why don’t you take your laptop to the pub for a couple of hours?’
‘Am I ... allowed?’ I ask.
She laughs. ‘Are you allowed to take a couple of hours for yourself? Yes, Jack. Yes, you are.’
This is the most obvious suggestion imaginable. ‘I was worried you’d be hurt that I didn’t want to hang out,’ I say sheepishly.
‘I love you, but the idea of an evening here alone to do all my gross beauty shit without you around and then watch an episode of something you’d judge me for? That sounds like the most perfect Friday night.’
‘Are you sure that’s okay? That it’s not a bad sign?’
She rolls her eyes at me and points at the door. ‘Out.’
I wander down the road to a sweet ivy-covered pub I’ve never been to before. I write half a chapter of the book I’ve been working on since I was twenty-two. Drink a pint of the Hobbitty ale I can’t usually order because I share a bottle of wine with Jess. And then I walk home and crawl into bed with her, smelling the sweet citrus of her neck and her hair.
‘Did you have fun?’ she asks.
‘I did. It was a decent place. Burgers the size of your head, served on actual plates, none of that slate nonsense. I want to take you there at the weekend.’
‘Sounds lovely,’ she says, stretching and pulling another of my pillows into her arms. ‘Sleep well.’
When I’m lying next to her, I always do.
Jessica
‘This morning you’re going to spend some time being selfish,’ Suze tells us, as we all sit around in the armchairs and on the sofas. ‘Jessica, could you explain a little about the rationale?’
‘Sure,’ I say, getting to my feet. ‘So, selfishness gets a bad rep. But we’ve found that by taking some time to be selfish, we’re way better partners to each other. You need time where you’re not thinking about other people’s needs, where you can focus on yourself and recharge your batteries. You can’t pour from an empty cup. When you live together and spend a lot of your time together, there’s a bit of a risk that you sort of lose yourself. There’s a lot of compromise in a good marriage, and we love that. But in order to maintain that original version of you – the one your partner fell in love with – you need to do things which recharge you.’
I recount a story of when we first moved in and Jack went out for the night and how it turned out to be the best thing for us.
‘See, love?’ Ben says to Chloe. ‘She’s saying that I need to be able to go golfing all weekend!’
‘That’s not really what I’m saying,’ I say, trying to be patient. I know Ben is joking, and he’s actually a very decent guy, but it’s a criticism I’ve heard levelled at our method a lot, and it’s one which annoys me. This isn’t about men going off on a four-hour cycle while their wife looks after the kids at home. It’s about improving yourself so that you’re a better person, and by extension, a better partner. ‘There’s a place for the golfing,’ I say, trying not to sound like a primary school teacher. ‘What you absolutely don’t want to do is have a situation where one of you – and let’s face it, in a heterosexual relationship, it’s usually the bloke – spends their weekend seeing mates, and the other partner picks up all the domestic labour. You also want to try to avoid a situation where the “fun” stuff that you do to be selfish is actually like, having a shower or going to the supermarket. That’s essential maintenance, not self-care.’
‘How does that work when you’ve got kids?’ Verity asks. ‘Or you work full-time?’
‘That’s a really good question,’ I acknowledge. ‘I used to try to take a bit of my commute each morning and listen to an audiobook I was really looking forward to, to make that dead time into a bit of a treat. And of course if you’re in a two-parent relationship, then you can tag in and tag out to make sure the other person gets a little window to read a book, go for a walk, or see friends.’
It’s a pretty textbook answer – I’m basically quoting the book – but it’s not a bad one, and I do mean it. I get that it’s easy for us with our flexible job and zero caring responsibilities to sit here and preach at people like Verity who’ve got three young kids and probably mounting bills to go with that. But I’ve been there, at least with the money and the job. I didn’t come from a life like this one, and I don’t like the idea that if you’ve got kids and a busy life then you can’t be selfish occasionally.
‘You’ll have a couple of hours,’ Suze says, ‘and you’re going to go off individually and do whatever you would like. We have the pool open, there’s an entertainment centre in the lounge, you can go for a walk, take part in a crafting session in the library – or do whatever else you most enjoy. Cait, Will and I will be around if you have any additional requests.’
Everyone stands around a bit awkwardly trying to work out what to do next. Ken makes noises about watching some sport on the telly, Noah wants to pray, Stuart wants to work out, and I’m not sure where everyone else is going, but within moments they’ve all dispersed, including Jack, and I’m left standing alone in the snug wondering what to do.
An old version of me would put on an old season of Real Housewives and exfoliate, pluck all my ingrown hairs and paint my nails.
But now I have a dermatologist-prescribed shower gel which exfoliates chemically.
My hair is lasered and I’ve got shellac on my nails.
All my grooming is outsourced.
There’s an essay I need to start work on for my course, but that’s hardly the point of the exercise.
I could go for a run, I guess.
It would be nice to move my limbs, and the rhythm of my feet on the ground always helps calm the gnawing in my stomach.
But we’ve got this photoshoot later which I have to look decent for, and if I go for a run, I’ll have to wash my hair, and I’ll still be pink in the face by the time the photographer arrives – and again, I don’t know if it would really fit the bill.
My actual current activity of choice when I have the house to myself is to sit on a pregnancy forum for several hours and read about treatments I haven’t tried, and comment on posts from strangers about their potential pregnancy symptoms.
Again, obviously not something I’m going to want to share when we all catch up later.
What I’d like to do is plan and schedule some content about the weekend, but then I’ll have to try and explain that working is genuinely my favourite way to spend my time, and usually when I try to explain that, people look at me like I’m a loser.
Maybe I could go and have a nap? That would kill a couple of hours. But that’s not going to sound great when everyone asks what we did. I’ll read. Reading is a perfectly safe, sensible activity that no one can take issue with. And maybe I’ll spend a couple of minutes thinking about how I’ve got no idea what to do for fun. Which really can’t be a good sign.
I wander the corridor and eventually I see Ken watching snooker on the TV. I linger in the doorway, not sure whether to go in or not.
‘Have you ever played?’ he asks, without turning around.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I mean, I’ve tried it a couple of times in the pub.’
Ken laughs. ‘I can’t see you in the kind of place that’s got a snooker table.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ I say defensively. ‘I used to be fun when I was younger.’
He laughs again, and I take this as an invitation to sit on the far end of his sofa. ‘Have you always played?’
‘Sue and I used to go to the working men’s club every Saturday night when the kids were young. Left ’em with the grandparents, or on their own once they were a bit bigger and happy with a video. She was a demon at poker.’
‘Sounds like a very happy time.’
‘It was.’ He pauses. ‘That’s why you stick with it, when it’s hard. She’s the only one who remembers all of it, like I do. When I’m with her, I’m right back there again, with all our friends and our kids. Best years of my life.’
‘That’s lovely,’ I say, really meaning it. ‘You’re very lucky.’
‘Aye,’ he says. ‘D’you know how to use the remote? There’s darts on the other channel.’
Between us we make the monstrously complicated television work and we put the darts on. He gives a satisfied sigh as it starts.
‘You and that husband of yours have been a marvel this weekend. Shouldn’t you be doing something you actually enjoy?’ he says, after a few minutes.
I look up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t think of anything to do,’ I admit.
‘You sound like me, when I retired.’ He smiles.
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. I’ve been driving Sue bananas, walking around the house. I’d been to work every day for nearly fifty years, I’d not thought of a thing to do when I stopped.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do,’ I admit, drawing my knees up to my chest. ‘I used to say that we’d take a break when the book published. But I never thought about what we’d do. To be honest –’ I don’t know why I’m saying this – ‘I assumed by then we’d be having a baby.’
Ken looks at me, straight on, for the first time since I came into the telly room. ‘You two having trouble?’
I nod, and swallow at the same time, because if I try and form any words I’ll start sobbing and I’ve already embarrassed myself enough doing that last night.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Ken says. ‘I really am.’
There’s a long pause, and I get enough control of myself to say, ‘Thank you.’
‘It’ll come right,’ he says, looking at the television again. ‘One way or another. It always does.’
I have a horrible feeling that when he says ‘one way or another’ he means that there’s a world in which Jack and I aren’t together anymore.
I’d be lying if I said I’d never thought about it. If in our worst moments, I hadn’t wondered what it would be like to share a home with someone who actively loved my work, or to spend the night with someone I haven’t known since I was twenty-one. On the handful of occasions I’ve allowed myself to think about it, I’ve imagined one of those grown-up, sensible splits where everyone is mature, but you just go from sharing a bed to never seeing each other again. It’s not like we’ve got children. Nothing binding us together if we decided we didn’t want to be married anymore. And within seconds of giving it any proper consideration, I know that I absolutely cannot let that happen. It would break my heart.