My holiday (friendship) romance
And why I secretly know it won't last
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I have come to the painful realisation that I don’t see my friends often enough. I’ll catch-up with a friend over dinner once or twice a month and beyond that, it’s a WhatsApp rally with weeks often passing between messages. I suspect the reasons for this are many and layered, but I often feel bad about it.
Then in December I went to Buenos Aires for six weeks where I met up with a girl who lives there and who I had met once before, Imabelle from Venezuela.
Over those few weeks we spent an inordinate amount of time together. We went to dinners, lunches, drinks, concerts and even experienced immersive postmodern theatre together. We hung out for hours at a time and didn’t stop talking — ‘I don't usually do this…’ said the both of us, repeatedly.
We finished each other's sentences and replied to pretty much all aspects of our lives with ‘me too!’. We are exactly a year apart in age, have been with our partners the same number of years and we had conversations about stuff I simply do not have with my friends at home.
I don’t think I have ever hit it off so completely and instantly with another person before. Neither of us wanted me to leave. She even — jokingly — asked me to marry her.
I was in the throes of a holiday friendship romance.
Why am I calling this a holiday friendship romance? Because like most holiday romances, this one was a shooting star. It was a fleeting moment that burned intensely and brightly but because of circumstance and great distances, it will inevitably fade away.
We know we will barely stay in touch. Sure, there’ll be the occasional WhatsApp and maybe even an email or two. But we both do our best social work in person. I need to be able to touch the people I’m having conversations with; a finger on their knee or arm to emphasize my point or highlight my excitement (I get this from my Dad).
She’s unlikely to come to London so unless I go back to Buenos Aires, we won’t ever see each other again.
Our last night
Our last night together was at a tango dancehall and our husbands were with us (they had become mere accessories to our courtship by this point). We imitated some pretend emoji-style crying whilst waiting for our taxis in the early morning, an afterglow of melancholy dawning with the rising sun as it began to bruise the night sky.
We both knew very well this could be the last time we ever saw each other. But we didn’t make a big deal about it. We didn’t say a final goodbye. We said teo veo pronto, a see you soon goodbye. As if the next time would be in just a couple of days.
But it wouldn’t be.
Then she slipped into her taxi, winding down the window to stick her head out and wave frantically at me as it pulled away.
The difference between here and there
One day in Buenos Aires my husband and I were walking to get a coffee. I was talking about Imabelle (again) and asked him, “Why doesn’t this happen in London? Why don’t I hang out with my friends this often back home? What is the difference between what is happening here and what happens there?”
writes in The Friendship Dip ‘the way our society is organized, we have a prolonged stretch of adulthood that is not conducive to forging or sustaining friendship or community’. has had ‘hyper-busy, overworked and thinly stretched’ friends in Washington DC, making it ‘hard to find the energy and the time to have the kind of regular, causal connection that used to be commonplace, even in cities’.And a friend of
said that having dinner with pals in south London in the middle of the week, a 60 minute commute, ends up being more of an energy drain than a nourishing social interaction (hard relate to this).‘Our lives are bereft of ways to see people in the low-effort, regular, and repeating ways our brains were designed to connect through’, Rosie goes on to say.
Because whilst Imabelle is a very special person to me, it wasn’t just about Imabelle. It was also the setting we were in of Buenos Aires and the person I became whilst I was there.
When I’m in a different country, I often feel like a different person. I’m freed from the routine of life back home, freed from the ironclad fist of grey London skies. I glow a little brighter and laugh a little louder.
In Buenos Aires this clean freak didn’t do any chores. I didn’t care about the dust balls collecting under the bed of our rental apartment and I didn’t even see the dishes piling up in the kitchen. This over planner became spontaneous, deciding what we would do just an hour before doing it.
I became a person who took tango lessons in the middle of the day. I became a person who wore crop tops.
And it felt as if the city was actively encouraging me to spend time with Imabelle. It was always warm and sunny and I never needed a jacket, even at night. I was within walking distance of some of the best bars and restaurants.
Imabelle and I were only 15 minutes from anywhere, jumping into Ubers that cost £2 for the whole journey. And because of her remote working hours and not having children, her availability was extremely flexible.
“Want to go for dinner tonight?”
“Yes! I have one more hour of work then I’ll get ready.”
We’d be eating together 90 minutes later.
Appreciating things for what they are
I would so love to have Imabelle in my physical, in-person life back here in the UK. I think she could become my best friend (is this still a term? I just made myself cringe). But that will never happen. And strangely, I have made peace with this. I am OK with stepping back and appreciating the time I spent with her for what it was.
We know all good things come to an end and it’s always sad when they do. But I think part of the reason holiday romances are so all-encompassing and enigmatic is because of the temporary escapism they bring.
Not only do we fall for the person we’ve met, but we also fall for the person we become when we are with them and in that place.
Maybe a friendship with Imabelle here would be different to how it was in Buenos Aires. In fact, I’m certain it would. Maybe the spell our time together cast over me would be broken because we would be here and not there.
I tried to do two things with this experience: enjoy every moment of the relationship while I was in it and also manage my expectations. I have decided I would rather honour the feelings I had by keeping the magic intact, folded away in a beautiful velvet pouch and safely stored in my memory box.
My time with Imabelle made me feel good and it made my heart grow. The fact that the chapter has ended doesn’t mean it wasn’t written. The love might have faded to an imprint of the shooting star it once was, scorched against the black sky. But it was there.
And Imabelle, if you are reading this (which I’m sure you will be) and I make it back to Buenos Aires some day, I would love to see you again. Te ve pronto, espero.