In 2016 I was an Australian student on exchange in Dublin, plotting to fall in love at Trinity College before Normal People made it cool. My housemates had swiped on Jack’s Tinder profile on my behalf, and we met in October for the first time under the Spire on O’Connell Street.
Jack couldn’t quite believe I had actually shown up; I was just glad he wasn’t the other lad standing there with the Peaky Blinders haircut and matching tracksuit. We went to a bookshop cafe, where Jack spilled his tea due to nerves and I waxed lyrical about the importance of compulsory voting due to mine. It was sweet, genuine, interesting conversation. When we parted ways, we both did the classic over-the-shoulder, cow-eyed glance back. Jack kept his cool; I panicked and walked straight into a line of kindergarteners on an excursion in the city.
Soon we were seeing each other every week, which quickly turned into every day. My room had a view out onto Pearse Street, and Jack would wave to me out of the train window as it pulled into Pearse St station. I’d sign him into the “overnight visitors” book at my dorm (sorry Mum) where we’d watch Australian horror films (Wolf Creek) and Irish comedies (Father Ted). We walked all over Dublin in the cold afternoons that were bluey-gold in the light and smelled like peat fires, Jack taking me to his favourite parks and pubs. We ate spice bags and Vegemite, drank tea and Guinness.
My uni friends put my phone on time-out so I could stop texting Jack about the “season finale of America” – Trump 1.0 had just begun – and start studying for exams; my Australian friends wondered if I’d finally cracked and made the whole boy up, given the romantic disaster I’d been at home.
But as the year drew to a close, reality loomed. My visa meant I had to come home in January and Jack still had two more years of study to complete in Dublin. We hadn’t talked about what we were going to do, or what our future looked like.
Our relationship status remained undefined, at least by us. To everyone else, from my mum who gently advised me to “give it a chance” to Jack’s family who I joined for Christmas Day, it was clear we were serious about being together.
On the night I was leaving my university accommodation, Jack helped me pack my life – which had quickly become our life – into a straining suitcase. He picked up a pair of his pyjama pants that I coveted and had claimed as my own. They were thick, fluffy, in a blue and green plaid; no Irish clan connection, no fancy label, just a budget pair from Penneys, my other great Irish love. He packed them into my bag, but I protested: “You can’t do that, you love these pants”. He looked at me steadily and said: “Yes, but I love you more.” His words were a simple gift, one that I had never received before, which gave me the answer I didn’t know I was looking for: that we would give it a chance, together.
I flew back to Australia a few days later and cried the whole way home. We didn’t have a plan, but we knew we wanted to be together. We talked in the mornings, sent memes to each other during the day and called to say goodnight. We did this for three years. Life might have shrunk to the size of a phone screen, but it had also never felt so large.
I visited Jack in Dublin in 2017; he spent six months in Australia doing his own exchange in 2018; we reunited halfway in Vietnam in 2019. In early 2020, Jack moved to Australia – he really took “locking it down” seriously, even before Covid.
Since then, Jack has become a citizen, and we’ve bought a house and a puppy together. We married last year, in Dublin, around the corner from our first date.
Our love is something I’m so proud of, and it brings me joy every day. There have been sacrifices, hard conversations and long lonely days, but I would do it again. I’m pretty sure Jack feels the same. But perhaps he has just been trying to get his pyjamas back this whole time.
