At the end of every week, I make my way to Wellington to spent two days and three nights with my boyfriend. Sunday afternoon laziness means I often find myself negotiating the Rimutaka Gorge about 4.30am on a Monday morning and battling through a long, drawn-out day.
While I'm sure many people have been in long-distance relationships before, and likely at far greater lengths than Wellington to Hawke's Bay, I'm willing to bet not too many people have done it while living at each others parents' houses. My boyfriend and I moved to Wellington from Auckland at the beginning of this year, where I was to find a job and he enrolled in postgraduate study.
We moved into my parents' house, back into my old room, under the guise of a place to stay while we were "flat hunting". Unable to find a job in Wellington, I applied for a position at this very paper, not really considering I could actually get it. About six weeks after I'd moved to Wellington, I packed up again and hit the road to Hawke's Bay, leaving my boyfriend with mum and dad. Oops. In a move our friends, family and other miscellaneous strangers found hilarious, I moved in with my boyfriend's parents in Napier and so began a year of intense bonding with our potential in-laws. The child swap is unchartered territory for most and may, in fact, be the strangest living situation in which to conduct a relationship.
I drive home at weekends to see my parents and their new live-in child; my boyfriend. Then I return to the Bay where I sit alongside my boyfriend's sisters at the dinner table as if I am one of them. When my boyfriend returns home, I welcome him into his house, where I have more of a bedroom than he does. Makes a pretty big change from the past three years where we lived in flats five minutes from each other in Auckland.
As weird as it sounds, it seems to be working out all right. I think when conducting a relationship in less than conventional circumstances there are a couple of golden rules to live by. One - spend as much time together as you possibly can. If you can see each other at weekends, do it. If you can't see each other for awhile make an effort when you do, go away somewhere different.
Two - even though you may spend a lot of time with each other's parents, don't act like their child. Clean up after yourself, don't whine like you may to your parents and try not to complain about their actual child too much. I think the most important thing is to have an end point. Long distance doesn't work forever. For me, the end of the university year means the end of my long-distance child swap. Aforementioned boyfriend will move to Hawke's Bay, where we will find a flat and learn to cook our own meals again.
Parents can be assured of more than just occasional visits though, if not just for the company then for the killer spaghetti and meatballs boyfriend's mum has got me accustomed to.
Anna Ferrick is a reporter for Hawke's Bay Today.
Jacoby Poulain is taking a break until after the elections.
