The moment I knew: I told him my life was too messed up for a relationship, and he said ‘I’ll wait’ | Dating

I met Chris on an internet dating site in 2006, back when internet dating was considered the domain of losers and Dungeons & Dragons aficionados.

I wasn’t expecting to get much from internet dating other than a distraction. I was at the lowest point of my life – depressed and anxious and doing weekly therapy to exorcise the demons of my past.

I decided I would only accept love from someone who genuinely thought my needs, opinions, ambitions and time were as valuable as theirs. And if I couldn’t find such a person, that was OK, because I was already enough. In any case, I doubted such a person existed.

Nevertheless, I was first-dating my way through a list of potentials that included a Buddhist dog trainer (he was the Buddhist, not the dogs), a CEO of a multinational company, an accountant, a couple of lawyers, a policeman, a meteorologist and enough IT professionals to fill an Excel spreadsheet.

Then I stumbled on an academic and journalist. I googled this Dr Christopher Scanlon fellow before our first date and found a stack of articles he’d written for various newspapers. Let me tell you, this man could write.

So, obviously, I fell for him instantly. Good writing is like porn to me. Our first date progressed in the usual way, discussing prepositions and past participles. Well, not quite. We were far more interested in the common misuse of the word “amount” instead of “number”.

Things nearly came to an abrupt halt on our third date when I discovered he was Catholic. It was a twist for me, because I had deliberately filtered my internet dating search to only return profiles of people who were atheist or agnostic. It turned out Chris had accidentally missed the “religious and spiritual beliefs” section on his profile. His faith was confronting enough for this little atheist, but lack of attention to detail was the real shocker. I decided to put my pedantry aside and overlook this character flaw.

A few months after Chris and I started dating, events in my life unspooled further and it became clear to me that when it came to regaining my mental health, I had a long way to go.

I decided it was time to call things off. I took him out for coffee to end our relationship. I told him I adored him, that he was exactly the person I could see myself with, but that I couldn’t do a relationship right now. I told him it was stupid of me to have even tried and unfair of me to have lured him into my crazy life and messed him around. I needed to sort myself out before I could share my life with someone else, I told him. And since I had no idea how long that was going to take, we needed to break up.

Chris was quiet for a moment. He looked at me across the table. He took a sip of his long macchiato as I tried to gauge how much I’d hurt him. Chris and I had never argued, so I didn’t know what response I was going to get – anger, cruelty, sulking or indifference?

I braced myself for any and all of the standard responses. But then he replied, simply: “I’ll wait.”

Those two words were the purest expression of love I had ever experienced. Nobody had ever waited for me. Ever. Even the people who were supposed to love me didn’t wait for me.

I had grown up believing love was only available to me if I kept up with someone else’s pace. I believed I only had a shot at being loved if I only showed the best version of myself. And here was a man seeing me at my lowest, most broken, most distressed and asking nothing from me but me.

Chris reached across the table and took my hand. “You’re going to get through this, puss cat,” he said. “And when you do I’ll be here.”

I took Christopher Bernard Scanlon to be my lawfully wedded husband 18 months later in a tiny (Catholic!!) church in Hobart, the same church his parents were married in 40 years earlier.

I knew then it was the smartest decision I had ever made in my life. Years later, I still know this to be true. Even though he still can’t fill in a bloody form correctly.

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