Sometimes the best compliments are the ones you least expect. Mine came out of the blue about 4:30 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, while we were having a massive argument. Well, not exactly. We were fuming in the silent aftermath of a massive argument – each getting on with our own thing and wondering if we could pull this shit together before the evening began and we realised we wanted to be friends again.

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If my other half is beside me when I die at the age of ninety, it will come as quite a surprise. Not just surprising that I’ll have lived until ninety, which is unlikely given my lifestyle. It will come as a surprise that we haven’t yet split up.

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I miss you. Every morning when I wake up and see you there, I miss you. I miss you while we’re exchanging emails about the minutiae of our lives. I miss you when we sit together on the sofa, our eyes locked on the telly, to keep each other out.

I miss you when we fight.

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I don’t want to boast, but my partner and I are quite good at Lego. And by ‘good’ I think I mean ‘prolific’ rather than accurate. We have almost-perfect models all over our flat – treehouses and Batman cars and other colourful delights. When we’re not busy shagging or counting pennies, we like to build things.

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Most of us dread being asked “what are you thinking?” – it’s like a bucket of cold water chucked on you from the sky, interrupting whatever train of thought you were pursuing. Inviting you to pluck the most recent flash of memory or fantasy from your head, and spit it out into the world. Without context, without nuance. It’s just there. Sometimes I am thinking thoughts so bizarre that I wouldn’t want him to hear them unprepared. Other thoughts are so dark that I wouldn’t voice them at all. But I like that he asks. I love that he asks. And for that, he deserves answers.

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