Girl on the Net

Are you looking for a long term relationship? Here’s the one question you should ask of everyone you date. It’s going to sound weirdly specific, and has little to do with compatibility or shared interests or personality matching, but bear with me please because I think it’s worth it. The question you should ask of everyone you date is: would you come to Moorfield’s eye hospital with me at five o’clock in the morning?

Let me explain: the other day I had to go to Moorfield’s eye hospital at five o’clock in the morning. I was very upset and annoyed about it. I’d woken up at 3 am with intense pain in one of my eyes. It was streaming and I was in agony. I had a look in the mirror and I couldn’t see anything stuck in my eye, nor any obvious scratches on the surface. I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t because the pain was too bad. Also the worry, of course. As much as I don’t want to bother the overworked NHS with a problem that might be as pathetic-seeming as ‘I’ve got something in my eye’, I also didn’t want to be one of those people who ignored a serious problem then found out later that the delay had ruined something important, like my vision. I enjoy having eyes, they let me look at stuff like beautiful sunsets or smooth cycle paths or hot men in slutty little shorts.

What’s more, I need my eyes to do my job, and I was due at work at 9 o’clock the next morning. I definitely wouldn’t have been able to do it when I could barely see.

So I figured, fuck it, I’ll go to the eye hospital. I’m lucky enough to live in a city with many specialist hospitals that are accessible on public transport which starts running at roughly 5 am. I packed my work shit in my bag and hauled my tired, broken body onto one of the first trains of the day.

I sat in the hospital for a few hours and then got assessed and diagnosed – bless the NHS. Turns out I’m fine, I just have an infection on the surface of my eyeball (please calm yourselves, I know this is very very sexy), so I need to do eye drops for a week or so. Tip for fellow contact-lens wearers: apparently showering in your lenses is still a bad idea even during a heatwave when you want to take three cold ones a day.

Would you come to Moorfield’s eye hospital with me?

This experience got me thinking, though. About the people I have dated in the past and those I might choose to date in future. The lengths to which any of them might be willing to go with me, if emergencies arose.

People who want to have children are looking for a partner with qualities that would also make a good co-parent. So when they’re dating they’re often considering each applicant in that context. Not just ‘does this person make me happy?’ but ‘could I rely on this person to pick the kids up from after-school clubs, or teach them how to read, or instil them with confidence and security?’.

As someone who doesn’t want children, I don’t need these kinds of skills. But that doesn’t mean I get to focus purely on whether someone’s fun. Fun is important, but it isn’t everything. And though I continue to rage – and rage hard – against the dying of my youth, ageing is inevitable and it brings with it certain challenges: health being one. I long for someone to kiss and fuck and dance with and make coffee for and get high with in Victoria Park at sunset, but there are other priorities that are slowly working their way up my list of requirements. A level of grown-up-ness that hadn’t been a consideration when I was setting sail on the dating seas in my twenties.

I want someone funny, kind, and horny (not necessarily in that order), but I also need someone who’s willing to put in the work. I don’t just want someone to share the fun times, I need – and want – a partner who’ll hold my hand through experiences that are sad and awkward and difficult. To be very blunt and extremely specific: I want someone who’ll come to Moorfield’s eye hospital with me at five in the morning.

It matters and matters more and more

A few things have happened to people in my life recently which require the support of their partner. Physical health problems, redundancies, mental health crises – you know the sort of thing. And the way their partners respond to these sudden difficulties is something to which I find myself paying more attention as time goes on.

There are genuinely supportive partners, who’ll attend hospital appointments or help them juggle life admin to make sure that my friend gets get recovery time. Other partners who’ll see these crises as simply not their problem. They might offer advice or a shoulder to cry on, but they rarely extend the simple, practical help that I think makes a huge difference in these contexts.

Sitting in the too-bright light in the waiting room at the hospital, I found myself running through a back catalogue of men I have dated, and asking myself one question: would this guy have come to Moorfield’s eye hospital with me at five in the morning?

This guy definitely would – he’d probably have suggested it before it even occurred to me, he was a Proper Grown Up and I found that very compelling. I would never have asked or expected this guy to do it, but I suspect when I told him about the incident he’d have offered to send me doughnuts to eat while I recovered. This guy would have come, if I’d asked. Though I imagine that, because I knew and loved him when I was young, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to ask – I’d just have brushed it off as no big deal and told him to go back to bed. This guy? The Big Ex? I genuinely don’t know. I like to think he’d have come with me if I’d asked him, but I suspect the reality would be more of a coin toss – depending on how tired he was, or whether he thought I was being too dramatic. How far we were from the hospital. He’d have offered to get me an Uber, that’s for sure, but physically coming with me and holding my hand? At five in the morning? I don’t know.

To be clear, this support isn’t something that I need need, in the same way I need clothing and oxygen and peanuts and cheap white wine. I am more than capable of taking myself to Moorfield’s eye hospital at five in the morning if that’s what I need. I’ve proved that beyond a doubt.

But blinking in the bright light of summer dawn and trying to find bus stops while in agony wasn’t much fun. Sitting in the waiting room would have been less stressful if I’d had someone beside me to stroke my hair. Writing down instructions on eye drops while everything was blurred and orange and double-vision dilated wasn’t awesome either. It wasn’t impossible, just difficult and sad. And it would have been less so with a companion.

I don’t think anyone ever wants to do this sort of thing. But I do think that, for people I have loved, I’d always rather join them on a sad and difficult journey than watch them do it alone. I’d like to find someone who feels that way about me. I don’t need someone to support me financially or go out of their way to please me or buy me flowers or make me their princess.

But I would like someone who might come to Moorfield’s with me.

Even at five in the morning.