As I sit here in my parents’ kitchen, looking over the grey and barren landscape of the Devon countryside, wrapped up like a burrito with every portable radiator I can find turned up to full, I find it hard to believe that my intense summer of love ever happened.
Just a few short months ago, during Britain’s first lockdown, I fell so head over heels that I invited a complete stranger to move in with me and my parents. Even more astonishing is the fact that he said yes.
After less than a week of talking online, I knew that Sean, a musician, and I should be together. He said he had never felt this way and I agreed: it was love at first sight. And so it was that, six days from our meeting on Tinder, I hared up the A303 one May morning to pick him up from his London flat.
Within hours, and with negative Covid tests completed, we were firmly ensconced in my parents’ spare room, making up for lost time. It sounds bonkers but it felt utterly normal — the world had gone mad, so why couldn’t we?
Hattie Sloggett (right) asked her Tinder date to move in with her earlier this year after having known him for just one week
Putting away the garden furniture for winter recently and dusting leaves off the cushions, I remembered that first evening we spent with my mum and dad. It was as if he had always been there. He told us about growing up in Belfast and how he had moved to London to pursue a career in music.
Bonding over their shared creativity, my father had talked incessantly about his life as a film director. Mum had been beaming — she was thrilled because, as she said, ‘she hadn’t seen me this happy in a long time’.
We all felt giddy that night, safe together, and shielded from the turmoil of the outside world. As the days rolled by, it felt like this funny little bubble of love atop a hill in the depths of Devon could last for ever.
We laughed, we loved, and we lived, all together. Never once did my parents complain about having to turn the TV up when we were being too loud in the bedroom, nor did Sean complain when he was pulled in to do his share of chores. If anything, he would tell me off for getting into petty spats with my parents. We were happy, all of us. Until we weren’t.
Strangely, although it had started in fast-forward, our relationship fell apart in slow motion. Looking back, there were a few signs, but I think I so desperately wanted it to work, I just didn’t pay them much heed.
It quickly became apparent to Hattie though that she came second to her new boyfriend’s work as he spent all day every day in front of the computer
There was the time my mum asked if we had a moving plan for when the lockdown was over, and Sean said: ‘Oh, we won’t be moving in together, we’ve only just met. We need to start dating first.’
This from the man who had talked long into the night with me about our future, about us having kids and how we would travel the world.
I began to realise that I came second to his work. I’m a confidence coach so I was often busy with clients on Zoom. But Sean would spend all day every day in front of the computer, composing music for commercials.
I was thrilled he was busy, and still had a job, but sometimes I also felt lonely and ignored.
If I tried to make plans for outings with him or ask why I wasn’t a priority, he would simply say: ‘Today Sean is too busy to think about that. Next week Sean can deal with it.’
Almost as soon as the lockdown lifted, he moved back to London. We made promises of making time to see each other. But when it came down to it, often things came up, or the timing wasn’t right. Never mind, I sighed, we still had our phone calls. We would video chat and still spoke about how we loved one another, and how ‘when it all gets back to normal’ we would start making plans. Slowly but surely, however, these calls started to fade too, and we were down to texting.
Hattie said she was initially glad that her Tinder date was busy, but his screen time often left her feeling lonely
Eventually, I managed to pin him down to a date he was free, and I drove back to London in late June to see him. I didn’t know the person who answered the door to me. I had never met this Sean before.
He felt cold, distant. That night, when we went to bed, he just rolled over and turned his back to me. Deep in my gut, I knew he wanted to end things, but I was unclear why, or what to do.
So, in a last-ditch attempt to keep the relationship going, I offered to give him some space. I saw myself as some kind of noble martyr, risking my own happiness for the sake of a greater, more powerful love.
Well, that backfired on me, didn’t it? Off he went, back to Ireland for some time with his family, while I sat on my hands forcing myself not to text him, or pester him with mushy phone calls. A few did slip through the net but he responded with just as much affection as at the beginning, putting multiple kisses at the end of his replies along with our special codewords that meant ‘I love you’.
Then, one glorious Thursday morning in July, I woke up to find a text on my phone. I sat up, a grin painted across my face, pulse racing, and read the message.
After eventually pinning her boyfriend down, the man who answered the door was cold and distant
‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be this person you need me to be. I’m not enough for you. I need to be by myself.’ Boom! Tears streamed down my face, my whole body hurt and it felt like my heart had died in my chest. When she heard me wailing, my mum came running to put her arms round me.
My father asked me: ‘What did you do?’ In his eyes, Sean was such a nice guy that I must have cocked it up. But my mum said she had seen this coming, as she’d watched the sparkle fade from my eyes while waiting for Sean to call.
She thought Sean had been cruel, but my father’s advice had always just been: ‘Don’t annoy him’. For days, I tried to figure out where I’d gone wrong, endlessly going back over conversations, or rereading messages. And then it hit me: I had lost myself, basing everything in my life on Sean.
No wonder he felt stressed, with the pressure to make not just one person but two constantly happy. I had vowed after my marriage had fallen to pieces many years ago that I would never give control of my happiness away again, but I had.
This was my first year sober, and I had been so excited to share my new more hopeful life with someone. Then the pandemic had struck and I was terrified of being alone. It was like a scene from the movies, when the world is about to end and everyone just grabs the nearest person because they don’t want to face it on their own. I had grabbed my nearest person and clung on for dear life.
Eventually Hattie’s boyfriend left her a text message to say that their relationship wasn’t working and that they should split up
I look back and sometimes think, what if things had been different, what if we hadn’t moved so fast, what if we hadn’t moved in with my parents.
Maybe if Sean and I had dated slowly at first, we could have made it work.
I’m glad I met Sean, I’m grateful for the time we spent together because I have learnt a lot. When I next fall in love, I will try to remember that boundaries are important on both sides.
I met up with him the other day for breakfast. I asked him if any of his feelings had been real, the declarations of love, that breathless confidence that I was The One, and he swore he had meant every word . . . at the start.
It was comforting to hear, because our odd apocalyptic passion was very real for me too, even though it still sounds to other people like nothing more than a crazy dream.
Sean’s name has been changed.