On Gut Feelings in Life and Love

Is it fate, or simply confirmation bias?

On this day, six years ago, I fell in love for the first time.

I met R on my first day of university. If I’m honest, I don’t think I saw the potential in him immediately. He was tall and lanky, features that would come to define my physical type in men, but I wasn’t to know this yet. I don’t remember much of our relationship in the early days.

My first impression was that he was kind of quiet, slow to warm up, but nice nonetheless. It was only later that his somewhat off-the-wall sense of humour would start to reveal itself. Either way, through sheer proximity—we shared a lot of classes, and lived on the same corridor—we developed something of a bond in those first weeks at university. I think we both struggled adjusting to the change of living away from home, I certainly did. Judging by his habit of eating cereal for lunch and dinner on a semi-regular basis, and inability to start an essay until 9pm the night before it was due, it seemed he did too.

My expectations for university were different to the reality. I expected to immediately hit it off and fall in with a group of friends like I’d had at school. I expected that I’d meet a range of potential suitors that were ‘university boyfriend’ material straight away, that I’d kiss guys at clubs, go on dates, and finally get to experience the excitement and romance I’d believed was waiting for me after achieving my A-level grades. Instead, I spent my first few weeks feeling overwhelmed by the amount of reading and university work on my plate, all the while questioning whether the friends I’d initially made were really right for me and that I should go out and make new ones despite not knowing how to do this and feeling crippled by the stress of having to submit two essays per week. In freshers week, I’d kissed a boy in my halls, pretty much for the sake of it so I could say I’d kissed someone. Now I had to avert my eyes every time I passed him in the dining hall.

My friendship with R, however, felt like a safe space. I’d vent to him about my academic stress on the way to lectures, and he’d make me feel better by telling me he hadn’t yet started the mountain of required reading for the essay due the next day. We’d sit and watch the apprentice together on an evening, and spend hours after giggling over our university tutor’s twitter account, which featured some very entertaining Medieval jokes. There were moment verging on flirtation. He came to watch my orchestra concerts, and I went to his. “He seems sweet,” my sister said to me as we sat in the audience waiting for the symphony to begin, “he gave you the biggest smile ever just now when he saw you.”

Perhaps it was merely the exposure effect, the university version of a ‘work crush’, but one day, I felt myself looking at him differently. I remember the exact moment, as I looked at him across the pews in a choir rehearsal and felt a visceral reaction in my body. It felt like a switch had flipped in my brain.

It was a Wednesday evening and we’d been out at the pub with a group of Musician friends. We were both slightly tipsy as we walked back to our halls, arm in arm. “Do you want to come back to my room for some hot chocolate?” he asked. As we sat on the end of the bed in awkward silence, sipping our hot chocolate, and giggling, the tension was palpable. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I put my mug down. “For fuck’s sake R,” I said, giggling, and kissed him. That was the real beginning.

Our fledgling romance lasted a week. A week of secret make out sessions. Because he was on my course, in my friendship group and lived in my halls, a big no-no, I felt like I was having an illicit affair. This made the whole thing immensely exciting. Although initially unsure about a long-term future for the two of us, I went on some long walks, did some deep introspection, and decided that even though I was scared by the whole thing, I was indeed in love.

Only by the time I’d decided this, I started to feel something was off. We walked home from a lecture together and I felt something had changed—the sense of playfulness that characterised our relationship initially was suddenly gone. Later, we talked. “I thought about it, I really did,” he said. “But I really don’t think I can do a relationship right now, I can barely look after myself.”

And so I experienced my first heartbreak. It was a gentle sort of heartbreak, the type that follows love in its shallowest yet most melodramatic form. Still, I felt deeply that the relationship between us was supposed to be something significant. I thought maybe in the future things would go further between us, that we’d both grow up and finally we’d be ready. I was both right and wrong.

Over the Christmas break, I watched the film ‘When Harry Met Sally’ for the first time. It was at the time my favourite rom-com (and still is) because I think it so readily captures the complexity of the friends/lovers dynamic. The moment after Harry and Sally sleep together and it suddenly becomes awkward— that’s in some ways how I felt about R and I. I liked to think at the time this was a temporary glitch on our road to becoming lovers again.

For next two years, we remained friends. The proximity between us meant it would have been awkward not to. There were moments where the line was crossed by accident, and even a period where we were ‘friends with benefits’. Part of me held on to the hope that one day we’d turn out to be something. During this time, R was grappling with his sexuality, the extent to which he was attracted to guys and girls. As we began to speak more openly about this later down the line, I felt lots more about our fledgling relationship made sense.

Then, in my second year of university, I met my first proper boyfriend, S. In fact, it was R who introduced me to him. The initial stages of any relationship are anxiety-inducing, and this one was no different. I was ready to embrace romance with someone new, and it felt right. R saw me through the highs and lows, the uncertainty of that initial stage of dating with S, in the days before we were exclusive. I cried to him when I thought he’d slept with his ex. We cooked together to take my mind off things when he didn’t reply for a day. He shared his feelings on guys he was seeing, yet admitted that part of him had been jealous when S and I first got together. It was the start of a new sort of relationship.

Then COVID hit. S and I were together for over a year. R and I ceased to speak in the way we used to. When university came to an end, S and I broke up. Life moved on.

I moved to London for my first teaching job knowing next to no-one and I started to make a new life for myself. R moved to London not long after. Once again, we helped each other through the turmoil moving to a new place. We spend New Years 2022 on his rooftop watching the fireworks.

We’ve now been friends for over six years. I think about that initial gut feeling I had that our relationship was meant to be something special, and how in a way I was right—just not in the way I’d anticipated. It now seems absolutely unfathomable that we would ever be together. He has slipped neatly into the role of ‘gay best-friend’.

Last weekend, after one two many glasses of wine at a house warming party, we found ourselves, like an old married couple, telling our friends the story of how we first got together. I looked at him fondly. Some things really are meant to be, but not in the way you first thought.