We stopped waiting for a perfectly settled year

The conversation began on a Sunday evening while I was packing for another week in Berlin. My partner was checking train times back to Leipzig, and I said, again, that perhaps next year would be easier. We have been together five years. “Next year” had become a place where work travel, two apartments and every difficult decision were magically resolved.

He opened our shared calendar. Within seconds we were discussing rent, leave and whose job might change. All of those things mattered, but I could feel myself disappearing from the conversation. I closed the laptop and asked whether we could talk for ten minutes without solving anything.

I asked what made him hopeful about trying and what frightened him. He asked me the same. His answer was not the one I had prepared for: he worried that living apart during the week would leave me carrying the emotional work alone. I had assumed his hesitation meant he was less certain about us. Saying that aloud was uncomfortable, but more useful than another list.

We did eventually reopen the calendar. This time we labelled three columns: what we know, what could change, and what we would need to discuss. We did not set a date. We agreed to speak again after each of us had considered what support would look like while living in two cities.

Nothing became settled that evening. I still took the train on Monday, and we still paid for two homes. The difference was that “not yet” was no longer doing all the talking for us. We had a next conversation rather than a distant year in which everything was supposed to be easy.