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I met Adrian when I was 18 and we married when I was 23.
I fell in love with Adrian because he made me laugh, he was smart and he looked good in footy shorts.
However, what I loved most was that right from the beginning there was no pretence between us. Adrian has always been “what you see is what you get”, and the flipside of this is that he takes everyone at face value. I never had to second-guess who he wanted me to be; I always felt he loved me for who I was.
At this early stage of my life – when I was trying so hard to find my place in the world – falling in love with Adrian and making plans for the rest of our lives felt simultaneously safe and exciting.
In my 30s, I experienced a few decades’ worth of events in a few short years. Complicated births, a baby’s surgery, secondary infertility; cancer, death and dementia in my family. It was a lot. Then, a few weeks after I had settled my grandfather into aged accommodation and spoken at my father’s funeral, Adrian came home and said he’d been offered a job in Abu Dhabi.
In many ways our relationship has been defined by travel. The day after our wedding in 1992 we left on an open-ended backpacking trip; we had always talked about living overseas with our children. So, I packed up my third house in six months – my childhood home, my grandfather’s home and now our home – and in 2009, we moved to a desert city a 12-hour flight away. A few weeks after we landed, I turned 40. Adrian gave me a simple, silver ring and a matching pendant.
Whether that move was the tipping point or whether I was headed for an emotional collapse anyway, I can’t know, but my first year in Abu Dhabi was marked by panic attacks in the supermarket and insomnia-filled nights staring out at the city from our 17th-floor apartment.
One evening, going through the usual pre-bed shenanigans with our young children, I started to cry for no identifiable reason. I couldn’t stop. I was filled with a fear that I might never stop. I asked Adrian if this was it – if this might be who I was now.
He reassured me that he’d known me a long time, that this wouldn’t last forever. “It’s OK,” he said. He didn’t diminish my current truth, but when I heard him say, “It’s OK,” I believed in the future he could see.
Several years later, in 2016, we decided that I would move home with the children and Adrian would stay in Abu Dhabi until he had found a job in Australia. That took nearly two years. It was profoundly challenging, but it also enriched our relationship. I regained a sense of autonomy; and after all that absence we never take each other’s presence for granted.
My fragmented creative practice has few objective measures of success, and at times I envy Adrian’s successful, “traditional” career as an engineer. But I love that my writing and performance brings unexpected opportunities to work together. Adrian builds sets, works front-of-house and brings lunch to tech runs. He offers endless emotional reassurance and is the good-natured straight guy for many jokes. Getting my most recent solo show on stage was rocky. Driving to the preview, I told him that I knew I’d been hard work, and thanked him for being there for me. He replied, with genuine relish, “I love it.”
I have big plans for our 60s. When Adrian retires sometime in the next 10 years, we will tour my shows around regional Australia – me writing and performing, and Adrian a full-time roadie.
In the meantime, on a holiday we took last year, I dubbed Adrian an “Influencer Husband”. When he asked what he had to do I explained he simply had to take photos of me and say: “Looking good, babe.” When I posted the photos he took, several people commented on the ring I was wearing. It’s the one Adrian gave me when I turned 40. I don’t wear my wedding ring. I’ve always felt ambivalent about being married.
However, that simple, silver ring Adrian gave me when we were living far from home and I was at my messiest and darkest? I’ve worn it every day since.
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Tracy Crisp is the author of Pearls, available now through Pink Shorts Press
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