In typical Nickie fashion, I started my thirties doing things my own way. I was newly single and had just moved back in with my mum. I didn’t feel like it was a step backwards as I had purchased part of her house (although not straight away) and I was officially on the property ladder, so that must mean I’m an adult of some description, right? Splitting the mortgage gave my mum a bit of financial reprieve too which was good.

In my view, most “normal” people were shacked up in relationships, in their perfect homes, with their picket fence and their kids. I wasn’t ready for any of that stuff, well not with my last partner anyway. At the end of the day, all of these “norms” are just stories we tell ourselves or we get told of what society thinks is normal, but the reality is often far from the truth. For anybody who sits outside those societal norms, it’s just feels like we are set up to compare ourselves to others in everyway possible or to feel like we’ve failed.

Comparing ourselves to others is so bloody harmful, especially when some people only show the best parts of their lives so what you think you’re comparing to is not even accurate (this is so prevalent now we have social media). If you’ve been brought up in a household where comparing is normal, it’s a hard habit to break.  Just know you don’t need to measure up to some invisible bar and meet certain criteria to be good enough. You are good enough, end of story!

When I googled “dirty thirties” for a bit of insight as to where the saying came from, I was expecting to find some sort of information about everybody being comfortable in their relationships and having lots of sex (insert bunny picture here), but instead I found references to the 1930’s and a crippling drought that happened in Canada. Um… what the?

After I re-googled “dirty thirties age”, google informed me that the Urban Dictionary defines the “dirty 30’s” as the age at which single women without children realize their biological clock is ticking and, as a consequence, may lower their standards. Well, that was rather unexpected, I don’t know what to make of that!? It is about shagging, but potentially not just because of dirty or lustful thoughts but for women to find a suitor to “knock them up”. So that begs to question, what the hell does it mean if a man turns 30 and people say welcome to the dirty thirties? I can’t get my head around that at all, and as far as I’m aware you can’t knock a man up.

I spent the first four years of my thirties single and that was the longest time I’d been single since my first proper relationship in my late teens. I was woefully lonely if I’m honest! I really wanted some companionship, but also, I just wanted to feel loved. People always say that you have to love yourself first, but I never really understood what that meant. I feel like it’s one of those cheesy one liners people drop into conversation. I feel like now that I actually understand what it means to love yourself. It’s something that comes from within, it’s about being compassionate to yourself, being supportive of yourself, being everything to yourself that you thought you needed from other people. Be your biggest champion, instead of your biggest critic, be gentle on yourself, nurture that inner child. Drop words of comfort on yourself (pinched that one from a meditation) and speak to yourself as though you were giving encouragement to your best friend or a child. Tell that inner critic, that voice that tries to tell you you’re not good enough, skinny enough, pretty enough or smart enough or whatever it may be to bugger off thanks very much. Start replacing those thoughts with nice ones and you’ll notice a difference without question.

I wish I knew that stuff ages ago, as I was super dependent on being in a relationship to help me feel loved and supported. The reality was that even when I was in a relationship, I often didn’t feel loved, or I was relying on compliments, so I felt I was pretty enough or good enough. Shit don’t get me wrong I still have self-esteem issues, especially around my appearance. It’s nice to hear that your partner thinks your attractive, but I’m not as hung up on my self-worth having to come from external compliments. It is enough that I support myself (I think that’s from a meditation too).

While I wasn’t in a relationship per se, I guess you could say I was still having some of my “needs” met. The blokes I was seeing were safe options, they were guys who were acquaintances, or I’d had encounters with before and for whatever reason the “meetings” didn’t amount to anything. When I think about it, those encounters did nothing for my confidence as I was just a convenience with no strings attached. Maybe at the time I felt empowered, that I was free to have these encounters, but I think I was lying to myself. At the heart of it all, I just wanted to feel loved or desired, but it had the opposite effect as I didn’t feel like I was a priority, more of a second-class citizen.

The good thing about being single was that I spent a lot more time with my girlfriends. When I’m in a relationship, I feel like I don’t know how to nurture my friendships and be a girlfriend. I think a lot of people may have those same issues and it’s definitely something I bear in mind now that I’m aware. Certainly, during this time, I really spent a lot of time with family and friends, and I certainly treasure those moments.

Things at work were ticking along nicely, by then I had stepped up into a more senior position and I was now mentoring newbies. Things were far from perfect though, there were still times where I struggled with depression, anxiety and insomnia. I don’t think I ever told anybody I had mental health issues and blamed my sickness on other physical (tangible) health problems. In those days, my alcohol consumption was excessive, and I was either stupid or in denial that it had an impact on my mental health. My performance could not be faulted (my boss once said I could be less thorough, but I just didn’t know how). I always felt like excess sick leave was really something that was letting me down or that my colleagues were judging me. I know I’ve talked about it before, and I certainly judged myself.

In 2010 I started to get restless, and I went through a lot of changes, I cut my hair off really short, and I bought a new car (affectionately called Little Fred). I was also thinking about changing my job. One thing I remember really clearly about that year is that I talked to my colleagues about how in 2011, I was going to meet the guy that I would marry and have children with. I was quite emphatic about it, but also had a knowing. In later years, I would think back to that knowing and wonder how I could “tap” back into that.

In April 2011, I left my job of 8 or so years and went to a loss adjusting company (loss adjusters are assessors who help general insurance companies settle claims) as I felt like I needed a new challenge. In some respects, the job was actually a step backwards as I was mainly writing reports for other loss adjusters and unlike when I was a senior claims handler, I had no delegations or ability to make any real decisions on claims. I was providing the circumstances to the insurer so they could make decisions. I quite enjoyed the report writing and on occasion I would get to attend burglary claims which was a new challenge. I enjoyed getting out in the car (after sitting in an office for 15 years I was pretty stoked that I was being paid for the time I was in the car driving from job to job). There were a few times where I went out onsite to fire claims to help catalogue the losses, which was quite interesting (although heartbreaking for the people involved).

One of the chaps I worked with was nice enough, but he didn’t have a clue about insurance. While he was a qualified builder which provided him great knowledge when dealing with major building claims, he used to drive me up the wall. I was paired with him as his admin support and report writer, but my knowledge of insurance far exceeded his and he treated me like his “bum girl” which was infuriating. In the end, I got so pissed off, I asked the boss if I could provide support to somebody else. It was quite a different dynamic at that job as we worked out of a converted house and the business was privately owned. There was only about a dozen of us working out of the Hamilton branch which was tiny compared to working for the big corporate company I previously worked for. It really was a pretty cool dynamic office and a great bunch of people.

In June that same year, my dad had pizza and a few drinks for his birthday and when I got home, I had this idea (drunken) that I would sign up to an internet dating site. I think the alcohol gave me a bit of “dutch courage” but I didn’t end uploading a photo, so my profile was incomplete (in my opinion). Much to my shock, I had blokes messaging me, even though I had no picture. That raised serious “red flags”, even though I’d like to think that I’m attracted to more than how a person looks, I still want to be physically attracted to a person. I thought it was weird for somebody to message someone when they don’t know what they look like. Later in the week, I decided I’d be brave and give this internet dating business a proper crack and uploaded a photo of myself. I started talking to a couple of chaps, but the process was quite foreign to me, and I felt incredibly nervous about the whole thing. A few more days went by, and I came across a photo of a bloke who I thought was “a bit of alright”. I said to my sister, “oh he’s hot” and she said “oh, that’s Mike Hurley”. I was like who? He had been in a group that played inline and ice hockey and my sister’s husband knew him. I was considering meeting this other chap that I had been talking to but as soon as I saw Mike, I pulled right back from the other chap. The idea of meeting somebody who knows people I know made me feel way more at peace with the idea.

The following day I received a message back and we started texting backwards and forward and I was over the moon when we decided that we would meet the following day after work. He was very upfront that he’d been a “naughty boy” and currently had no driver’s license as he’d been caught drink driving. That didn’t put me off and, on the Monday, I rocked up to his house with a box of Waikato (the local “delicacy” of draught beer) and the rest as they say is history. We spent everyday with each other. but we were both pretty inexperienced in the “dating” game. Neither of us had much confidence and I think that we used alcohol as a bit of a crutch. In my group of friends, dating wasn’t really a thing. The way we met people was that you’d be at party, and you’d meet somebody there. When the party would wind down, you’d end up having a more intimate “party” at yours or your suitor’s home. No wonder we didn’t know what we were doing, even though we were in our 30’s.

I remember one occasion, we went out to a night club for a drink. A girl I used to go to high school was lurking and I could see she approached Mike when I went to get another drink or something. My self-esteem was so poor that I decided that because she was slimmer and better looking (in my opinion) and she wasn’t “shy” that he would pick her over me. It’s terrible to think that I thought so badly about myself that I made up a story up in my head, that he’d ditch me for her. I’d decided it would be better if I just went home, then I wouldn’t have to suffer the rejection. So, I did just that, I left them to it and left the pub. Mike must’ve gone looking for me and thankfully he did find me and explained he was just lending her his lighter so she could light her smoke. I decided to accept his explanation and we kissed and made up, so to speak.

There were times when we got a bit carried away and I can see how that alcohol intensified some of the irrational thoughts I had and brought some of my insecurities to the surface. I would be surprised if anybody said they had a good result from a drunken argument. I realised pretty soon that as great as things were. that things weren’t so good when we had too much to drink. Thankfully, even though we remained avid drinkers we seem to get over the arguing phase, perhaps it was because we became more comfortable with each other. To be fair though, neither of us had a lot of tools in our toolbox on how to communicate our feelings, especially in a relationship.

I spent so much time at his house that I was hardly ever home. My mum suggested that she would move in with her partner and Mike could come to live with me and our house. At that time, my sister and her daughter were living with us, and it was a bit of a “mad house”. I remember one time when we were all sitting on the couch and Mike had me on one side, my niece on the other side and the cat was sitting on this lap. I was thinking jeepers talk about female energy overload, but he did not seem to be phased at all.

We’d been going out for about a year when I started to feel quite frumpy and felt like I wanted to have a healthier lifestyle. I purchased a new mountain bike, and we started going on heaps of hikes and bike rides. We started to realize just how many cool waterfalls and nature walks were in our region and I found something that made me feel really good and I looked forward to our next adventures. I sometimes found some of these walks quite challenging and on one occasion I got so completely out of breath I freaked out and started crying. It was so weird, and I felt like a real “twit”, but I realize now that my mind mistook my loss of breath as an anxiety attack.

Mike having always played sport and having a physical job was way more fit than me. Not to mention he had to cycle to work for a while, while he had no license. He was very patient stopping while I caught up but being a typical bloke, he would hate it when people would pass us. I was so stoked when we got to the top of Mount Te Aroha (almost 1000m tall). It had been on the same day where I had broken down from being out of breath, which was helpful to my confidence. We were only supposed to walk to the lookout on that occasion. I remember getting home and I was just about too tired to have a beer. I was bloody knackered, and I thought to myself, shit I’ll sleep well tonight but my brain had other ideas.

After we’d been going out for just over 2 years, I was presented with an amazing job opportunity and my boss asked me if I would like to move to Christchurch to replace my colleague who has resigned. Ironically, I would be contracted back to the company I’d left only 2.5 years ago. The boss presented me with the salary, and it was very handsome, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I had serious concerns about whether I would be able to do the job. The role involved the management of earthquake repairs on people’s homes. My speciality was policy interpretation and contents losses, not building claims. A lot of other loss adjusters had some sort of building experience (like my work friend who drove me up the wall).

I went home and talked to Mike about the opportunity. I honestly didn’t think he’d be “into it”. I talked to him about my concerns and my worry that I didn’t have the skills, but he thought I/we should seriously consider it. Before I could formally take the job, I had to have an interview and it was the weirdest interview I’d ever had. I had to go back to my old work and have a video conference call with the Christchurch team (this wasn’t that common back in those days).

Once the deal was sealed, we had a very short amount of time to pack up all our belongings and within a matter of weeks, a transporter truck turned up to my house to take my car to the South Island. I remember crying and my mum said, “why are you crying?”, and I was like, “because everything just became real”. We had been saving for a trip to Canada (where Mike was born) but decided we’d put the trip on hold for now and it was pretty surreal to think we’d move to Christchurch (a city that both of us had only visited briefly many years ago).

Join me in my next blog to read about our new lives in Christchurch and see how things look as I slide into my 36th year.