Harriet figured having a relationship with a flatmate wasn’t the best idea, but when Chris suddenly moved in to the London flat she was living in while on her OE, she was smitten. Over the next few years they’d travel through the UK together, joined at the hip. She thought she knew everything about him – she even knew he was planning to propose after she found the ring – but, she ended up shocked by what happened next…
Welcome to our series, The Love Diaries – a space for you to share your experiences, advice, fairy-tale endings, setbacks and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences with love – from the woman who cheated on her husband with a work colleague, one woman’s temptation now the love of her life is finally single (although she’s not), and the woman who forced her husband to choose between her and his girlfriend.
Harriet and Nancy were three months into their London OE, when their flatmate – the very unreliable Karl, announced that he was going back to Australia. And was leaving in 20 minutes.
Harriet was keen to get a female flatmate this time around – despite the fact the place had just one very small bathroom – but Nancy said she had good news: a guy she went to university with had just arrived in London and his flat had fallen through.
Nancy said that Chris was a lovely guy – he was really kind, smart and easy-going. He’d just broken up with his girlfriend to do the OE and now the flat he thought he was going to, had already been taken by someone else. She saw he’d just posted on Facebook asking if anyone knew of a place going, asap.
“Message him!” said Harriet. “We were both living from paycheck to paycheck – we could not afford to cover the rent, so someone who could move in NOW was ideal, and someone we knew wasn’t a psycho.”
Two hours later, Chris was in their flat with two large suitcases, looking slightly worse for wear after travelling for more than 24 hours and then hauling all his possessions from one side of London to the other.
“I don’t remember a lot about that conversation, but I remember thinking he seemed alright,” says Harriet. “But the next morning, I was getting ready for work and he was in the kitchen – I remember he handed me a cup of coffee, a really good coffee, and I think I fell in love with him right then.”
Harriet says she started getting butterflies when it was time to go home every evening. “I’d stop in the bathroom at work and redo my makeup for going home,” she says. “I had it pretty bad for him! But I knew he’d only been broken up from his girlfriend for a few months and he’d just arrived in London – oh, and we were living together, so I didn’t want to make a move. Good flatmates are hard to come by.”
After about a month though, Nancy joked with Harriet that if she and Chris ended up together, they couldn’t move out because she couldn’t go through another flat hunt.
“I thought I’d been playing it really cool, so was shocked,” says Harriet. “But then she said, it was obvious he liked me. She said Chris had never made her a cup of coffee – but he had made me one every morning since he’d moved in. I thought he was just being nice and did that for everyone.”
But the next Friday, Chris invited Harriet and Nancy to a pub where he was meeting his mates. After a great night, the three headed home at the same time – Nancy headed straight to bed, but Harriet went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
“We’d definitely been flirting that night,” she says. “Then he came into the kitchen and asked if he could have one two. Then he said, ‘There’s something else I’m wondering about too – whether I might be able to kiss you?’ That was kind of it. We kissed and the rest is history.”
From then on, Chris and Harriet were a couple, doing everything together, taking trips around Europe on the weekends.
And right as her personal life seemed to be really taking off, Harriet got a big promotion at work.
“It was a great opportunity,” she says. “It meant my personal life started taking a hit and I couldn’t go on all the trips I used to, but I was earning good money – and the experience was really invaluable.”
Harriet began looking at extending her OE and Chris was onboard – he had a UK Ancestry Visa, so could stay in the UK for up to five years anyway.
She was feeling a bit homesick though – and so was Chris, his sister was due to have a baby and he wanted to get home to meet his new nephew, so they booked tickets to go home for Christmas.
It was Harriet’s first time meeting Chris’ family and his friends in NZ.
“It was so odd to come back home and it all be the same, but all different,” she says. “Nothing was really much different to how I left it, but I was seeing someone new, who lived in a different part of Auckland so it was a different perspective.”
Harriet and Chis mostly stayed with their own families but spent a lot of time together – including Christmas Day.
“My memories of Chris’ mum from that trip are actually of her being very warm and kind to me,” she says. “She asked me a lot of questions about my work and my family and seemed very interested in me. Now I think she was on a fact-finding mission that she would use against me.”
Chris and Harriet returned to the UK, but it wasn’t long before they saw his family again. His mum and dad came over during the UK summer.
“It was on that trip that I felt things were different,” she says. “His mum seemed quite prickly to me and Chris really brushed things off when I mentioned it.”
At the end of the year, Chris went back home to NZ for two weeks over Christmas/New Year after his parents paid for his flights. Harriet stayed in the UK because she was in the middle of an important work project.
While Chris was back in NZ, Harriet went hunting for her driver’s licence – she needed it for a second form of identification for a form she had to fill out, but suddenly couldn’t find it. When she was looking for it, deep in their wardrobe, she found a ring box. Curiosity got the better of her and she opened it – it was a beautiful diamond ring.
“I was so stoked,” she says. “I kept it to myself but I started thinking about when he might propose.”
Chris and Harriet had a long weekend trip booked to Italy in February – one that Chris had done all the planning and booking for. She felt pretty sure that was when he was going to do it.
But when Chris returned home from NZ, something felt a little off.
“I was in this bubble, I think, already thinking that we were going to be engaged soon and I’d missed him over Christmas and New Year,” she says. “But Chris just seemed a bit flat – like not as excited to see me.”
She chalked it up to jet lag and life just continued forward – albeit, all still feeling a little different.
“I asked him a few times if everything was okay and he always reassured me that everything was fine,” she says.
Then the trip to Italy came – and went without a proposal.
“I felt a bit deflated, because I really thought that was when he would do it,” she says.
One night when they were back home and Chris was out with friends, Harriet looked back in the wardrobe – the ring had gone.
When Chris got home, Harriet confronted him.
“I didn’t say anything about the ring, but I said I knew something was going on things had been feeling off and I deserved to know what was going on,” she says.
Chris said he hadn’t been sure what to do, but that he obviously wasn’t being fair to her and so they should end things then and there.
“God, I really beat myself up for a while after that,” she says. “I felt like I forced his hand or something and that I did something wrong to make him just give up that night.”
Although she’d pleaded that he stay and talk things through, Chris left the flat to go stay with friends. He moved out a couple of days later.
“I was in total shock, I had whiplash,” says Harriet. “I’d gone from feeling like I was as good as engaged, to being single. My personal life felt a mess – our friend group had become so enmeshed.”
After a few weeks spent in a daze – blaming herself for the break-up (and making a few un-answered, unreturned calls to Chris – Harriet decided to go out for the night with friends. Chris wasn’t there – but his best UK friends were.
Over the course of the night – and a few drinks – Harriet started to learn a lot more about what had gone on in her relationship.
“I was so shocked – but at the same time, not really surprised at hearing what happened, if that makes any sense!” she says.
Essentially, Chris’ friends said that his mother didn’t approve of the relationship.
“I knew she was pretty conservative, but she seemed very different to Chris,” says Harriet. “The crux of it was though, that she thought I was this career woman, who was really ambitious and was focused on work. That’s true – I don’t think I should have to apologise for that. She thought that would mean that I wouldn’t have kids, or I would be too career focused to be the kind of mother she thought I should be – whatever the hell that meant.”
Harriet was furious – she did want kids. And a career. And a supportive partner who she wanted to champion and share life together with, equally.
“One of his friends said his mum put all these doubts in his mind, plus he was just wondering if life was going to be too difficult having a wife and mother who were at loggerheads,” she says. “He confirmed that Chris was going to propose, but his mother had told him to give it another year and think on it. She was worried I’d never want kids, or I’d want to stay in the UK and she’d never get to see Chris or her potential grandchildren. It was all such bizarre hypothetical and misogynistic bullsh*t.”
Harriet says she felt hurt and betrayed – and a bit humiliated – but also felt a smidgen of relief.
“I had really romanticised our relationship – and him, like he was the dream partner,” she says. “Now I realised that he wasn’t the dream – he couldn’t even think for himself, or stand up or fight for me.”
She had it out with Chris a few days later and he apologised and there was even a bit of back and forth about whether they get back together.
“It was on-and-off for a couple of months,” she says. “It was hard to turn off those feelings! But, I saw him differently after that.”
One night she heard him on the phone to his mum and she was obviously asking him about his love life – and she heard him say he was just going to be single for a while.
“That was really the final straw,” she says. “I could see he was never going to stand up to his mum.”
They broke up for good – and although it hadn’t blindsided Harriet like the last time, she was still heartbroken.
Then, just two weeks later, a recruiter from New Zealand got in touch with her. A role had come up in New Zealand – and it was one that excited her. When she thought about going home, she worried about what the next step in her career might be – this one would be an excellent step, so she agreed to interview for it.
“I had been in the UK for more than four years at this point and it felt like I was at a crossroads,” she says. “This coming up at the time it did felt like a sign to close my London chapter there.”
Harriet got the job, and returned home.
It’s now five years since she made that decision and she’s thrilled she did.
“I have a good career and a really good relationship now,” she says.
Last year she got engaged on holiday and she and her fiancé are in the process of buying a home. One they hope will be the place they raise their kids.
“The funny – or maybe not that ha-ha funny – thing is, I’ve kept in touch with friends in the UK and now and then they’ll give me an update on Chris,” she says.
It turns out, Chris is still living in the UK – his mother’s nightmare come true. A year after she and Chris broke up he had a short fling with a UK woman who got pregnant.
“She found out she was pregnant after the relationship had already ended,” she says. “He’s in a relationship with someone else now, but he has a child over there. Look, maybe he’s very happy still living there – or maybe he’s a bit stuck having to be there if he wants to be near his child. I feel bad for him if it’s more the latter. But I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a smidge of joy at everything backfiring for his mum.”
