Louise O'Neill: We're trying to buy a house around Dublin but the market is grim

'Because his job is based in Dublin and my job is wherever I put my laptop down, that decision has to involve me leaving my beloved west Cork'

Louise O'Neill, author. Photograph Moya Nolan

Since the beginning of our relationship, my boyfriend and I have done the long-distance thing. It suited us, I would say, seeing each other every weekend. It made our time together more special.

Then the pandemic happened. In 2020, we didn’t see each other from March until June. Then again from September until Christmas. He left on January 3. I waved him off, not knowing that it would be May before I saw him again. This isn’t an unusual story; thousands of other couples have found themselves in similar circumstances over the last year. We’re lucky, we tell each other, and we count the ways we are lucky — we still have our homes, our jobs.