Two days into our proposed ‘week off’, Boyfriend and I have arranged to meet again to talk. I’m anxious about how it will turn out. I feel like I dropped a bomb on him last week declaring I need space, and in the few days of space that followed, something occurred to me that I wasn’t expecting, that I wasn’t wanting to occur.

In the space of just over 48 hours I’ve reconsidered every option; one minute I’m missing him furiously and telling myself that it’s cold feet, commitment jitters, the next I’ve convinced myself that what I really need is to be alone properly, to clear my head independently. Every text from him re-ignites delirious emotion and, by the time he arrives, we’re both wrecks, but I’ve made my mind up and, when he leaves, he disappears through the garden gate in a blur of tears.

The following week is a bizarre blank, punctuated by text messages, errands that I complete by floating through the motions, a million cigarettes, barrels of thick, weak builders tea and vague nods convincing my friends that I’m fine. I decline another invite to do something and dodge phone calls, and less than a day later, I’ve convinced myself that I’ve made completely the wrong decision.

My housemate, the Tiny Dancer, is on hand at every emotional loop and dip, sitting in front of me under the baking sun and the spattering rain, an aura of calm surrounding her. Wisdom curls around her jaw line carried by our cigarette smoke and, like Siddhartha himself, imparts her years of wisdom upon my eager ears. “Your problem” she muses, “is that you’re a fucking nutbag like me.”

"Nothing anybody says seems to help and yet, somehow, something unsaid tells me the decision’s already made."

Tiny Dancer wonders whether it’s actually the fact that Boyfriend is perfect for me that’s making me nervous. I have to swallow and nod sheepishly that, as always, she may be right. I’m seeing a sad portrait reflected back at me, some old gay cliché of the stereotypical commitment-phobe, hopping from bed to bed. I’m back at square one again.

I call my sister. Part of me wants her to tell me that I’m better of being single, just for a while. She astounds me by saying just that. “You’ve been single, like, what, 5 minutes in the last ten years?” she says to me through hundreds of miles of static. “Karl, you’re a young man and you’re constantly in relationships with other people and you’re constantly feeling guilty when it doesn’t work. I think maybe what you need is to be single for a while, properly.”

Suddenly this is the last thing I wanted to hear, what I really need is someone to tell me that we’re perfect together and that I should give it a chance. Nothing that anybody says, it seems, is the right thing to say.

So back to square one I go. I’m going insane and Boyfriend is still hurt and confused. Nothing anybody says seems to help and yet, somehow, something unsaid tells me the decision’s already made.

Catch up with our Boy Out Of Town and his queer life every Friday. Got something to say? Then leave a comment for Karl in the box below or take a look at www.karlarbuthnot.com.