KEEP IT IN THE PHAMLY

It’s hard to be the first person to say ‘I love you,’ which is why I recommend you tell people ‘you love me’ instead. It makes things way easier so long as you’re comfortable coming across like an arrogant jerk.

It works well in situations with your partner. Whenever I do anything annoying to Boyfriend Pham like squeezing his arm non-stop and aggressively because it’s a habit from my childhood to adulthood with Mum Pham’s arms, and he looks exasperated and is about to tell me to stop. I remind him ‘You love me!’ To which he sighs and says in defeated tones, ‘I know.’

I’m not the only arm-obsessive, Little Sissy Pham has the same arm squishing habit I do. You guys don’t understand, Mum Pham’s arms were the best to squeeze affectionately and sometimes aggressively. So satisfying!

‘You love me’ also works well with siblings. I’m constantly reminding Little Sissy Pham that she loves me just in case she forgets, especially while I’m doing my big sister duties and birth right to poke fun at her every chance that I get. Like that time I teased her lisp relentlessly until she learned how to pronounce ‘crocodile’ and ‘smile’ properly. Or that time pigeon-toed me made fun of her funny, out-turned waddle walk until she trained herself to walk with her feet pointed straight ahead. Ah, she loves me.

I love you. I was talking to my girlfriends about this heavily weighted sentence. Some of them are in long-term relationships, others are in new relationships or dating.

The first time Boyfriend Pham told me he loved me was in the car as I was dropping him off at home on his last day in our office. We were both upset and spent the car ride talking about our next chapter and what we should do. The first thing I had to do, however, was to go back to work so when I pulled up outside his place, I anticipated him saying bye and hopping out. Instead he said those words. I was so surprised I thought I’d misheard him so my response was, ‘Huh?’ (I know, facepalm, Jade!) He repeated himself and I told him, ‘I love you, too.’

Many people agonise over the right time and place to say this to someone new in their life. Me? I hadn’t thought about it before this moment because I don’t know how to relationship, as BF likes to remind me when I do some oddball thing people apparently don’t do in relationships. Boyfriend Pham? He felt it so he said it, which is a very him thing to do.

Other people are not so matter-of-fact about it. One friend wasn’t sure how to bring it up and for months wondered if now was the right time to say something. And when that time came and went and they didn’t have the nerve to say it in person, they wrote a lovely letter instead.

Some people don’t struggle to say I love you, but don’t know when to keep their mouth shut. A Tinder date who, after being broken up with, came to visit my friend at her place of work. Red flag! She again had to tell him things were over, yet he proceeded to casually call out ‘Love you!’ to her back as she was walking away. Red flag! Had never said it to her before then, and for good reason: They’d only been on a handful of dates and barely knew one another.

When you don’t know someone well, maybe don’t tell them you love them because it’s probably infatuation and you haven’t seen them in a rough patch yet. When you know someone and you adore the way they conduct themselves in good and bad situations, then you’re probably in love. And if you’re in love, there isn’t a bad time to tell your beloved. The sooner, the better. Love is special. Don’t keep it to yourself. We need to share it more with the world.

When I first moved in with Boyfriend Pham he was persistent to the point of being annoying that I keep up with my weekly dinner with the girls. Why was he so desperate to get me out of the house? What was he doing without me? Eating family packs of potato chips? Watching porn? He is supportive of Girls Night because he knows and has dated girls who didn’t have a close-knit friendship with other women so their worlds revolved, a little unhealthily, around their boyfriends.

Girls Night in practicality is a night in at one of our humble abodes where we wear cute Peter Alexander PJs (not me - too lazy to pack PJs), drink wine (except me - too allergic to alcohol), and order-in dinner. Girls Night in actuality is a sanctuary. A place where we feel safe to talk about anything and everything going on in our lives. We support one another whether it’s through sympathising and sharing a similar experience so our friends don’t feel alone in what they’re going through, or giving some tough love and sharing advice we know they won’t want to hear but need to.

There is no such thing as oversharing at Girls Night. We talk about bodily functions, our relationships and dating, growing or failing friendships, our career development and changes at work, our living situations, pets, parents, and family. Whatever is on our minds, gets aired at Girls Night to a room of supportive, loving friends.

While I call mine Girls Night, yours can take any shape or form. It could be a social sport, or nights out on the town, or a book club. If it’s frequent enough to be called a regular thing, then you’ve got yourself a Girls/Boys/Friends Night. A time to look forward to, somewhere to socialise, have fun and share whatever’s going on in your life with people who matter and care.

Not all of my gifts are joke gifts. Some of the time they are thoughtful and meaningful. Not this one though. This gift idea stems from pure selfishness. I needed an excuse to take photos of my camera-averse Boyfriend every day and now I finally have it.

When I lived in Melbourne I'd visit The Phamly 3-4 times a year and talk on the phone with Mum Pham every couple of days. Boyfriend's mum lives in Perth, which is about as far away from Brisbane as you can get within Australia so quarterly visits aren't so easy. They talk regularly, but for his first year in Brisbane his mum could only visit us once. She got to see where he lives and meet me and Dad Pham, but it's hard to learn what someone's life is like in one weekend.

When her birthday was approaching... then came...then went, and Boyfriend had only called her to wish her happy birthday because their family don't do gifting, my brain started to tick. We had to do something for Xmas. Life is too short not to show people you love that you appreciate them.

What would Mum Pham have liked if we lived far apart and we hardly ever got to see one another? Lightbulb! 'A year in the life of' photo project about Boyfriend for his mum. I pitched the idea as a daily calendar so it's sort of practical but mainly so she can learn more of his Brisbane life. We could send her prints in monthly packs so the moments captured would be recent and relevant. It's something she will look at every day to remember that a) she has a son and b) he loves her and misses her.

Boyfriend normally yells no to gifts, but he was fully behind this idea. He got to designing the calendar pages, while I took on the difficult task of photographing my favourite human going about his life. We found an iPad holder (like a compact cookbook holder) at Kmart which fit prints in size 6" x 8" nicely. He sent the iPad holder and photos for the month of January. She opened it today for Christmas, and it made her cry - hopefully, they were happy tears and not because I didn't think to set my phone camera to the highest quality for better prints. Oops.

Merry Christmas everyone, hope you have the best time showing your loved ones how much you care!

It might seem a bit impulsive to move out with someone I'd been dating for only a few months, but the beginnings of our friendship then courtship then relationship happened during some very trying times at work where we met.

I got to see how he handled himself in a tense situation and I fell in love with what I saw. He kept his cool and showed more integrity than I could have mustered given his circumstances. I was ready to rage-quit on principle, which would have been way more impulsive than moving in together so quickly. Boyfriend, being the level-headed person he is, convinced me to use my head and not my outraged moral compass. Another thing I love about him - he's got my back and always looks out for me. Except in his sleep when he sometimes accidentally punches me in the face (he vehemently denies this but I never woke up with a swollen nose when I slept alone for all of my life so...).

I'm grateful we went through tough times early on - it made us closer and I gained immense respect for him. I know him better than most people I've known for years. People show their true colours when they're under pressure.

It all worked out for the best. If we still worked together we wouldn't have moved in together; and if he hadn't left when he did, he wouldn't have found his current dream role. The only downside is we work on opposite sides of town now and live in between, so these days I don't dawdle at work or hang out with the crew 'cause I'm rushing home to meet my favourite person in the middle.

I've been distracted from writing of late. Two things - One: I met a boy. Two: we moved in together. So, in your face, Dave! I did get a boyfriend with my OnePlus 5t.

It's been a whirlwind year of 3-month upheavals. After Europe last year Little Sissy Pham's boyfriend moved in with us. Then I met someone at work and three months in, we started dating. A few more months of share housing with my sibling and her man, and it became obvious I was the third wheel preventing them from being a bike. By that, I mean, most bikes need to settle down with two wheels. I feel like I'm not making sense but you get what I mean. In short, a few months ago I was tossing up whether to live in a sharehouse for affordability (but people, ew) or paying 30% more rent to live alone (but expensive, ew).

New boyfriend of a few months gave me a third option when he asked if it would be crazy for us to live together. Well, yeah it is. But we did it anyway. And so here I am a few months later and we're living together in a cosy apartment - him with his black and white minimalism. Me in my rainbow splattered everything.

We're complete opposites in most ways. He likes gyms, I like swims. He plays basketball, I throw pokeballs. He raps, I can't. He sings, I won't. I dance, he don't. I love the outdoors, he prefers temperature controlled environments. I'm all about summer, he's all for winter. And let's not talk about the long list of things he won't eat. There's one thing I don't eat - animals.

We don't even use the same words to describe things. I say extra, he says spare. I say drizzling, he says sprinkling. I say yah huh, he says nuh uh. I say shut up, he says shush. Why does English have so many words that mean pretty much the same thing?

Somehow we work though. After all the bullshit and mind games of online dating and being with a serial liar and cheater, this is the first romantic relationship where I haven't felt like it is an effort to make it work. When it's right, it's easy. Unlike all of my previous boy history, this one comes Phamly approved. It's nice to be in love with someone worthy of it. I'm a lucky girl.

So, I've been keeping a secret. I'm dating someone. I've been seeing him for a while but kept it offline because we met at work and were avoiding some inconvenient office politics. The good news is, he's since left the company so I can write about him. He's great - he's funny, smart, and my friends' favourite part is he's upfront and honest (unlike previous people in my life). A bit too honest. Which is why at 34, I learned that I don't know how to chew and breathe at the same time. I am a mouth breather when I eat. Little Sissy Pham backed him up enthusiastically saying I am so loud when I chew.

We were listing things we found annoying about one another because that's totally healthy. We couldn't think of anything really so we picked petty little things we don't really mind. My two annoying yet tolerable traits are I don't push in the chair at the dining table, which I've since started doing and I chew loudly with my mouth open, which I can't figure out how to do quietly.

I have a persistent stuffy nose because I'm allergic to life. My hay fever is nowhere near as bad as it used to be in Melbourne, my eyes aren't red and sore most of the time but my nose lives in two states - runny or clogged, never clear. So while I can't chew with my mouth closed all the time like a regular a person, I can suffer through it until I run out of breath then try not to suck in air too noisily before I begin chewing again. My attempts have been very poor, according to him... but at least I try or, think about trying. Some of the time.

Such is my life right now. But hey, we're all learning and growing every day, right?