John is in IT and Briony teaches English as a Foreign Language, and they share a love of travelling.  A colourful, woven rug sits at their feet, a souvenir from their honeymoon in India. As we chat, Briony remembers something she liked in an advice column from the Saturday paper and reads me a passage from it. In the article a woman asks why happiness is so hard to find, and the newspaper's "Agony Aunt" replies that perhaps the woman should create her own happiness.  Briony could see the same idea in her own experiences. "Once you get over this "Where is my happiness?" question you reach a contented part of your life," she says. "Content" is exactly the word I think of when I see John and Briony together.   The first time they met was at an Irish pub in Sydney, because Briony, an Australian, had a friend who was mad to find a man with a British or Irish accent.  John thought Briony fancied his friend.  She remembers, "The first thing he said to me was "My friend over there wants to kiss you!" She, however, was interested in John, and his Irish accent, and returned to the pub another night to try to chat with him again.  She did find him, but her accent was a little difficult for him to understand.  When she greeted him the second night with "I've come over to break the ice," John thought she'd said, "I've come over to break your ass!" They had a good laugh at the misunderstanding and spent the rest of the evening talking with each other.  Unfortunately Briony was leaving for Japan in three weeks, so they had very little time together.    Over the next few years Briony travelled to Japan, Ireland, and China, and John began his studies in Galway, later travelling to Spain himself.  Throughout this period they spent chunks of time together, off and on. They seemed sure that they were interested in each other, but their circumstances and personal goals made it difficult for them to be together in the same country for very long.  During a trip to Viet Nam, Briony began to wonder if things were over with John, and by coincidence met some Irish girls who were interested to hear about her relationship with him.  They invited her to come stay with them in Ireland, to try to "sort things out" with John, once and for all.    John and Briony met again in Ireland, rekindled their relationship, and eventually moved to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK together, where they would both be able to find work.  Living without other flatmates in the UK, "was such a novelty" Briony laughs.  John recalls that times were difficult. "Relationship-wise it was great, but Newcastle wasn't that good." They found it difficult to meet people and it was hard to find work. "That Christmas we were so broke!" Briony says. "Yeah," John laughs, "I bought you a melon!"

  They eventually moved back to Ireland, but reached a time when Briony's visa was going to run out. They had grown quite close, and the plan was that John was going to follow her to Australia.  By surprise, however, he got a permanent job in the place he was working in Ireland and decided not to go to Australia.  He was staying, but he couldn't forget Briony.  He rang her and said, "For me to stay in Ireland means that you need to get yourself here, and in order for you to get yourself here means we need to get married- so do you want to get married?Ó  Briony begins laughing happily at the memory of this. She asked him if that was an actual "proposal" and then agreed to marriage with, "Yeah, sure! Why not?"    "I'm not a romantic person," John smiles.   When I ask them if marriage and settling in Ireland has changed their relationship, John says, "The relationship is pretty much the same as it always was- only the question of "What'll we do?" doesn't come up anymore."  It is as if they were always going to find some way of ending up together, and that it was just a matter of timing.  I ask John if long-distance relationships are different to "normal" ones, and he considers the question. "It forces you to work hard at the relationship. You can't really be complacent. If you were living in the same town, it'd be different. It forces you to put things into perspective." Briony adds, "Having the patience to stick it out (is important) as well."  We begin to talk about their choice to live in Cork, and they agree that making the decision was mostly based on practical and social reasons.  "If you go to a new place... it takes a year to get relatively comfortable," John says. "We already had a kind of set-up here."  "I can't imagine living anywhere else. It's big enough and yet small enough to run into people when you're walking down the street," states Briony. When I ask her why she didn't want to stay in her home country, she said "I'd been away from Australia so long that I had more friends here... (staying) seemed to take the headache out of making new friends." When I ask if she gets homesick, she replies that, "there is a grieving process. Your memories exist, but you can't tap into them as easily as you could at home."

   As is clear from their relationship, Briony and John think independence and patience are important in long-distance relationships. "I think it's important, especially if you're from opposite ends of the globe..." John starts.  Briony laughs, "Like from Iceland and New Zealand, because that's probably the only furthest combination than us!"  John laughs too and continues, "If there's gonna be a period together, it might be better to have a period apart as well- going back to what you're used to, to your own people, so that you know what it's like to be together and to be apart."  Briony agrees. "It's actually a good test for a relationship- if you can survive it when you're apart. It's is a real struggle and challenges you to think about how much you actually want to be with the person."

  As our conversation comes to an end they chat about the pumpkin soup they are planning to make later that week.  The huge cook-book they'll be using is sitting on their kitchen table, waiting to be opened. I admire their adventurous spirit and their creativity, and imagine the number of recipes they'll be making together in their new apartment. They joke about cracking open the pumpkin the way Briony used to with coconuts in Australia- by throwing it off the balcony.  I ask Briony if she misses "Oz" and she tells me about a quote her father gave her before she left for Ireland the first time, six years ago, which said "You'll always regret the things in life that you didn't do rather than the things you did do." She has no regrets. Long ago she decided, "if it doesn't work, it doesn't work... why not just take the risk? You might even get a little happiness out of it as well!"  Being in an international relationship myself, this rang true for me.  Risks make relationships work.