I'm leaving on a jet plane…

I got home Monday night to find a slightly sullen bloke tinkering with tunes on his computer. "Would a cup of tea cheer you up?" I asked. "No, but a game of darts and a few drinks would," came the reply. Honestly, sometimes I think he's more British than I am.

A few games later in our local bar, the wonderfully named Yuppie, and bloke had perked up slightly (yes, because he won). Good, stuff – everyone gets the Monday blues after all. But no, it was more than that, he admitted.

"You'll be gone on Wednesday, and I'm really going to miss you."

Then it hit me – god I was really going to miss him too. Sure I was looking forward to spending a week with my friends and family, but ouch, I would miss him. Not a feeling I've had to cope with for a long time.

At the start of our relationship (second time around) It was all long goodbyes and thinking of him at odd moments in the day. Madrid and Barcelona may be cities in the same country, but they might as well be on the other side of the world when you know you won't be seeing the object of your affection for a whole month.

Couples kissing on the metro make you want to spit and the sight of people holding hands in the street is almost too much to bear. Before long you even find yourself pining for your other half on those wild nights out with your mates. Then kicking yourself for being such a hopeless saddo. Such is the nature of those tricky long distance relationships.

We managed it for a year before I threw my toys out of the pram and basically said "I'm moving to Madrid whether you like it or not."

So I did. And it wasn't until then that we really got to know each other. But despite the few arguments that inevitably come when two people try and negotiate the new and strange business of living together for the first time, we pulled it off.

And four years later we are incredibly happy, and that emotion of "missing" each other is just redundant.

But here it is again. And only just slightly less painful, says the bloke, than the first time we ever said goodbye, circa 2002.

Only six months into our relationship, the first time around, and circumstances had thwarted us. He had to return to Madrid and I was going to stay in London to pursue my shiny new career as a freelance journalist. There was nothing for me in Spain, or so I thought. Three years later I changed my mind though.

As we kissed goodbye then at the departure gates, trying to hold back the tears. I somehow knew that despite our fresh and surprising declarations of love from the night before, it wouldn't work out this time around.

The distance would be too much. We had too many issues we had to sort out separately and I would have to let it go. And it was going to hurt. A lot, maybe more than it had ever hurt before. I was right.

But I also knew, as I watched him disappear through the sliding doors and out of my life, that I would see him again one day. And happily, I was right about that too.