It’s been a minute (decade)

A random DM on Twitter asking for the password to the blog archive… wow, I hadn’t thought about this blog in years. So, I unlocked all the old posts and realised, it’s been a decade since I did this!

What has changed in the last 10 years? well I don’t blog anymore. That much is obvious. But I don’t have anything to blog about. This blog was therapy, journaling for the world to see, and an outlet. Now there’s banana bread (joke – even at the height of the pandemic I didn’t fall foul to banana bread). But there is a someone. A someone that makes me a better version of myself. A someone who makes me laugh, pushes me, protects me and empowers me. A someone that I respect and would be pissed if he featured in this blog. Again.

So enjoy the archives!

Excuse me, my friend fancies you

I have threatened my male friends before with the ‘my friend fancies you’ line. If they spend too much time debating whether to approach a girl I threaten to do it for them unless they stop me. They invariably stop me. Not because they actually then talk to the girl. No, they just distract me with alcohol. I once got talking to a girl in the toilet queue to check out if she was single for a friend. She said she was. She also walked out of the toilets and proceeded to snog someone else. I told him she wasn’t.

Never have I had the line used on me. Until Saturday night.

There I was, dancing away on a raised stage (yes, I am 30, what of it?) when a girl came up to me to ask if I was single. I said yes, but I was also straight and she laughed. She explained that her friend (who we’ll call Kevin as I’ve no clue what his name was, it was 2am) was very shy and that Kevin would like to come and talk to me. Would that be ok?

Before I had a chance to think of a reason why the pale-faced, floppy haired Kevin was probably best talking to someone else he was in front of me, all wet lips and hopeful eyes. I was brought up to always be polite and even when steaming drunk in a nightclub at 2am I would like to think I still am. So I talked to him. I can’t remember what I said but it couldn’t have lasted long and I was searching over his shoulder for my friends the whole time. I do remember him launching in for a kiss so he wasn’t that bloody shy. Or maybe my politeness made him think he was in there. I ducked and ran.

Or at least I thought I did…

In the cab on the way home my phone beeped…

“Hey! Just to say you are stunning! I fly to France next week, would love to treat u to dinner? Xx”

I had no recollection of giving my number out, let alone the real one! But I figured it would all come back to me in the morning so I replied:

“That would be lovely, I’m free Tuesday”

(see, I’m awfully polite when pissed)

I didn’t work it out in the morning. In fact I was even more confused in the morning when he woke me up to say ‘good morning beautiful’. If I wasn’t retching because of the sambuca I was now. A few texts back and forth and nothing was shedding any light so I came out with it and asked him who the hell he was and when did I give him my number? Then he explained who he was, and the eager little face popped in to my head. I stopped replying. He then asked for my name… I would LOVE to know what he had me in his phone as because surely that is a key piece of information you acquire when asking for a girl’s number?

Anyway, the date never happened because he didn’t get in touch until after 8pm Tuesday and that was only to apologise for not getting in touch. Wasn’t that bothered to be honest so haven’t replied again.

Morals of this week’s blog?

If you don’t find a guy attractive, don’t give out your number.
Don’t talk to strangers after getting to the shallow end of a bottle of Grey Goose.
Don’t approach girls on you male friend’s behalf – he may be lovely but he’ll always be the ‘my mate fancies you’ guy.

A Little Forward

As many of you who follow me on Twitter know, I recently spent three days in the Middle East. Kuwait specifically. It was more for business than it was pleasure so my free time was limited, I did however get a couple of hours to explore a massive shopping mall, and mix with the locals. Some of them a little forward!

In the UK, one of the (many) annoying things about men is their inability to approach women. Usually the men that chat me up are drunk, desperate or in relationships and looking for a bit on the side. You can spend hours making eyes at a cute boy across the room before he gets the hint and comes over. My male friends never approach girls yet will bemoan the fact they are single. What’s the worse that can happen boys? We say we are not interested so you move on. No girl is going to be rude and obnoxious about your approach because it’s flattering, unless of course they are a complete bitch and if that’s the case then you’ve actually had a lucky escape.

In Kuwait boys do not have this problem with nerves. In Kuwait they are a little too forward for an innocent Westerner like me!

I was stood outside a shop in the mall talking to a friend whilst we waited for another of our party to try something on. As we were chatting away a Kuwaiti boy in his twenties approached us and said he could guess our nationality by our accents. I had flashbacks to the Mind Reader from earlier blogs. When he got our nationalities wrong twice I definitely getting flashbacks. We eventually revealed we were British and were in town for business meetings and his friend approached asking:

“Are you trying to chat these girls up?”

Our Kuwaiti explained that yes he was. I turned to the friend and agreed that yes, he was trying, but trying and failing. Mr Smooth then turned to his friend and asked where the nearest hotel was so he could just ‘get it out the way’ with both of us. There was only one thing to do… laugh and walk back in to the shop out of the way.

Whilst I am sure the boy was joking it did make me think about the approaches that boys use with girls. The British reserve can mean that our men waste time and fail to talk to attractive women whilst some other cultures just admit they are only after one thing and dive straight in there. How hard is it to find a happy medium?

Greedy Girls

I’m 30, therefore I have become quite accustomed, although not yet immune, to the constant parade of wedding and baby photos on Facebook. There are very few more depressing places to exist on the internet than Facebook when you are single and childless sometimes. It starts with the constant status updates about ‘my wonderful hubby’ and how ‘lucky I am to have such a man’. Although these don’t make me jealous, these make me a little sick in my mouth until the wonderful hubby runs off with someone else and I remember the bile-inducing statuses that once were and I smile to myself. Because yes, I am evil, and there is nothing more us single girls like more than karma and wedding shots that the bride looks fat in. The baby photos that pollute my feed currently don’t make my womb skip a beat, they make me call the nurse to book an appointment for a contraceptive implant. Yes, we get it, you can breed whereas our eggs have probably all dried up by now. but do we really have to see DAILY photo albums of the world’s ugliest child? Surely that thing should be hidden from public until it grows in to its face?

However, there is a new breed emerging on my wall that really makes me want to throw things at the computer. Not leastly because I think it’s a sign that I am officially getting old and should make my space on the shelf comfy because I’m going to get left up there. These are The Greedy Girls. These girls are in their late 20s and early 30s and are on husband number two. In fact, one has just left husband number two and is dating again. No doubt she’ll have landed number three before I’ve managed to get past date three let alone got engaged. Husband number one spent your mortgage money on cocaine and fucked his secretary or you found your wonderful hubby in bed with your slut of a sister (both happened!) or you just lied and said you really really wanted children so that you could get the white dress and big party but three years down the line you’ve had to admit you’re still taking the pill so he’s left you and got someone else up the duff within six months. I agree, your life really sucks and you’ve had it so much worse than the rest of us. What us single girls that have never been married really need to hear is that within a year of the divorce being finalised you are married again and, in most cases, pregnant. How have you found it that bloody easy to nab one of the few remaining marriable men on the market when some of us have been searching for years and can’t get past date three? Is it like a practice run the first time? So if I had one wedding under my belt I’d find The One next time around no problem? If I’d have known that I’d have ignored The Ex and his wayward cock and married the arsehole, safe in the knowledge that within 18 months The One would have replaced him.

If you are a Greedy Girl, please have some respect for your single sisters. Do not write all over Facebook that dating is ‘soooooo hard’ followed a week later with photos of a romantic weekend away for two. We have degrees in dating and don’t appreciate ex-smug marrieds swooping in and succeeding where we fail. And to all those newly-weds that think their husband is so wonderful… we’ll see you out on the playing field in a year!

All I Want For Christmas…

So the summer has whizzed by (so quickly I missed it), Halloween saw me dressed as a red devil and being interviewed (drunk) for a YouTube channel and Bonfire night I spent tucked up at home in the warm watching other people’s displays (the joys of living on a hill with nothing blocking the view). So now begins the countdown to Christmas. The supermarkets have been doing it since September but I prefer to wait until Bonfire Night is over. You can have too much of a good thing, and starting too early does make you a little sick! (the same can be said about wine).

So it’s time to celebrate another Christmas as a single girlie. Or time to stock up on Port as inevitably I will be found crying in to it by 22nd December at the thought of waking up alone in the parental home and then spending the day eating enough to balloon up and ensure no man looks twice at me until February.  And this year girls, we have the John Lewis advert to REALLY make us want to hang ourselves with the mistletoe. Even the snowmen are getting more action.

So will I be trawling the Christmas parties looking for a 6-foot something, broad-shouldered hunk to stick a bow on and unwrap over and over again until twelfth night? Will I sit in hope that Santa will see fit to send something down my chimney that will really clear the cobwebs out?

No thanks.

You see, more than any other time of the year if you meet a guy on the run up to Christmas you get your hopes up. The ‘magic’ of Christmas will wash over you and you’ll spend days missing him, re-reading the sweet texts he sends on Christmas morning saying he wishes he’d woken up with you and hopes that Santa brought you all you’d hoped for and counting down the minutes until your family duties are done and you can hop on the motorway back to him, playing Mariah Carey on loop. You’ll wait with bated breath every time he mentions New Year’s Eve in the hope he’s about to invite you along and you’ll drive your friends mad by not committing to any of the invites that they extend to you.

You won’t spend new year with him. You won’t even get a text at midnight. In fact, he won’t text you for weeks afterwards and you’ll have absolutely no idea what happened. And even then when he texts it’s because he wants a photo of your boobs, and not to ask how you are.

So this year I am taking a dating sabbatical. I am taking myself off the dating scene until 2013. This way I can avoid the “should I buy him a present?” debate if I meet him before December and I can wave the mistletoe around freely without having to wonder whether he’ll call the next day.

So this year Mariah, you can stick it. All I want for Christmas is me.

The Unplanned Crazy Nights

You can go to great efforts for a Big Night Out but you know that the unplanned ones are the best ones. The nights when you pop out for a quiet couple of drinks with your best friend and end up doing tequila shots with 15 RAF servicemen and dancing on a table 5 hours before you are due at work.

Look at New Year’s Eve. Who can honestly say that NYE is one of the best nights out they have all year? You spend twice as much, you have twice the anticipation and cabs are twice as hard to get hold of, yet you have half the fun of a normal Saturday night. Last New Years a gang of us went to an Alice in Wonderland ball. I had more fun getting ready in the hotel room with my friends than I did at some up-itself Berkshire nightclub (not sure why we bothered crossing the border now) where only those over 30 had bothered to dress up because the under 30s thought they were far too cool to do fancy dress. The Queen of Hearts was not amused.

I am an ‘organiser’. I’m not happy when I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, where and when and it annoys me when others don’t comply as I’ll put a lot of thought in to organising things. That said, I am well aware of the benefits of going with the flow because of previous nights out ending in utter chaos and some great stories to tell. So when my cousin turned and asked if I would take her out in London I only had a rough plan in my head. I had looked up bars that allowed 18-year-olds (as most I frequent are over 21) and checked for happy hours. She’s 18 and it was her birthday treat so I had to make sure I could fund most rounds! The PIC, being a good Partner in Crime (and never one to miss happy hour) decided to join us, so at 3pm we meet Baby Cousin at Oxford Circus (she’s from East Anglia so a trip to Top Shop is a must-do). We headed down to Piccadilly as I figured this was the best place to take an 18-year-old ‘tourist’ and ended up in Tiger Tiger for a first drink whilst we decided what the plan was.

Within half an hour we have a boy at our table. Shortly after this boy joined us, 20 of his friends did. It’s now 4pm and we are in the middle of a stag party, from which there is no escape. As they were very generous with the cocktails there was no reason to leave the party. At 5pm I am trying to convince them that it is too early for me to drink tequila let alone Baby Cousin. By 6pm a bottle of Bollinger has arrived on the table with only three glasses, by 7pm we’re dancing like it’s midnight and by 8pm Baby Cousin makes the grown up decision to drink water. Grown up decisions is not something I am familiar with. Which is probably how I snogged two of the stag party and swapped numbers with them. This happens when I mix champagne with cosmopolitans for five hours. Baby Cousin wanted to dance the alcohol off and was quite put out that the club portion of the bar was empty at 9pm. Just because we started early it doesn’t mean the rest of London did.

Suddenly the afternoon had turned to late evening and we realise that we need to get Baby Cousin back up to East Anglia and I need to get out to the Shires before the trains turn in to pumpkins on my line. So we duck out of the stag party and hot foot it to Kings Cross to drop off the youngest.  As she hugs me goodbye she asks:

“Can I come out with you every week?”

Seeing as I only spent £20 she can’t have spent anything, plus she was chatted up by an attractive 25-year-old investment banker all night (who text her two days later), so it’s no wonder she wants to spend Saturdays with me now. I however am going back to meticulously planning my social life as I’m not sure my body can take un-planned craziness every week. Not quite sure what’s happening this weekend though, just that it’s a hen party…

The ones that get away

Saturday night got a little out of hand and if I ever piece together the bit between the quiet drink and drinking Dom Perignon straight from the bottle I will blog about it. But one thing I do remember is being told that I was ‘The One That Got Away’.

We all have them, and in fact I think I can name at least three. One of which came crawling out of the woodwork less than 12 hours after I found out I was someone else’s.

Being told you are someone’s ‘One That Got Away’ (OTGA) is one of the most flattering things to hear at the end of happy hour when you have consumed enough Cosmopolitans to drown the entire cast of Sex and The City. It also leads you in to making very poor decisions… like sticking your tongue down the throat of the person that uttered the words.

I bumped in to Mr C in a bar in Piccadilly on Saturday night. It wasn’t the bar I’d planned on going to, and not a bar I usually would go to, but it was open at 4pm and that’s when we started drinking. He walked in with a big group of guys and immediately I recognised him, despite not having seen him in four years. The last time I had seen him was also a random coincidence and was at Twickenham Stadium. Prior to that day I couldn’t tell you when I’d last seen him as I didn’t know him that well. He was on my university’s rugby team and so were some of my friends so we were part of a large social circle and knew each other by sight. I’m not sure we had ever had an actual conversation and I was pretty sure that he didn’t even know my name. When I saw him at Twickenham I was engaged to The Ex and he and The Ex knew each other. So when I tapped him on the shoulder on Saturday night and asked if he was who I thought he was one of the first things he asked was why I was not wearing a ring. I explained, and as the drinks flowed so did the charm. Mr C started telling me that he’d been intimidated by me and he’d spent ages trying to work out how to ask me out and by the time he was ready I was already with The Ex. So to find out on Saturday that I was single, and fate had put us in the same bar was, to him, the most amazing coincidence in the world.

I was flattered. I was drunk.

I let him kiss me. It was one of those sloppy, washing machine like kisses where your own lips disappear under his massive wet lips and all you can do is pull away, tell him the room is spinning and you’ve had too much to drink and walk off… drying your mouth on the back of your hand as you go.

Of course at some point I had also given him my number so I’m now politely fending off invites to meet up. Especially as later on I snogged one of his friends… but like I said, that night as a whole is a separate blog.

So as flattered as I was to be described as OTGA by this guy, one of my own decided to text at 3am. Although due to his circumstances I can now see that I had a lucky escape when he got away.

The Boy featured a lot in my old blog (the one that got hacked and shut down). We met up after 8 years, I did the whole ‘is it a date, isn’t it a date’ thing in my head, turned out it was a date. Had a few more dates, had dates ending in sex and had constant contact. Until he did the typical boy thing of disappearing without a word. I have occasionally had contact with him (sent him a cleavage shot when he returned from Afghanistan for example, you have to support our troops after all) but about 6 months ago he changed his relationship status on Facebook and this girl has moved in with him. I now wouldn’t expect to hear from him. But stick him on night two of a stag do and I came to mind. Thankfully it wasn’t his own! But what on earth goes through a guy’s head to text the girl he was seeing before his girlfriend at 3am? I guess in his defence we know he was in a hotel room on his own. At least he’s stopped me from missing him. I always thought of him as the only person I have met in three years of being single that I thought I could have a future with. Turns out he’s actually just a typical bloke that wants what he can’t have any more. And that makes him a tosser.

I think I’d rather be someone’s One That Got Away, as until the male race proves me otherwise I will be getting away a lot!

The Day I Got Engaged

Well, I’m back from sunny Spain and I am a slightly tanned bundle of freckles. That’s what you get if you have blue eyes, dark hair and super-pale skin. Freckles. Lots of them, and not a proper tan. Although I’ve not done too badly this time as I had enough hangovers to sweat out that I spent a lot of the daylight hours asleep in the sun. Hangovers that were a consequence of using a crying PIC as a chat up line, using my limited Spanish to play Cougar (ok not quite, he was 26), randomly snogging a bloke ‘just because he walked in front of me’ and trying to persuade the Spanish police that I needed a lift home but didn’t want to pay for a taxi so could they take me? They didn’t, the spoilsports. Thames Valley have done. Twice, and neither time I got arrested.

So you’ve had a gap in blogs and as I’ve been away I have no suitable dating tales to fill you in on, so I thought I’d go back in time and fill you in on the crap engagement. I’ve mentioned it before and so it’s about time I let you in on the ‘happiest day of my life’ so you can see why I will never open the glove box of a Fiesta when asked to again.

At the time The Ex and I had been together about 5 or 6 years but didn’t live together. Early December he asked a friend of mine what he should get me for Christmas. This made a change as usually he’d give me money to buy my own gift as he was the romantic type like that. That’s why I have a pig charm on my bracelet – he gave me the cash and I bought a pig to remind me of him. This friend joked that I was expecting an engagement ring. I assume she was joking as she knew full well I didn’t want to get engaged. Although she was the type to stitch you up for her own entertainment. The Ex took this seriously and sat me down the next day to explain that I wouldn’t be getting an engagement ring for Christmas. I explained to him that a ring was the furthest from my mind as:

1)    We didn’t live together and if I got engaged I would want to plan a wedding, not be one of those girls that is engaged for years. You are ‘engaged to be married’ not ‘look at my ring, one day I’ll get married’. Those girls are no further down the aisle than me, they just have better accessories.
2)    It was Christmas and I wanted presents. You do not pass an engagement ring off as a present.
3)    He owed me money. I would much rather he paid off the £1,200 credit card that was in my name than buy me a ring (he never did pay this off by the way).

So as an alternative I produced a list of alternative presents so that if, for the first time ever, he fancied going shopping, he knew what to get.

22nd December we go shopping with two male friends. I went off with them to help buy presents for their girlfriends and he went off to buy my present(s). When we all met up a few hours later he was empty-handed as he had cunningly stashed the gifts in the car. From there we all headed to the pub. During the afternoon The Ex kept asking his mates if they wanted to see what he’d got me for Christmas. This made me realise that I wasn’t getting the Benefit make up I was running out of and had asked him for. It also made me worried that I had something that was actually meant for him, like the Wii he bought me after an argument that I never used.

The next morning I woke up and he wasn’t in the bed. I am a very light sleeper so waking up and realising he wasn’t there felt weird. He’s obviously crept out as usually he could wake the dead with the amount of noise he made getting ready. I wandered downstairs and my Dad informed me that The Ex had popped out and said I was to meet him in the pub at lunchtime. Fine by me as it was a cold, wet day and I planned to get a stack of magazines (well, text him to tell him to get them) and read them by the fire in the pub whilst he played pool with his friends all afternoon.

When I got to the pub he was already there. I greeted him with a kiss and asked if he’d bought the magazines. He said they were in the car and chucked me his car keys. It was cold, murky and drizzly outside and no part of me wanted to go back out to the car park having only just shedded the layers of winter clothing I’d worn to walk to the pub in. So I pouted and asked him to get them. He said that if I went I’d find one of my Christmas presents in the glove box so it would be worth my while. Thinking he might have been to Benefit after all I grabbed his car keys and headed for the door.

As I am walking across the car park, dodging the puddles I’m aware that he’s walking behind me and suddenly time slows down. From that moment on it felt like slow motion. Why would he be following me if he wasn’t willing to go to the car himself? I knew. I knew that in that clapped out N reg fiesta, parked in the car park of my local pub that I didn’t even like, was an engagement ring. As I get closer and closer to the car all I can think is:

“You’re about to get engaged in a pub car park. You are about to get engaged in the rain in a pub car park. This is NOT the way this was supposed to happen. You don’t want to get married yet. How do you say no without breaking his heart? Just say yes, we’ll worry about the details later”.

So as I open the driver’s door (because a large dent in the passenger side meant you couldn’t unlock that door from outside) and reached across to the glove box I took a deep breath. As the door dropped down with a thud there is was. Not the Tiffany blue box of a girl’s dream, but a slightly shiny brown one with gold lettering. Voice in head pipes up:

“Well at least it’s Goldsmiths, he could have gone to H Samuel”

I turn, with the box in my hand, and am aware of him stood there. I can’t look him in the eye. I am praying, wishing and yearning for that box to contain earrings. Voice in my head is screaming for earrings. I never wear earrings. Please God let it be earrings. He prompts me to open the box and I finally make eye contact. In front of me is a 6 foot, 15 stone, shaved headed man with the most inane grin on his face and teary eyes. And there I am, the biggest bitch on the planet in damp clothes wanting to scream at him that he’d done it all wrong and he didn’t know me at all if he thought that’s what I wanted. But I open the box (and squint) and see a brilliant cut diamond solitaire ring squinting back at me. He gives a small speech about how I make him the happiest person in the world and he loves me more every day and slips the ring on my finger. He tells me not to cry, I wasn’t going to. The voice in my head slaps me and makes me realise that no emotion at all has come forward. Not happiness, not joy, no tears, nothing. So I force a smile and throw my arms round him so he can’t see my face.

We walk back in to the pub hand in hand and I look around. Not one of the people in there would I want to remember as the first person I told I was engaged. So I text my friends. I had to tell someone to make it real. I text my mum and she said she knew. Turns out he’d crept out of bed to ask my dad’s permission. My dad’s reaction?

She’s old enough to make her own decisions.

Dad has been told that next time he’s allowed to say NO if he thinks it’s a mistake.

The Ex goes outside to call his friends and family and I sit at the bar, staring down the length of it. After a minute or so a male friend walks in. He’s a few years younger than me and has had quite an obvious crush on me for years. He asks how I am and gives me a big hug. In a small voice I tell him I’m engaged and show him the ring and his face says it all.

Oh.

I tell him it’s literally just happened outside but I wanted a friendly face to be the first person I told. So he gives me a hug and buys me a bottle of cheap sparkling wine (as this pub doesn’t stock champagne). I asked for a straw.

The rest of the afternoon was a blur of people texting me, calling in to buy me a drink and congratulating me and finally, after several wines, I am swept up in the occasion and can relax.
When I told this story to friends after the event I would also end it with ‘the next proposal will be better’. They all thought that was strange.

The ring came with a teddy bear. In the bag with the teddy bear was the payment plan contract he’s signed for the ring. Money that could have gone towards paying the credit card off, especially seeing as the ring was more than the credit card bill. And worth more than the car I found it in.

I started planning my wedding in the January, in the March we moved in together and by the June he’d moved out. I’m pretty sure the girl he’s with now was with him from the February.

I was right when I said the next proposal will be better. You’d have to be really shit to make it worse.

As for the ring… that’s now in a pawn shop near my office and it paid for my trip to Italy this year where I was bridesmaid for the girl who introduced me to The Ex in the first place. Funny how things work out.

Wanted: Self Esteem

A Twitter friend told me that the reason I go crazy over a boy early on is because of my lack of self-esteem.

I have been dwelling on this a lot and in part it’s true, but it’s been true for pretty much all of my dating life – so is it too hard to turn back the clock? Have I now got so many bad habits that I am doomed to a life of living behind my barriers, only to get lonely and lower them too soon and wind up disappointed and at a lower point to where I started?

Maybe I should look back over the car crash that is my relationship history and learn from the mistakes? But no one likes to confront their demons or admit that they made mistakes.

My first proper boyfriend wasn’t the problem – although technically we never split up as we had a row and were both so stubborn we never called each other again. After him there was the World’s Worst Boyfriend. This guy thought that if I couldn’t go clubbing with him then he was allowed to take part in a ‘pull a pig contest’ with his friends. Apparently I should have been pleased he won by pulling the ugliest girl in the club and not have been upset about his cheating. I took him back over and over again until he left to join the Army. We eventually became friends again and he apologised for his past behaviour. He still had all the lines though. The greatest one being “I was so scared of the depths of my feelings for you that it made me cheat”. Yes, I’m sure that was it. But, he’s since died so we don’t talk ill of the dead.

After him were a parade of useless older guys or guys only interested in sex. And I put up with the lot. My male housemates despaired of my self-destructive behaviour and the constant stream of men through my life. You see, I was young and naïve and thought if I put out then they’d love me. I would love to shake 18-year-old me and convince her that this doesn’t lead to a boyfriend, it leads you to reputation as a slut.

Or it leads you in to a destructive relationship with a ‘Fuck Buddy’ (the grown up term is Friend With Benefits but I was 19 so he was Fuck Buddy). I convinced myself I could deal with things on his terms – and his terms being seeing each other at least 3 nights a week but never in public.

Shit hit the fan there big time and then he started seeing someone else at the same time. He decided she was girlfriend material so despite spending more than 6 months with me I was made redundant. Why was she girlfriend material? Because she wouldn’t put out until he was all hers.

They are now married.

After him I think I was the world’s worst date. I dated a few people. Properly dated and only slept with one of them. But the FB would still be in my head. I was a mess still and therefore couldn’t get close to anyone.

A nice boy came along and helped re-build my confidence again. He had his own sex-related issues (including the ability to do it in his sleep!). But as soon as I relaxed and thought I was in a better place, he dumped me. He blamed the long distance relationship. I blamed me.

And then a mutual friend introduced me to The Ex. And that did become a relationship. A relationship where he slowly alienated me from all my friends, hated me going out without him, made me feel (and called me) fat, spent all my money, got me in to a lot of debt and I’m fairly sure cheated on me numerous times before leaving me, a shell of what I once was, after 7 years, for someone else. Oh and did I mention his drug taking?!

My low self-esteem was definitely to blame there. I remember the first time he told me he loved me and as I said it back I told myself that I didn’t hate him, and might grow to love him, so it was better to play the game as no one else wanted me.

Even the day he proposed I prayed for a meteor to strike me down on the spot so I didn’t have to open that ring box. And on the nights he was drunk and smashing holes in the living room door and I had to sleep in the spare room to avoid the verbal abuse, I would vow to leave, and the next day when he’d apologise I’d kid myself that being with him was better than being single.

Wow, you can kind of see why it’s taken me three years to be in a position mentally where I can cope with dating again. But as much as I’ve been scared and backed away from dates, why do I feel the need to rush straight in to sex when I do go on them? Am I still subconsciously begging for approval and attention or do I just make bad decisions drunk? Whatever it is it needs working on so I can break this cycle.

I don’t need closure, I need a fresh start. I need to have more faith in myself and a lot more self-respect. One thing I do know that the way I am is making me miserable and if it carries on I may as well buy myself that cat. I really don’t want that cat.

Sent to The Island

The PIC text me recently to inform me that ‘RAF boy’ has been’ sent to The Island’.

Nope, not the Falklands or Cyprus or any other island out-post the Air Force could send him to. No, this posting she’s done all on her own. The fabled Island.

Personally I run with the theory that all the single, eligible males live on an island and I’m wandering though life trying to find a mode of transport to get there or waiting for one to go rogue and escape. The PIC runs with the theory that once you’re done with a guy you send them to The Island never to deal with them again. If you think about it they’re the same island, it’s just she’s busy adding to the population whilst I’m stood at Arrivals waving my ‘I’m Single Pick Me’ banner. Men get sent to The Island by the PIC for all manner of dating atrocities. The latest one, RAF Boy, is there for lack of any effort on his part AT ALL. He’d ask for a date, a day of the week would be decided on and then there would be a complete lack of communication until the night before said date when PIC would have to ask if the day was still on. This happened three times. If you ask a girl out surely you actually talk to her other than to ask for the date? And surely you give her then ‘where’ and ‘what time’ information? If he’s that interested he’d make a little more effort so off to The Island he’s been sent.

Whether you have used the terminology or not I bet a lot of you are now visualising that last bad date or ex boyfriend being packed off on a grotty ferry to an island far far away. Nice thought isn’t it?

But what about the other side? No guy comes without history. Every single guy you meet will have an ex or two (unless you are Caroline Flack and then you might be his first). The exes and girls’ he has dated may think he’s a complete arse for some misdemeanour or other but to you he will be the best ever. I have made some very bad boyfriend choices in the past and have had some horrific dates yet my track record of guys marrying the one after me is phenomenal. Even bad dates shack up with the next date they have. So if I’m sending an endless stream of guys to The Island then these girls are hooking them off like prize anglers. I just need to work out where The Island is and where do I get a fishing rod from.

After all, some girl’s trash is another girl’s treasure!