Tag Archives: relationships

OK, Cupid, we’re done

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I was talking to a friend the other day about New Year’s Resolutions. Her theory was that you should save them for Spring, because the desire for change is greater when the weather’s warmer and the whole world feels like it’s renewing itself. It’s not a bad theory, but  I’m even more in favour of an even gentler approach: that we put too much pressure on ourselves generally and resolutions should be avoided at all times. Life is pretty damn hard: be kind to yourself.

With that conversation in mind, as well as this blog post which I wrote a few weeks back, I spoke to another friend. I told her that my plan is (eventually!) to stop focusing on my short term pleasure/happiness, and instead to dedicate myself to the long game. She assumed, unsurprisingly, that by ‘the long game’ I meant finding a guy to settle down and have children with. I didn’t, actually, or at least, not entirely, I more meant that I want to find a calmer, more steady sense of contentment than the one I have now. Quite a few people have commented on my post about babies, saying that yes, it probably is best to call it quits on friends-with-benefits type relationships, and work harder at finding something more meaningful if that’s what I want in the long term. I agree, with the first part, at least, and so 2014 will be the year I stop sleeping with the boy. Honest.

‘Great,’ she said, ‘I’m sure you’ll meet someone fantastic, there are loads of great guys online.’ 

‘I’m going to stop internet dating, too.’

There was a pause. A long pause. Then she said ‘Well, I can understand why you’d want a break, but I’m sure you’ll feel more like it if you have a month off.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean it. I hate it, and I’m not doing it any more.’

We went back and forth like this for a while – her trying to persuade me that I’d feel better about it after some time off; me increasingly pissed off that she just didn’t seem to get what I was saying. Sure, OKCupid and Tinder can be fun; and can be flattering, but they also exhaust me and play havoc with my already fragile mental health.

Earlier this year, I had a few weeks of back and forth flirting with a guy on OKCupid. The conversation repeatedly came back to his desire that we should meet for drinks, and then get a hotel room and fuck each other senseless. The bit that made me wary was that we couldn’t just go back to his. When I mentioned it to a friend, she said ‘He’s married.’ And so I asked him outright. And sure enough, yes, he was. His wife though, apparently, was ‘fine with it,’ so I went along with it too, enjoying the flirting and the potential for some dirty, no-strings sex like I used to have. I was nervous, sure, but I had no intention of backing out. He, however, did – the night before we were supposed to meet.

That was my last serious interaction with anyone on the site. I still have an active profile, still reply to the odd message, but not really with the intention of it going anywhere – I genuinely hate the emotional ups and downs, as well as just how hard you have to work at the communication, all, it seems, with very little return. 

So, I plan to start 2014 by deleting both my OKCupid and Tinder profiles. Meeting someone is important to me, but feeling calm and emotionally stable is so much more so. I have much more to say about this blog post by Juniper, but suffice to say for the moment that the first few months of this year will be given over to rediscovering the state of solo contentment that she describes so beautifully. Maybe, eventually, I’ll rejoin one of what I consider to be the more serious dating sites – match.com or the like, but for now, I’m giving myself a break from boys.

Is it me?

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I don’t think I’m massively out of touch with the world, nor do I think I’m particularly romantic, but recently a few things have caused me to call my views on monogamy and love.

I’ve never dated in the traditional sense of the word – met someone online, through a friend, at work – and seen that blossom gradually into a relationship, so I don’t know at what point most couples discuss the subject of exclusivity. I’d imagine, and hope, that it happens once they start to like each enough that they’d rather spend time with one another than anyone else who might be on the dating horizon. That they agree to be monogamous because, y’know, they care about each other. And even then, it confuses me a bit that it requires a full conversation, or even a discussion – surely you just need to establish that you’re both similarly into each other, and that’s that?

I can see that, when it comes to discussing monogamy with someone you’ve been sleeping with on and off for several years, the situation becomes a little more complex. The fact that the existing arrangement has carried on for so long suggests that both parties find it largely satisfactory. Except, of course, if you’re having to have a conversation about a potentially different set up, it suggests one of you maybe isn’t quite as happy with the arrangement as they used to be.

When it comes to my own life, if I’m having that conversation, it means I’m really not happy with the old arrangement. I’ll avoid difficult conversations at all costs – in fact I’ve fucked someone in the Gents at his place of work in order to stall the conversation for as long as possible. The reason for this is simple: even when we’re just fucking on and off, I’m already being faithful – I have neither the desire nor the emotional capacity to handle sleeping with more than one guy at a time.

So that’s where I behave badly – if you know a conversation needs to be had, shying away from it is counterproductive and unfair on the other person, who may also have had to psych themselves up for this chat. However, I’m shying away because I don’t understand what there is to discuss. If I’ve been sleeping with you for a while, and the subject of monogamy comes up, I think only the following three paths are possible:

1) Ideally, it won’t have been me who brought the subject up in the first place. I already have feelings for you, but I haven’t said anything because I’m a complete scaredey-cat and have been doing my utmost to hide the way I feel (no, this story isn’t very ‘girlpower’). One day you realise that you have feelings for me and that these feelings are important enough to warrant us being in an exclusive relationship. It may not work out, but the mutual affection is great enough for it to be definitely worth a try.

2) I somehow find the guts/something pushes me (far more likely) into admitting that I have feelings for you and that I’m no longer happy to sleep with you if you’re also sleeping with other women. I tell you this, and you care about me enough to want to try being in an exclusive relationship with me. It may not work out, but the mutual affection is great enough for it to be definitely worth a try.

3) I somehow find the guts/something pushes me (far more likely) into admitting that I have feelings for you and that I’m no longer happy to sleep with you if you’re also sleeping with other women. I tell you this, and you say  that you’re sorry, but while you like me and enjoy the sex, you’re not interested in an actual relationship with me. Sure, I’m sad and a little bit hurt, but with time I’ll get over it and find a guy who does like me enough to want the same things I do.

Do you see why I don’t think there’s a full-on discussion in any of these scenarios? To me, monogamy is black and white – you either like me enough to give it a go, or you don’t. Yes, there’ll need to be conversations about the ins and outs of a monogamous relationship: how often we see each other, if/when we get to meet each other’s friends etc. etc., but the actual monogamy bit is much more clear cut.

Because sadly, I think that if, like me, you avoid conversations you’d rather not have, from time to time people will exploit that. I might have told a guy that I’d rather he no longer slept with other women, but if I keep putting off actually talking about it, the word can keep cropping up and yet nothing ever changes: I’m still sad and jealous as hell that he’s still fucking other people, and he too gets to carry on exactly the same way he did before.

The above situation has happened to me, and it’s made me more cynical about men than I used to be, something which in the past I wouldn’t have thought possible. Now I think they’ll all play on my unwillingness to talk about commitment, and I’ll keep fucking them nonetheless – trapped between fear of the conversation on one side and the fear of them no longer being in my life on the other.

And I do think there’s a romance side to it, too. No one wants exclusivity to become a business deal to be wrangled out with both parties trying to concede as little as they possibly can. I don’t want you to be faithful to me because you feel you have to be, I want you to be faithful because you want to be – because your feelings have developed to the point where you’re happy to give up other girls, not resentful about it.

So what do you think? Do I need to man up and tackle the issue of monogamy head on or am I right that the desire for monogamy comes from the heart, not the head, and that it doesn’t therefore need a discussion at all?

 

Self-preservation: 2 ways

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So … you remember friend with the ex-fling who ‘joked’ about her being a size 14? Well, he’s been cementing his reputation as a total cunt this week by getting drunk and making more great jokes – this time about how, the morning after he slept with a girl, he drew a map to the nearest bus stop, gave it to her, rolled over and went back to sleep. That girl is my friend and they work together. It’s not like he was never going to see her again. But the deal breaker for me is that he regaled all her other friends and colleagues with this story on a night out – ok, he didn’t say it was her, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t something she wanted to relive. She was, understandably, pretty upset. But she didn’t let him know this, because this is her version of self-preservation:

Self-preservation #01

When someone, whether it’s a guy, a friend, a family member or whoever, does or says something that hurts you, you *never* let them know that it bothered you because that would just add to how humiliated and stupid you feel. You might, after a time, rant to other friends about it, about how he made you cry, or why you wish your mum would just shut up for once, but on no occasion do you mention it to the person concerned. If it’s particularly bad, you might give them the silent treatment for a while, but the key feature of this approach, to me at least, is ‘Quick! Brush it under the carpet!’

Self-preservation #02

Personally, I prefer approach No. 2. The only thing this has in common with approach No. 1 is that it sometimes involves the silent treatment, but rarely. More often it involves ranting and raving at the person who hurt you until both of you have lost the thread of the argument and are absolutely exhausted. Why do I handle things this way? Because just as my friend says it’s embarrassing to let someone know that they’ve got to you, I cannot internalize how much I hate myself if I think someone’s treated me badly and I’ve just gone along with it.

That’s the logical thinking behind it, anyway. The reality is more instinctive. If, for instance, I get a text or see something online that I don’t like, I immediately get pins and needles in my hands and feel like I can’t breathe. For a long time, I thought this was just me being melodramatic – I’ve since realised that it’s actually a mild panic attack, and as someone who suffers with anxiety and depression, I’m not sure why that surprises me. I’ll immediately fire back a text or an email with my gut ‘How dare you!’ response, because it feels like the only way to exercise some control over the physical reactions.

I should probably learn some relaxation techniques, but I’m far from ashamed of approach No. 2. Yes, it often backfires, but hopefully it sometimes also forces difficult conversations that wouldn’t otherwise be had (sometimes being the key word). I wouldn’t switch to approach No. 1 for the world.

How about you? Which of these approaches do you think works better? Or do you have a third way? Are you , *gasp*, capable of talking things through calmly?!

We’re just people who fuck … and buy each other Christmas gifts?

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Sometimes I worry that online shopping is my greatest skill. Seriously, I’m the kind of girl who not only has three Amazon wishlists for herself (one for stuff I’d like as gifts, one for boring stuff I need to buy myself and one for stuff to treat myself to – which is mostly erotica), but also has a private one that runs all year round with gift ideas for the people I love. I don’t technically *start* my Christmas shopping until November, but usually I know long before then what everyone else is getting. I don’t understand why people put themselves through the hell of the high street in December when there’s so much good stuff being made and sold by independent designer/makers and retailers. And books. If you have no other ideas, there are always books. Don’t even get me started on the joys of wrapping …

As usual with my blog posts, none of the above has that much to do with the central point here. The point is that, despite all my fabulous lines about how much I don’t care about him, about how we’re not even friends, just two people who fuck, I think I’ve pretty much undermined that with a lot of what I write here, so it probably won’t kill me to admit that, yeah, not buying him anything feels weird.

Actually, since I’ve known him I have bought him gifts at Christmas. Except for this year. Look, I’m trying to stay emotionally detached, ok?! He doesn’t buy me stuff, except for my birthday last year, when he did (best that I leave the specifics to your imagination!) This post isn’t about accusing him of a lack of generosity – he’s definitely well up on the tally chart when it comes to paying for drinks when we’re out and about, nor, really, about accusing him of not caring enough – he’s never made any promises regarding affection – it’s just that buying people stuff is one of the key ways I demonstrate to people that I like them, but I can’t do it with him because it just makes me look stupid.

So, essentially, I don’t want him to buy me a gift because I think I deserve to get stuff from him, or even because, whether I deserve it or not, I want it anyway (and don’t get me wrong, I do *love* it when guys buy me flowers). I’d like him to buy me a gift because then it means I can do  the same for him. Because, in my opinion, when it comes to saying ‘I care,’ nothing says it like ‘I spent twenty minutes tying this ribbon and it still looks wonky and shit.’

On imminent big birthdays

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One of my best friends turned 30 today – the first in my uni friendship group to do so. I’m in the slightly strange position of being young for my school year, but old for my uni year because I took a gap year, which means that roughly half of my friends will be turning 30 before I do, while the others still have a year to go.

Let’s get one thing clear: I’m far from having a breakdown at the idea of turning 30. Casual sex aside, I’m really not a massive fan of a lot of things you’re supposed to spend your late teens and twenties doing – clubbing, getting blind drunk, travelling the world – so I’m quite happy to, shhh, whisper it, ‘settle down.’

Quite happy, that is, apart from one thing – I want to be a mum, and I’m worried that the things that need to fall into place for that to happen won’t fall into place until it’s too late. And when I say ‘want to be a mum,’ I don’t say it lightly – I’m the girl at dinner parties cuddling the babies of mere acquaintances, the one who inevitably doesn’t get to eat dessert because my hands are taken up cradling someone else’s kid who’s fallen asleep on my shoulder. I’ve wanted it for as long as I can remember and I don’t see that feeling going away any time soon. 

Society’s views on women like me aren’t often very helpful either – I know I shouldn’t let the Mail rile me, but god I was fucked off when Liz Jones wrote this piece. You might steal men’s sperm as payment for microwaving the odd ready-meal, love, but don’t you dare imply that it’s something the rest of us would do. I think a woman in her early 30s should be able to be open with a man about wanting to have a child without the man automatically assuming that that means that she wants to have one with him, and feeling accordingly threatened because that’s not something he’s interested in.

That, plus the fact that I can’t quite get my head around how I will meet, fall in love with and build a sufficiently strong relationship with a guy before the mental cut-off point that I’ve established by which I need to make this a reality (35, if you must know), means that my usual, defensive position is: ‘I don’t need a man in my life to have a baby, I’ll have one by myself.’ That line though, I’m increasingly realising, is just self-preservation – it’s my way of persuading myself, and other people, that I’m in control and have a game plan, even though the reality is, yeah, not so much.

More and more I’m realising that, while I would still have a baby on my own, I’d rather have one with a guy who I love and who I’m in a relationship with. The question is: if I know that that’s something I want from my life, should I give up the relationships happening in my life now that clearly aren’t leading to that in order to dedicate myself more fully to what I want in the long term, or should I stick with what’s working in the short term and assume that the bigger picture will sort itself given time?

 

The best post ever on being single at Christmas …

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… is not one of mine.

Just a very quick post to say that I noticed this week that Lucy Robinson, one of my favourite bloggers, is back on Twitter after a substantial period of down time. Way back in 2009, she wrote this for Marie Claire – rarely has a blog post stayed with me for so long. If you’re single, and you’d rather not be, it might be worth a read.

http://lucy-robinson.co.uk/breakups-the-end-of-the-world/

Enjoy! x

The things that make us who we are …

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I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what it is that’s stopping me from going after what I really want when it comes to love. Sure, I’ve dabbled with internet dating, but I hate it. And recently, I’ve realised that, unlike many people who hate it because it can be depressing and it takes up precious time, I hate it because it means confronting my biggest fear: that no one will want me.

As ever, no melodrama intended – that’s just my honest world view. One of the things that has surprised me most since setting up this blog is the followers I feel I have most in common with are not the sex bloggers, but the relationship bloggers. That’s not to say that there aren’t some fab and supportive sex and erotica bloggers out there (if you haven’t read Kristina Lloyd or Alison Tyler you really, really should), but the girls who write about their search for Mr Right have been kinder and more interested in what I’m doing here than I could ever have hoped for.

Because relationships are my greatest hang up. Technically, I’ve never had one. How did that happen? Well, it’s a pretty long story….

Why do you walk like that?

I’ve touched on some of the issues in this post before. My very first post was about my slight disability and the way complete strangers react to it, but it’s not always complete strangers. The first person I ever felt wasn’t able to accept that my body wasn’t normal was my mum.

This isn’t some kind of attempt to pass the blame for all my insecurities back to my parents – they’re fantastic, and I adore them. In fact, when I first went to therapy, the first thing I said was that I had no interest in trying to pass the buck back to them for how I got so fucked up. But my mum hasn’t always got it right. She walks at 100mph, for example, and I’ve always been expected to keep up. My dad is generally better at recognising that this is tricky for me but when I was a kid, we got taken into his office every Christmas Eve and every year I fell over on the walk from the station and ended up in awful emergency Sock Shop tartan tights.

Not only do I have to keep up though: I have to walk properly. I’ve got much better at this – until very recently I was becoming more agile, not less. She’d say things like ‘You’re walking badly today – are you tired/not concentrating/wearing uncomfortable shoes?’ Often, yes, one of the above – but who isn’t one of those things much of the time. When I paid close attention to every step, I walked better but at the expense of becoming massively self-conscious. It’s never gone away.

No one wants to kiss me

All through primary school, no one noticed that I wasn’t as co-ordinated as every else. Then, when I started secondary school, all that changed. Not only was there a fair amount of teasing, there was also the hell of school discos and under-18s club nights. All the other girls would spend most of the evening with some boy’s tongue down their throat while I hovered on the edge of the group, desperate for the evening to end. Did my disability mean that I was a terrible dancer? Actually, I have no idea – I’m a pretty cautious dancer, but I don’t know if that’s because my body won’t let me be otherwise, or just because I’ve never had the guts to properly throw some shapes. In the end, I was 17 before I had my first kiss and then, irony of all ironies, 17 and a half when I lost my virginity. In a nightclub.

Older men

When the boys your age aren’t interested, you’ll turn elsewhere for male attention in the end. I have a lot more to say about crushes on teachers, so I’ll write about it in more detail later, but let’s just say that most of the years from 15-18 I wasn’t interested in anyone who didn’t take a register. Wanting to impress helped me to get into one of the best universities in the country, but the opportunities for sex there were far and few between too. Plus ca change …

Just good friends

My first grad job was in the middle of nowhere, and my first good friend in that job was senior to me, but behaved at least five years younger than I was. He was a terrible flirt, and he had a Geordie accent that left me weak at the knees. We spent increasing amounts of time together until he decided to tackle the fact that I clearly fancied him head on. He wasn’t ‘in a good place for a relationship,’ which turned out to mean that he’d been in love with his girlfriend’s twin sister for nearly seven years and the idea of moving on was completely alien to him.

That rang true with me. I started seeing a therapist about a year later and one of the first things she asked me was why I thought I continued to be drawn to him despite the fact that we didn’t want the same things. My answer: he doesn’t want to sleep with me.

Now, looking back, that seems odd, even to me. I’m unapologetic about how much I love sex – chasing it, talking about it, having it. But I didn’t want to have sex with anyone I really cared about – I couldn’t face the fact that the morning after they’d inevitably wake up knowing that I’m bad in bed and liking me less because of it. But I stuck with it nonetheless, increasingly unhappy. For two whole years.

What ended it? He met someone, obviously. Someone younger, stick thin, and with no tits to speak of. It’s rare that I don’t love my cleavage, but we had a rough few weeks around that time.

Friends with benefits

Of course, looking back I can see that he didn’t end up with someone else purely because my body was a disappointment to him. It probably wasn’t a disappointment at all – it was probably just that he didn’t fancy me. Or that he wanted someone who was less emotional, less of a drama queen. And that’s ok. Well, ok to an extent – we’ve never salvaged the friendship, but he collects stuffed meerkats now, so I consider myself to have had a lucky escape.

Hopefully all of the above makes it clearer why I consider the current boy  (wow, nearly wrote relationship there!) to be something of a break through. The first time I slept with him I honestly expected that I would never see him again – I certainly never imagined that two years on, despite huge ups and downs, we’d still be fucking, or that I’d be comfortable enough with him to not need to pull my clothes back on straight after sex or to always need a few drinks beforehand.

Of course, the things that don’t work in this arrangement have been well-documented over the last few days – I’m reluctant to lose what we do have, but I know that if I stay, I’ll be giving up a massive chunk of my dreams. I can argue until I’m blue in the face that I’d rather have a baby by myself, but honestly? It’s self-defensive bullshit. I would have one by myself, absolutely, if I don’t find anyone to have one with. But would I rather find someone to raise my children with, someone to slob in front of the telly with, someone who loves my body and who wants to be my friend? Well, obviously. Who wouldn’t?

Playing stupid

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Weirdly, I was going to write a very different post tonight about playing stupid and then someone left a very interesting comment on my post on endings from a couple of days back. And now this is a very different post on endings.

I’ve known for a while now that the boy plays games – I didn’t know from the start but I’ve known for long enough that I should have just walked away already. He doesn’t want monogamy until I do, and then suddenly, just as I threaten to walk away, that card suddenly appears on the table. Which is a surprise, because it turns out that other girls have been dealt the monogamy card too. At the same time.

So knowing all that, I really should call it quits, right? A story: the last guy who hurt me promised we could still be friends. I moved away. He said he’d come and visit. I invited him. No reply. When I next saw him I asked if he ‘d just forgotten to reply. But no, eventually he admitted that his girlfriend wouldn’t let him. Now, that’s fine – but be honest about it. I’d moved to a new city, where I knew no one and I just wanted to fill my weekends. If he’d said no, I’d have freed up the space for something else, but a no reply makes that harder. And, just as you’ll have guessed, we no longer even try to be friends.

The current boy is cleverer. He makes me feel special, then he disappears, then he makes me feel special again. It’s like being on the waltzers, and I hate fairground rides. When he wants to be in my life, his presence can make me almost claustrophobic – he’s joining in my Twitter conversations with people he wants to befriend, texting me, emailing – all stuff that would be perfectly acceptable if it wasn’t followed by huge periods of silence.

And, as I’ve blogged about in other posts there are other upsides too, such as the way he makes me feel about my body. But the result of being on such a constant roller coaster can be devastating, especially for someone like me, whose mental health is fragile at the best of times. Last time I ended it I didn’t sleep all night, then I had a massive panic attack and ended up taking a day off work. That’s still fresh enough to not want to end it again right now.

I don’t really know how to end this post. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that I’m not stupid, and deep down I know he doesn’t care about me. That he’s lying to me. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to stay than to go, right ? I wish he’d be honest with me , that’s all.

On other people’s relationships

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I’m currently watching a couple on a pretty awkward date (I think). Of course, that’s not guaranteed. They could be friends with benefits, colleagues having an affair, or, possibly, they think they’re on the best first date in the world…

Watching other couples doesn’t usually fascinate me. Other people’s PDAs, intimacy, affection for one another is a massive trigger for me. It reminds me of how lonely I often feel. Today is unusual, because until a few minutes ago I was having lunch with my own friend with benefits, and yes, I’ll admit it, we were watching this date as a source of entertainment.

I’m not generally smug when I’m out and about with the boy. Our own dynamic often leaves a lot to be desired and I spend a lot of time wishing we had more moments just like these – having lunch, feeling like we’re on the same wavelength, relishing the fact that, after 2 years, we know each other well enough that it’s no longer that awkward and yet the sex is still damn hot.

But of course, it might not appear like that to other people. They might watch us and think we don’t like each other at all. We don’t hold hands when we’re out and about, for instance. Are other people watching us and thinking, ‘Thank fuck we’re not scared of showing we care.’ And when we bicker, (there’s a lot of one upmanship) – are they thinking. ‘So glad we never argue.’

My point, I guess, is that, much as it’s fun to watch other couples and to draw your own conclusions, you shouldn’t use them as a barometer to judge your own relationship. Use them as a funny story to tell your partner, your friends, your colleagues, but, good or bad, don’t try to be more like them. You have to find your own happiness.