Catharsis

I don’t know if I have any subscribers, and I’m not publishing this anywhere, but I hope by writing all this down I find some relief, and that it helps me move on. I did the stupidest thing ever and fell in love with someone I can’t have. Someone I adored more than the woman I thought I was going to marry. This is an open letter to her.

I made the mistake of letting you get too close and caring too much about you, allowing myself to fall for you. There was a time when I knew where you were virtually every second of every day…. and that’s not healthy. I spent every waking second of my free time either messaging you or wondering if you were going to message…. you were the last thing I thought about before sleep and my first thought in the morning. You were my morning noon and night. I knew better but I couldn’t bring myself to say “I cant be your friend” because I thought you were getting something out of it and I didnt want to hurt you. I put your happiness before my own. There’s a word for that and I’m not afraid of it. No I’m not ok, I just need to learn who I am again, without my evenings occupied by your barrage of cute or crazy or random memes. I can’t cope with the constant reminders of how beautiful, hilarious and adorable you are. I need distance I can’t have and the time to fall out of love with you.

Everything else in my life lost its colour, lost its meaning, because nothing else mattered to me compared to you. When your life plays in your mind likes scenes in a movie …. my favourite scenes are with you. I find it so sickening that I could be allowed to meet someone as perfect as you, but not for you to be mine. It would be so easy to simply want to undo everything and wish we could have never met but our friendship made me happier than I’ve been for years. But now I’m going to have to be selfish and put myself first. I’m not OK. Love has torn me apart again.

Terminally Single

On occasion, I am asked why I am still single (it has been six years). Every now and again, I get told that I should try my luck on dating sites by well-meaning friends, some of whom have found really good and long-term relationships through them. Some of them have even suggested Tinder, and time and time again I get asked “What have you got to lose?” I won’t lie, sometimes it’s maddening and exasperating as I try and explain that while no, I don’t suppose I DO have anything to lose, it’s simply not happening for me. It’s not who I am.

So just for fun, let me explain to why I’m still single, and more to the point, why I’m going to stay single.

Chapter 1 – “Game”/Confidence

How honest do you want this? When I was 14 years old, my confidence was CRUSHED by a girl at school, and I mean, slaughtered. Like, humiliated in front of nearly 30 classmates. I had already figured out that I wasn’t going to be the proverbial ladykiler, but this booted me into hiding in the corner and I pretty much stayed there for the rest of my life. I never developed the part of the brain that deals with going about getting a relationship or even a date, every time I’ve discovered a girl was interested in me my first reaction is always disbelief, and every girl that’s ever got anywhere with me has had to make the first move, or ALL the moves. We’re talking a small number, obviously. What happens if I go on a date? I’ll tell you – I sit there assuming she’s not interested, if we get on I’m going to assume I’m being friendzoned, and I’m going to miss any and all signs more subtle than just grabbing me. Which is exactly what my last ex had to do for me to understand I was being pulled. So from the off, I’m struggling. I can’t play “the game”, I certainly can’t do “the chase” and in very general terms, I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing.

Chapter 2 – Fear of rejection

I’ve got a crippling fear of rejection. My history of having a thing for a girl and doing FUCK ALL about it is lengthy. On the small number of times I’ve been able to actually make the closest I can to “the move” i.e. let someone know I’m interested, usually involving a small amount of alcohol (see Chapter 1 – Confidence), it hasn’t gone well for me. I never dealt with a lot of rejection when I was younger because of the aforementioned hiding in the corner, but the handful of inevitable knockbacks I’ve had in adulthood, preceded by my KNOWING that I was going to get knocked back, made me think “Fuck, I wish I hadn’t bothered.” To the point where I stopped bothering. I’ve been on one date in the last six years, and I had to find out after the fact that the girl considered it a date. Which explains how I was able to ask her out in the first place – I didn’t even know I was asking her out! Naturally, in the aftermath, I decided I quite liked her. And did nothing about it. Because. So, you can probably imagine the thought of sending hopeful messages on a dating site to receive zero or negative replies, or clocking how few “matches” I get compared to how many “likes” I’ve done (swiped right, is it?) makes my fucking blood run cold.

Chapter 3 – Trust

I hate to cover old ground for any of my friends that read this who might have heard this, but here goes. When I was 23 I got into a relationship. I had been friends with the girl on and off for six years, and had long thought that she could have been perfect for me but had done nothing about it (see Chapter 2 – Fear of rejection). Going in, I had developed a pathological fear of being lied to, cheated on and eventually left. I had crippling doubts that any girl temporarily interested in me couldn’t possibly remain so (see Chapter 1 – confidence) and it would all go terribly wrong leaving me a heartbroken mess. The girl had gone through a messy breakup and been cheated on, but we had been friends for so long that when she told me she thought I was special, I believed her. When she said she wanted something serious, I believed her. She used words like “love” and “forever” and “hero” and “soulmate” and we lived together, took holidays with her family and talked about getting married. You already know where I’m going here…. after four years when we split up for good, I found out she had been cheating on me. Somebody I had known for ten years, who I thought I KNEW and had shared the entirety of who I am more than anyone ever in the history of my life, cheated on me and ultimately left me a heartbroken mess, just as I had always feared. I hadn’t dealt with “a breakup” in my teens, I was twenty-fucking-seven, and my biggest fears were realized. I won’t bore you with details about how hard I found it to go on for a while, but as much as being single sometimes bothers me, do I want to expose myself to the risk of THAT kind of pain again? Do I fuck.

Chapter 4 – Girls

Jesus, I’m going to regret this one, aren’t I. Despite what you’ll come to read below and the idea that “beggars can’t be choosers” – I’m actually stupidly picky. I mean, I don’t think I ask for much, but if what I ask for isn’t there, it’s dead in the water. All I truly look for…. first and foremost, she needs to make me laugh. If I don’t catch myself laughing at what comes out of her mouth or things that she does, I almost never have any interest. As important, I have to make her laugh. Once I let my guard down and let the real me come out a little, if we’re laughing at the same things or at each other, that’s golden to me. When all the other bullshit fades away, if we’re laughing together, that lasts, and that’s what attracts me. On top of that… butterflies. It needs to be said, but there needs to be that “something indescribable.” I settled on “butterflies” and I don’t necessarily mean physical attraction, just that … I don’t know. Catching myself smiling about something she does, says or is, just that little voice inside that says “I like being around you.” Probably not making it clear but… yeah. If you really twisted my arm and asked me about the physical, then dark hair, pale skin and eyes I lose myself in will never hurt, but by no means have my inappropriate crushes over the years been limited to that description.

Oh yeah… the inappropriate crushes. Meet girl, decide she has what I like, struggle to deal with the fact it simply isn’t happening. Occasionally just because she isn’t going to be interested (see Chapter 2 – Fear of rejection) or 99% of the time because she’s taken already. Because I’m just that picky. But you know what? I’ve been single that long, that I’ve given myself the right to be picky. I’m hardly going to stick my neck out now unless I’m 100% in the “I like this one” stakes.

Chapter 5 – Failings and Shortcomings

Please don’t write this off as an inferiority complex – I reckon I know what girls like, and I don’t have it. I have zero confidence in my looks and positively negative body con. I’ve struggled with my weight my entire adult life as a guy that likes sedentary pastimes and snacking and whose asthma has always made exercise problematic. And to be blunt, if I’m not going to the gym with someone, I give up too easily and get depressed. Of course, having spent my whole life watching the girls I like being with the good looking guys (see Chapter 4 – Girls) it’s become too easy to just accept that I’m pretty screwed anyway (see Chapter 1 – Confidence). As for the rest… I don’t have any money to speak of, my interests are few and niche, and as far as that unconscious “suitable father” theory goes, it’s pretty clear that I’m not really an actual grown-up. I can’t look after myself, much less anyone else. And guess what? Doubts about whether I’d be any good at looking after the kids we probably weren’t going to have anyway was one of the reasons thrown at me the last time I got dumped, and if I ever had the chance to get over the myriad of things I hate about my own body, I’m likely to never get over the fact my one long-term, serious, grown-up relationship came to a crashing halt because she decided she wanted to fuck other guys. I don’t think there’s any coming back from that.

Biggest problem I have, I think, is that girls see through me. Within hardly any time, due to my inability to play “the game”, a girl figures out that I don’t really manage the “go out a few times and see how it goes” thing, and if I’ve figured out that I’m interested enough to test the water, chances are I’ve already decided I’m interested in something serious, and that scares girls away. I’m hardly ever, truly, thinking “we should go out sometime” – I go from zero to “I’d like you to be my girlfriend” in hardly any time. Even though (see Chapter 3 – Trust) I’m never actually going to allow myself to actually pursue it unless the stars align and I trip into something that gives me genuine hope (see Chapter 4 – Girls) but that doesn’t happen for me. Never has, never will.

Best of all, the fact I’ve actually taken the time to think about all this and put it into words should tell you all you need to know about the state of my brain, and girls want a man, not a fucking project.

There you go, I think that covers it. I’m fucked. I’m not going on dating websites, I’m not going on Tinder. I’m not doing fucking anything. Please, don’t think of any of this as being me “giving up” or being down on myself. I’m 33 years old, and I know who I am. It’s taken many years, I freely admit I’m a little broken, but I KNOW WHO I AM and I’ve accepted it. So please… don’t try and help me. Don’t tell me what I need to be doing to improve my situation, don’t try and set me up with your friends, just leave me alone.

Please don’t tell my mother any of this.

I Hate Valentine’s Day.

I hate Valentine’s Day. Truly, truly loathe it. I’ve said it, it’s out there, and I expect I’ll take some flak for it. But I’m going to explain to you why, and hopefully you won’t judge me so harshly by the end of this piece.

I know what some people who read this might be thinking. They’ll be thinking “You just hate Valentine’s Day because you’re single.” Well, that certainly doesn’t help, does it? No, being alone on Valentine’s Day can be a really unpleasant experience. From the point of view of the terminal singleton – like myself – you already succumb to the feeling that everyone else in the world is forcing their happinness down your throat, that you’re doomed to walk the Earth alone while everyone else stares and thinks “Finding someone is so easy, why hasn’t he/she done it too?” That feeling is magnified to dizzying heights around VD. You cannot walk around a corner, it seems, without some ad campaign blurting out another great idea how to spoil your special someone on February 14th, or some rom-com coming out dedicated to showing you explicitly how everybody else’s lovelife happens, and yours does not.

Worst of all, without doubt, is Facebook. Now, in fairness, even at the best of times Facebook can feel like the world’s biggest competition to make your life look better than everyone else’s, but Valentine’s Day in particular becomes a gratuitous display of “look how much my other half loves me!” It makes the other 364 days of the year pale in comparison to how outright sucky it feels to not HAVE someone to spoil or make feel special. I know not every coupled-up person feels the need to broadcast how fabulous their relationship is, and from personal experience (warning : hypocrite alert) while the four VDs I spent with my last ex, I did in fact make a lot of effort and spend a lot of money to make the day as special as I could for her, I took great delight in putting none of it on Facebook. I was too busy living the moments to take pictures of the flowers or the meals or the wine, and to be frank those moments were for US, and I didn’t consider them anybody else’s damn business.

Me on Valentine’s Just kidding… it’s every day.

But finally, my biggest problem with Valentine’s Day as a concept, is that it actually fundamentally flies in the face of my idea of romance. Romance to me is about spontaneity, creativity and imagination. The unexpected things you do, the joyous surprises. I can think of nothing less romantic than an arbitrarily selected day where you are expected to go out of your way to prove how much you love your partner, as if the other 364 days a year are any less important to let somebody know how special they are. For me, romance is things like turning up unexpectedly as she finishes her shift to take her out for a meal without warning, taking a day off unannounced so you can spend a day together for a change, buying that dress she pointed out two weeks ago or coming home with flowers JUST BECAUSE. Not spending wildly on the same day every year just because every other fucker does it too.

So there you go, that’s why I hate Valentine’s. Yes, I am a hypocrite. When I was in a couple, despite being told “I don’t want you to make a big deal of Valentine’s” I always managed to do exactly that, because despite the warning, no guy wants to be the guy that doesn’t do anything on Valentine’s Day. And therein lies the problem.