Little to report

Long time, no post. There's been no particular reason for the lack of blogging, I just haven't really felt in the mood to write. I have been keeping up with me favourite blogs, though haven't managed to do much commenting either.

So, a few updates. T hasn't really moved on much. On the surface she mostly appears okay, is functioning normally, and has cut back a lot on alcohol (she was drinking daily). But she says she is still in love with the idiot guy and described him at one point as an addiction.

A couple of times I have felt our friendship has been threatened by how she feels. Once, she said I sounded disapproving in a phone conversation with her of her wish to stay friends with him, and said if I couldn't support her we might have to talk about whether we could remain friends. We got past that, and on another occasion after she had said she didn't think she could cope with how she felt much longer, I suggested she see her doctor and get referred to a psychologist (which she was referred to a year or two ago for self esteem issues, but because of an admin error never had an appointment). She texted "Goodbye" to me, saying that a doctor can't fix everything and can't stop you loving someone. She went AWOL on me for a week or two then sent a text which said simply "sorry". She occasionally mentions how awful she still feels but I haven't had to play counsellor too much since then, so I think maybe she is aware of how draining I was finding it. She did send me a lovely note at Christmas thanking me for keeping her going and it was nice to know she appreciates me. Despite everything we have had some really fun times over the past few months, when hopefully she has managed to forget him briefly and enjoy herself.

As for me, there have been no more dates. I am still a member of eHarmony but rather inactive. I have hundreds of matches I haven't even looked at. I got really fed up with sending men questions and not hearing back from any of them. Surely one of them at some point has to find me interesting? And I don't think I have been attracted to a single man who has sent me questions. Some are much older than me, others have been really overweight, which I really don't find attractive, others just sound plain boring.

I feel as if I have reached the point where I just can't be bothered. I haven't cried about being single for a long time. I'm not sure I've even felt particularly sad. But I'm not really happy and content with it either. I just don't really seem to feel anything. Have I become really hard? Have I lost the ability to feel sadness about something that I have been sad about for years? I still fantasise about what it would be like to be in a relationship which I think means I still want to be in one, so why am I am not pushing myself to do something about it?

OK, now I'm panicking

I've just made the mistake of googling for advice on first dates, and have found all sorts of articles about kissing at the end of the date. I'm sure I will manage to converse with him in some way, I think I can seem interesting, I may even be able to make him laugh, but I have no idea how to kiss and am utterly convinced that if it happens I will screw it up. And therefore I am now dreading the end of the date.

And what's with all the online advice which says that you really must kiss on the first date, and if you don't then it means there was no chemistry, or you don't like each other? Is there something wrong with wanting to spend more than a couple of hours with someone before kissing them?

I hate being a 35 year old woman with the relationship and dating experience of a teenager.

Now what?

I logged into eharmony this evening to find two matches have sent me open ended questions. One of them asks three interesting questions which will take a bit of thinking about, the other asks two which I can answer and a final one which is "What have you learned from past relationships?".

Soooooooo what answer to give? Lying feels plain wrong and I'm sure would be obvious. But is now the right time to say well actually I have had no past relationships? Is that a surefire way to make him run for the hills? Of the two guys he is the one I am less interested in but I'm not sure I want to close my options off, when there aren't that many of them in the first place.

To online date or not to online date?

In the past week I've had a couple of conversations about online dating and dating agencies. The first was when a work colleague mentioned that she once had a second job and that it was because she wasn't meeting anyone (i.e. men) at her main job. She didn't meet any men there so joined some sort of dating agency. She was quite open about it and others in the office laughed about how they used to help her choose who to go out with next, and how they used to look forward to hearing how the dates went. She said that the 6 months she was doing it were the most fun she's ever had, going for dinner, seeing films etc with all sorts of men. And she did end up meeting the man she married.

The next conversation was with one of my housemates who randomly asked if I was looking for a boyfriend. I stumbled a bit over my answer and said something along the lines of "well, not particularly, but I wouldn't complain if someone came along". I couldn't very well say "I've never actually had a boyfriend, I have no idea why not, but I think I really would like one" could I? She then went on to ask if I'd ever tried internet dating and I said I hadn't but that I knew friends who had. She seemed to quite like the idea and was of the opinion that while in the past it was only so-called "desperate" people who tried it, now it's a much more "acceptable" way for anyone to meet someone new. I agree with her about that, the embarrassment factor is certainly less nowadays, and the more people, like my colleague, are open about it, the more it will be seen as a "normal" way to meet men.

However, I'm not sure whether it's something that I personally want to do. Not because of any embarrassment amongst friends, but for various other reasons. I'm shy and don't have much confidence when meeting new people. How successful would I be at picking up the phone and trying to converse? I fear there would be lengthy silences. I have no relationship history. How do I know what I want in a man? How do I answer the questions about previous relationships, especially if the question comes up early on? Would it put a guy off even before he'd got to really know me?

I know that with internet dating at least you know that the guy is definitely looking for a relationship, and you therefore hopefully avoid all the "is he, isn't he interested" worry, but I think I would much prefer to know someone as a friend first. I'd rather get to know them without worrying or feeling any pressure about where things are going, and I'd want to let them get to know me as a person before any awkward questions came up. Trouble is, I've made male friends but none has become anything more and I'm not having much luck meeting new friends.

Hearing people talk about online dating has made me wonder if I should just think what the hell and give it a go. Surely I can live with any embarrassment? It's not going to kill me after all. And if a guy is scared off by my relationship history, would I really want him? Or should I try clubs or evening classes in my new city first? Maybe I will investigate some websites.

A mutual lack of understanding

I saw my friend T (she of the relationship with the married man) on Friday. I told her about E and A moving in together and how it had made me feel. I used to speak to her quite a lot about my feelings for and attraction to A, before he and E started dating.

Anyway, on Friday she said all the “right” things: that it had been his loss, that I was too good for him, that it didn’t happen because there someone better out there for me (Yeah right. Where the hell has he got to then?). She also said she sort of understood how I had felt because she’d felt something similar about her married guy going home to his wife each evening and ultimately choosing his wife over her.

But she doesn’t really, truly understand, whether it’s about A or about my (lack of) love life in general. She’s had boyfriends. She’s had sex. She may have been rejected but she has also been wanted and been loved. She knows that she can attract men. She knows that she is capable of forming a relationship. She’s got over the hurdle of losing her virginity.

She isn’t afraid that the rejection means that there is something fundamentally wrong with her. She doesn’t wonder why it is that, as well as A, nobody else has ever wanted her either. She doesn’t think that maybe she’s just too unattractive. She isn’t worried that starting to date a man will mean having to tell him she is a virgin. She doesn’t know what it’s like to want to be in a relationship, but at the same time to be terrified of starting a relationship because all the “firsts” it would entail make it seem an enormous leap. She doesn’t feel like a naive teenager.

She doesn’t know that I’m a virgin and have never had a boyfriend, so she believes that she really does understand.

In return, I don’t really understand things that go on in her life. Her potential relationship with the much older guy hasn’t developed into anything yet and she is unsure what’s going on and confused by the way he’s acting. She told me all about it and obviously wanted some advice, which I tried to give her, but really I have no idea what I’m talking about. I can’t relate to the situation she is in at all. My advice tends to be just what I think would be the sensible thing to do, but it isn’t taken from any personal experience whatsoever.

And because she doesn’t know that I’m a virgin and have never had a boyfriend, she believes that I really do understand.

I’ve never really questioned what, if anything, this mutual lack of understanding means for our friendship. Yes, there are things she doesn’t know about me. But she cares about me and I care about her. She wants me to be happy. She can still give me advice, even without fully understanding. She seems to want and value my advice (although she doesn’t always listen to it), so it seems me not fully understanding doesn’t really matter either.

It would be nice to open up and be honest with her about my virginity because it does feel occasionally as if I’m lying to her, but weighing it all up, I don’t think it is essential for her to know. My best friend knows and it feels right that she does. But in general if my other friends wouldn’t understand or be able to relate to it, for the moment I don’t think they need to know and I don’t want them to know. One day I may be ready to tell more of my friends and even to talk about it with them. Right now, I’m okay with knowing that there are others out there in the blogosphere who do get it and do understand.

The times they are not a-changin’

I didn’t go out with my Sociable Guy friend after all. I contacted him but he was working all day Saturday and decided the weather was too cold and wet to leave the warmth of home once he got back from work. So I spent the evening at home on my own. It’s at times like this that I really wish I had a group of single female friends who I could call up and invite out and I’d know that at least one of them would say yes.

I mentioned to Sociable Guy that at the moment I’m feeling fed up and as if my life is going anywhere. He responded by saying that only I can change the way my life is going and that I have to take the plunge and do what makes me happier.

I guess he’s right up to a point. No matter how stuck I may feel, there are probably ways out if only I try hard enough. I could try to work out what alternative job would suit me, then find myself a new job, preferably one with a higher salary, because that would mean that I could also get myself a home of my own. Or I could even try to find a better paid job similar to my current one because again that would enable a change of home. But finding someone to have a relationship with, relying as it does on someone else’s feelings, doesn’t seem quite as straightforward. I could make more effort to meet new people. I could sign up for even more courses and join even more clubs. I could even try internet dating, although the thought of it terrifies me. Ultimately though, I have no control over someone else’s feelings or over whether we click.

I know that I do need to change my life in some way, but I am uncertain whether I ought to try to change one aspect at a time, or just go for one big bang. Do I move into a different houseshare and stay in the same job? Do I find another job and a new home but stay in the same town? Do I find a new job in a different town which would give me a whole townful of new people to meet (assuming I could pluck up the courage to try to meet them)?

Doing anything at all seems too scary. What if I don’t like the new job? The new housemates? The new town? I think I’ve become almost too comfortable with a lot of things. I can do my job with my eyes closed. I’ve known my colleagues for ages so no nerve-wracking getting to know them required. I live conveniently close to work. I like the town I live in, its facilities and its location. I sometimes wish I hated my job because that would give me a push into at least changing jobs even if nothing else.

I am a terrible procrastinator. I am capable of spending hours thinking about what I‘d like to change and ways I’d want to do it, I day dream about living elsewhere, about travelling more, about the day I am offered a wonderful new job, yet I do nothing that might help to take me down that different path.

Sociable Guy is right. I am the only one who can change the way my life is going. I just need to give myself a very big kick to force myself to do it. Trouble is, I think I’m too afraid to give myself that kick.

Jumping out of the plane

There was an article in the Observer newspaper today about Peaches Geldof and how great it is to marry young and after a very short relationship. I’m not actually interested in Peaches or anything about her marriage but there was a section in the article that got me thinking:

If you ask me, getting married on a whim, drunk, aged 19, to somebody you barely know is the only way of doing it. If I had my life over again, that's what I'd do. If I had children, that's what I would advise them. But I don't have children, because I've been loitering timidly by the open doorway for so long that I'll probably never jump out of the plane. Pause to think about it and you just sit back down and buckle your seatbelt.

Perhaps the tabloids would prefer Peaches to hit 30 without marrying anyone. Give her a chance to get used to the single life, taking her own space, own sleep patterns, own choices, own holidays, own friends, own family, completely for granted. Allow the idea of sharing all this with somebody else, forever, to become a bit nerveracking. Let her come to believe that, having left it so long, it would now be really stupid to make a mistake. Let her take the whole thing so damn seriously that, instead of acting without thinking, she constantly thinks without acting.

All thirtysomethings do is date for years, too scared of abandoning self-sufficiency to take things any further, until the other person's flaws (perfectly tolerable if they had already made the commitment) become giant, looming reasons not to marry them anyway. Or they get married and are so shocked by the unfamiliar compromises of permanent partnership, they have to get divorced again.

By Victoria Coren, The Observer, 26.10.2008

What if she’s right? What if I’m so used to being single, to having my own space, to doing exactly what I want to when I want to that I’m too scared to jump out of the damn plane? Yes I’m lonely, yes I want to be in a relationship, but being so accustomed to being alone would I actually be able to make the necessary compromises, be willing to lose some of my independence? I would hope that the prospect of enjoying life with someone I loved would make the answer to that yes, but I don’t think I’ll really know until it happens.

I definitely think I would take the whole process of embarking on a relationship much more seriously than I would have done 10-15 years ago. I suspect I would be likely to wonder if every potential boyfriend (assuming I ever have any) was “the one”, to wonder right from the start whether a relationship was going to lead to a life together, marriage, children even. I’m not sure I could simply date someone and just wait to see what happens without any expectations. A lot of pressure to put on a new relationship, and on any man brave or crazy enough to be interested in me.