Getting Help

I was sitting here and had decided to write a lengthy “OH MY BUT I MISS HIM SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO” post. But really, where does that get me? So better to crack on in the spirit of pretending-not-to-care Swingers stylee, so I either stop caring or (please please please) he falls for the pretence and comes rushing back. And I’ve been thinking about posting on this for a while, so here goes…

I mentioned I went away to Portugal for a week (it ended up being 3 hours of yoga a day. Slavedrivers.) and whilst away I had 2 lots of books: sunbathing time was taken up by most of the contents of Richard and Judy’s book list (btw, he HATED Richard and Judy. and he wasn’t a person with a whole lot of hate. I still find that weird. Bless Richard and Judy – I felt they were surrogate parents during my long mornings of lecture-avoidance at university) and, for bedtime reading, some of my ever-expanding collection of self-help books. I’ve posted briefly about these before, but they fall into 3 categories:
1) Getting him back
2) Getting over him
3) Getting the next one (who I mainly want to find so He thinks I’ve got over Him and comes rushing back. The Universe is being wise enough not to send the next one to me just yet…)

I had examples from each category but due to limited time, I only really got through Are You the One for Me? Knowing Who’s Right and Avoiding Who’s Wrong Now, I’m going to go on to demonstrate how this did really help me, but I’ve just found this hilarious article about the author, bad nose-job recipient Dr Barbara De Angelis. The woman has been married 5 times!!!! She somehow glazes over this in her 353 page (small print) book. We hear about her first marriage and her current marriage but the other 3 go without mention. And she used to be married to the ‘Men Are From Mars…’ guy. So if TWO self-help authors divorced one another then maybe they should give out a few million book refunds, no? Anyway. FIVE TIMES!!! I can’t find one man willing to marry me, where the hell has she pulled 5 out of the bag from? There’s no mention of her living in Alaska or anything. Hmm…

Anyway, what I wanted was proof that He IS the one for me and I leafed through the pages eagerly in search of reassurance. It was not forthcoming. In fact, Ol’ 5 Times has a handy exercise (for those of you fortunate enough not to be literate in the self-help medium, self-help books LOVE an exercise) to determine whether your coupling is DOOMED or not. You gotta wonder whether 5 Times listens to her own advice…

Tragically enough, it would appear that I fall into the category of “You Care More About Your Partner Than He Does About You”. I discovered this by completing the moderately soul-destroyingly titled How To Tell If You’re Not Being Loved Enough ‘quiz’ (page 131 if you ever fancy dragging yourself down)

So here goes…

1) You are usually the one who reaches out first to be affectionate physically
Check

2) You want to make love, to be intimate and loving when you are in bed, but your partner is into just having sex
Um… To be honest, my ‘partner’ (I LOATHE this expression) became less and less interested in having sex, full-stop. Thanks partner.

3) You go out of your way to be with him or do things for him, but your partner rarely goes out of his way for you.
CHECK. Check check check check check. Check. Grrrrrrrr.

4) In the beginning of the realtionship you told your family about your partner before he told his family about you.
Don’t know – would it ever occur to anyone to ask their boyfriend this question?!

5) You are the one who makes most of the plans to do things together – restaurant reservations, weekend outings, romantic evenings – and your partner seems just to go along without showing a lot of enthusiasm.
Well, he controlled any of the plans for what we did together, because if his friends had plans, that’s what we went along with. Including if his friends made plans after my friends had made plans. So eventually, I handled this by not making plans involving my friends, to avoid conflict. I’m so 21st century and empowered. It was also pretty hard to plan stuff because he’d want to keep his time free so that if his friends made plans (and by ‘plans’ i mean went-to-the-cricket-club-to-get-drunk-for-the83rd-consecutive-week) then he could be available. The irony being that the nights that his friends (most of whom I did really like by the way) didn’t go out, it was because they were spending time with their girlfriends/wives. See how that works, partner? Anyway, these occasions aside, it was me who did the planning for stuff we did just as a couple. and, as the embarrassing revelations just keep on coming, a lot of the time I used to pay for tickets and stuff so that he would have less reason to say no to my suggestions. One time, I bought tickets ( 15 a pop) for this comedy thing, then he cancelled because we had to do this thing with his friends. Needless to say, I didn’t see 15 from him as well as the fact I missed out on night of laughs for the sake of night of baby puke.

And I have picked the edited lowlights here – obviously we did have some great times (when circumstances permitted…) and it’s not true to say that he just showed up without enthusiasm, but I think it’s fair to notch up another point.

6) You seem much more excited about being in the relationship than your partner, who doesn’t show you how much it means to him
Again, this isn’t something I ever really thought about… But i WAS really excited about being a relationship with him. At times, this even bordered on smugness. My inner thoughts frequently ran along the lines of: “look at meeee! i have it all! I am soooooooo lucky!”. Whereas he dumped me twice in a year. I think that tells its own story, don’t you?

7) On special occasions, your gifts to your partner are well-thought-out and personal, while his seem last-minute and impersonal.
Oooooh, can open, worms everywhere… Ummm… in his defence, I am tricky to buy for. He actually did really well last Christmas, after I sent him my Amazon wish-list. I got a lot of stuff that I’d wanted for aaaaages. However, this only happened after we had a row about him not wanting us to get each other anything expensive. During Project Reconciliation, he admitted this was because he already knew he probably wanted out, so he didn’t want me spending any money on him. Oh, and obviously i give AWESOME gifts. One of the petty things that makes me hyperventilate is that I got him a bunch of great clothes over the months (and the boy needed help – when we first started going out, he’d wear shirts with cufflinks to the pub on a saturday night – weird) so now he’s a LOT more attractive than he was. Shallow creatures that we girls are. He used to be all ralph lauren and cufflinks and I got him in Abercrombie and cashmere… He even said – pre any whiff of a break-up – he thinks one of the reasons his brother is single (in spite of being a bajillionaire) is because he dresses really badly and girls care about that stuff. THEN, in a moment that chills my soul every time I think about it, he thanked me, because I’d really helped him out in the wardrobe stakes. Now I don’t believe he was thanking me because he was rubbing his hands with glee at the thought of new-found attractiveness to the female race, but I have very dark thoughts about the fact that by turning him into a better-dressed boyfriend, I’ve now made him a better-dressed mating prospect now that he’s cast himself back into the dating pool. Whereas the one and only time he bought me clothes, I got a yellow and pink strappy top emblazoned with the words “I’m the next superstar, who are you?”. Words failed me. And still do now…

8 ) You initiate most of the contact in the relationship – phone calls, discussions etc
This was pretty much 50/50 until the end was in sight

9) When you talk about your relationship, your future together, or your feelings for each other, your partner becomes very uncomfortable and unresponsive, or changes the subject
Um… (again) We actually didn’t really talk about any of this stuff until during and after Break Up Mk1. Whihc is a bad sign in itself, right? half a point?

10) You seem to be fitting yourself into your partner’s life, habits and schedule and he doesn’t make efforts to fit into your life and schedule
Check. We lived really far apart (South London and North-of-London with only work anchoring us in the middle) and I did 80% of the travelling. Most of my weekends were spent up there because he always had a long list of reasons why he had to be near home. And if he stayed at mine during the week, he would get so annoyed by tube rush hour that he’d ignore me for the entire journey. Because a couple of million other Londoners are my fault, right? So I stopped inviting him over during the week to prevent conflict. In yet another failed measure.

Lordy. Typing this up has made me feel like the worst loser. But honestly, at the time, the constant compromising on my part didn’t really bother me becuase I thought I was contributiong towards my long-term goal of Lifetime Of Happiness With Amazing Boyfriend. As it was, he just got his own way all the time and I got dumped. Twice. Wanker.

Anyway, let’s total this up… And even if we allow for some half-points and interpretation at BEST I’m in the 5-7 bracket which is called What Are You Doing In Such An Awful Relationship? Stop kidding yourself and face the fact you aren’t getting the love you deserve. Your self-esteem is so low that you are settling for crumbs and pretending its enough It’s not! Hmmm 5 Times, I think my self-esteem just took another battering since I discovered that even you think I’m a doormat and an idiot. But it gets worse, because I’m probably closer to the 8-10 bracket: What Relationship? You Aren’t In A Relationship, You Are In A Fantasy. You are giving everything and getting nothing in return. This isn’t love, it’s self-mutilation. Get out now before it’s too late and seek some professional counselling to help you reclaim yourself.

Gulp.

I can’t believe my relationship was a fantasy. Could I not have come up with a better fantasy than one where I was stuck in North-Of-London with an under-acheiving guy who didn’t want to be with me??? I would have hoped I’d grant myself one involving Steve Jones in his underpants or something. Damnit. Stupid, unimaginative inner psyche.

So yeah. My relationship was horrifying and I shouldn’t want him back. But I do. But I shouldn’t.

I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t
I shouldn’t

Hopefully I’ll convince myself eventually…

And if not, at least I can console myself with the fact that I may not die alone if even Dr Barbara De Angelis has found 5 willing victims even though she comes out with statements like this: Most of all, thanks to my heart’s true companion, Jeffrey James… Thank you for helping me heal the frightened little girl inside me by not going away.

Remember – this woman thinks I am a loser who needs help. The shame…