Barnsley chops <\/a>and I couldn’t remember what they were called.\u00a0 Dave proffered: “chop-chop?”.\u00a0 I’m not kidding, this was the funniest joke he ever told. Which is why I remember it.\u00a0 A few times, he even tried to pass off remarks that I’d just made to him as his own jokes\u00a0in front of a group of people.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 And I’d call him out on it.\u00a0 Every time.\u00a0 Hahaha!\u00a0 No wonder he dumped me.\u00a0 But really.\u00a0 So no, Dave laughed easily, but was definitely NOT funny.\u00a0 Bless him]
\n“could he cook?”
\n“no, and he was a fussy eater”<\/p>\nAnd on and on it went, as we laughed and laughed.
\n“What WAS he good at?”
\n“Ummmm…\u00a0 *thought hard for 30 seconds* He knew a lot about cricket.”
\n“Do you LIKE cricket?”
\n“No”<\/p>\n
And\u00a0I don’t tell you this to underline Dave’s flaws, just to demonstrate the sheer ludicrousness of the whole thing.\u00a0\u00a0I was (and still am) tearing my insides out over this guy when – in my eyes – he had no redeeming features, beyond the convenience of his non-drug-addicted, house-in-spain situation.<\/p>\n
To reinforce, these are the things that bugged the shit out of me about him on a daily basis (daily is bad enough, but honestly, some of these were\u00a0hourly…):<\/p>\n
1) Hair.\u00a0 He had a really rubbish haircut AND was receding.\u00a0 I used to look at him and wonder how bald he’d be in 10 years’ time and if I could bear it.\u00a0 Ahhh, true love…
\n2) Teeth
\n3) Eyebrows
\n4) Weak chin
\n5) Lack of drive
\n6) Stupid simpering expression he used to get on his face sometimes
\n7) His mum still came round to do his ironing\/clean his flat.\u00a0 One time, he was going away with his parents (which he did 4 times in the couple of years we were together, each time paid for by them) for a fortnight.\u00a0 I was spending the night at his before he left and we went into his flat which was freezing because his parents had already been round to turn off the heating, put the lights on a timer and empty the fridge.\u00a0 So we were cold and hungry.\u00a0 Awesome.\u00a0 Plus I had to face the fact that my boyfriend was a giant Mummy’s boy.\u00a0 Nothing’s hotter than that.
\n8) After the first pangs of lust, we were not that well matched in the bedroom – each of us thought the other was a bit weird.\u00a0 We were probably both right.\u00a0 Even the\u00a0stuff he said\u00a0during the lovin’ made me cringe.\u00a0 This was never to be a successful union.
\n9) I wanted (and still want, damn my eyes) someone to adore me utterly and believe I was a creature like no other.\u00a0 Dave did not make me feel this way and\u00a0I decided that this was because I just wasn’t trying hard enough (I mean obviously…\u00a0 So much ego yet apparently the self-esteem of an underacheiving\u00a0gnat.\u00a0 What a winning combination…).\u00a0 So the entire time we were together, it felt like an uphill struggle.\u00a0 Backwards.\u00a0 Whilst wearing stilts and balancing a tea-tray on a thimble.\u00a0 And it didn’t matter how many tedious, embittering things\u00a0I did with or for him, he still didn’t like me any better.\u00a0 Because we just didn’t fit.\u00a0 But I still feel I failed somehow.\u00a0 And I’m angry (angry!<\/strong>) that Dave, who was not nearly as bright as I like to think I am, figured out that it was wiser to just cut his\/our losses whilst I was still desperately clinging on.\u00a0 I mean, I was already miserable, what was a lifetime more misery together?!\u00a0
\n10) He was sooooooo limited and, by default, limiting.\u00a0 He was one of those I-know-what-I-like-why-try-anything-new types and as I’ve already mentioned, is likely to be sitting in the same pub with the same friends 3 times a week for the next 50 years.\u00a0 At the time and during my mourning, i’d harp on about how comforting it would be to know exactly what you’ll be doing for the next 50 years.\u00a0 Comforting if you’ve had a frontal lobotomy<\/strong> maybe.\u00a0 There’s nothing wrong with being a small-town boy with small-town ideals, but I’m a small-town gal\u00a0who got out of said small-town FOR A REASON.\u00a0 So I was constantly frustrated by his unwillingness to do anything that tested the boundaries of his (limited) experience, be it spending a weekend away from his friends or eating tomatoes.\u00a0 I wish I was joking about the tomatoes.\u00a0 I remember once, as a determined attempt on his part to show that he was not a total food nightmare, he helped me skin some tomatoes.\u00a0 He said afterwards it made him retch a bit.\u00a0 Remember what\u00a0I said about not-so-rugged?\u00a0 The whole thing made him really, really boring.\u00a0 He had his heart broken by an ex who dumped him (after 3 years) on the basis that they “never did anything interesting together”.\u00a0 You’d think this would give a person a giant kick in the arse.\u00a0 Instead, he just carried on being boring (and hey, really, if he;’ happy that way it was more my problem than his) and couting on finding girls who were more interested in the fact of having a boyfriend than actually doing anything fun with said boyfriend (I am genuinely horrified to realise I was in that category).\u00a0 It’s also why it was a blow to hear that he’d gone to Edinburgh for NYE with The New GF.\u00a0 That’s literally the most interesting thing he’s done with a girlfriend in about 10 years.\u00a0 Again,\u00a0I suspect this one’s a keeper (incidentally, whilst I’m getting this all off my chest, I might as well reveal that I think thety will get married, but only after she gets knocked up on purpose.\u00a0 Mark my words…)
\n11) He was, how to put it…?\u00a0\u00a0A bit naff.\u00a0 I can’t believe I just used the word naff.\u00a0 My close encounter with “natch” recently has obviously rebooted my vocabulary back to 1983.\u00a0 But that’s what he was.\u00a0 And I am going to sound like the most godawful bitch\u00a0here.\u00a0 I’m sorry.\u00a0 Exhibit A for the prosecution: Dave was not that academically gifted. \u00a0I used to exclaim loudly with bewilderment that his parents had paid through the nose for his\u00a0schooling and yet\u00a0he’d emerged fundamentally uneducated (again, my constant exclamations about this may have been a\u00a0contributory factor in him dumping me.\u00a0 Fair ’nuff).\u00a0 He didn’t know<\/strong>ANYTHING (cricket aside).\u00a0 I remember going with him to the British Museum and having to explain that\u00a0people and dinosaurs\u00a0did not co-exist.\u00a0 So he ended up going to a mediocre university – a friend who is even more of an intellectual snob than I claimed never to have heard of it; it is one of the better-known former polys, but is\u00a0definitely not\u00a0recognised as an academic powerhouse –\u00a0to obtain a mediocre result in an\u00a0utterly meaningless degree.\u00a0 And yet, he had his degree certificate proudly\u00a0framed in his bedroom (the intellectual snob got me to send her a photo of it, which I’m ashamed to admit that I did.\u00a0 And this was during the honeymoon period!).\u00a0 The only other frame on his bedroom wall contained a framed\u00a0picture of Ian Botham (Exhibit B, he was 29 when we started going out).\u00a0 And (C) he had a load of stuffed toys that were gifts from former girlfriends proudly displayed around\u00a0his flat.\u00a0 And (D) a bagful more under the bed.\u00a0\u00a0 And (E – I’m going to hell) his parents’ cars had consecutive personalised numberplates.\u00a0 You may have read this and now frown upon me for being such a heinous snob.\u00a0 That may be.\u00a0 The fact remains that a heinous snob like me wad always going to struggle to reconcile the concept of Happiness That Lasts A Lifetime with a guy whose greatest intellectual pursuit was completing the medium difficulty Sudoku in the Evening Standard (which he managed about twice a fortnight).
\n12) His CD collection was my personal\u00a0musical Room 101.\u00a0 I know I’ve already mentioned that he loved Simply Red.\u00a0 Throw in Phil Collins (and Genesis), James Blunt, Snow Patrol, Katie Melua, approx 10 Boyzone\/Westlife CDs, Michael Bolton, Robbie Williams, Razorlight, Dido, David Gray, Stereophonics and I’m going to have to stop typing now before\u00a0I slit my wrists.\u00a0 In his defence, he shared my love of 80s music.\u00a0 Although more Wham than Kraftwerk.
\n13) So, as well as being dull, kinda annoying and having nothing whatsoever in common with me, he was also deeply moody.\u00a0 More so than the average guy, even.\u00a0 Of course, this may have been to do with the fact that he was\u00a0stuck with a girlfriend who thought\u00a0he was dull and annoying and who he had nothing whatsoever in common with.\u00a0\u00a0
\n14) He lived in a suburban suburb in north-of-london, but would always claim to live in London.\u00a0 Whatever…\u00a0 Even if geographical boundaries might support his claim, he didn’t know where anything was and had\u00a0no concept of how the tube worked or where anything was beyond the\u00a02 changes he had to make to get to work (after making a lengthy journey by train from north-of-london.\u00a0 He always used to say that he didn’t\u00a0need to\u00a0know the tube map, all he needed to do was look at the display\u00a0map when he got to a\u00a0tube station.\u00a0\u00a0 Now, I can see that there’s a great deal of logic in this statement,\u00a0but it used to frustrate the hell out of me that he claimed to have lived “in London” for over 30 years, yet had no idea what tube lines Oxford Street was on.\u00a0 I mean really.\u00a0 Even japanese tourists majnage to figure that one out after 24 hours and they use a totally different alphabet.<\/p>\nSo the times that\u00a0I get all angry about the fact that he’s got someone else and that he’s probably much happier with her, just means that he’s with someone who acknowledges all the above and just doesn’t see them as an issue.\u00a0 And\u00a0I may require medical help because then I get angry<\/strong>that he’s got someone in spite of all these flaws that plainly make him utterly impossible to live with.\u00a0 Which, yet again, begs the questions as to why I’m even bothered that we’re not together when I can’t understand how someone else would want to\u00a0 go out with him in the first place.\u00a0 I am one mixed-up kid.\u00a0 And\u00a0I think The Universe has acknowledged that.\u00a0 People tend to get what they wish for, if it’s what’s right for them.\u00a0 The Universe has, in its time, sent me awesome places to live, at least one great job, incredible friends\u00a0and countless pairs of shoes.\u00a0 Some people have crappy jobs but\u00a0incredible husbands\/wives because they’re better at being a spouse to that person than they would ever be at any job they did.\u00a0 I’m pretty good at my job (she said, whilst typing this at work – it’s a slow day.\u00a0 plus TC’s on holiday, so I’ve freed up the half-hour a day I usually spend craning my neck to look at him) but right now I’m a toxic witch with a heart full of bile.\u00a0 So it’s probably for the best that I don’t have anyone in my orbit for now.\u00a0\u00a0 Plus, if we consider TC (ahhh, TC), he is a prime reason why it is not safe for me to be around men right now.\u00a0 Let’s compile evidence.\u00a0 I like and long for him because:<\/p>\n1) He is hot
\n2) He is clever
\n3) He probably has bags of cash
\n4) He’s tall<\/p>\n
I shouldn’t like him because:<\/p>\n
1) He seems largely humourless
\n2) He is rude and dismissive of me and others so lacks both charm AND manners
\n3) He is,\u00a0 fundamentally, a maths geek with a good\u00a0haircut
\n4) He’s such an effort – life has to be easier than torturing yourself over some uninterested geek (even if he does have cool glasses)?!<\/p>\n
So until I stop investing myself in the wrong kind of person for the wrong kind of reasons (for anyone reading this who’s as shallow as I am, houses in spain and cool glasses are the wrong kinds of reasons) then I think another\u00a0boyfriend is not for me.\u00a0 Life is great right now, and if I’m honest, I’ve been more miserable than not in my last 2 relationships, mainly due to my ability to pick the wrong\u00a0guys for the wrong reasons and (even more) to my ability to cling on tenaciously to a disaster even when it’s All Going Wrong, because I can’t cope with the idea that they won’t love and adore me enough to make it All Go Right.\u00a0 I mentioned the\u00a0part where\u00a0I’m a mixed-up kid, right?<\/p>\n
And the Winehouse fits in because she says it pretty well:
\nI don’t understand,
\nWhy do\u00a0I stress a man
\nWhen there’s so many better things at hand.
\nWe coulda never had it all.
\nWe had to hit a wall,
\nSo this is inevitable withdrawal.<\/p>\n
I shouldn’t play myself again,
\nI should just be my own best friend,
\nNot fuck myself in the head with stupid men.<\/p>\n
This is the only time in his life that Dave will be compared to Blake Fielder-Civil.\u00a0 Although they do both have shit hair.<\/p>\n
So there we have it.\u00a0 My hope is that now I’ve spewed this all out, I can stop thinking about it and get on with getting on.\u00a0 Although several thousand words later, I’m still angry, which is the least productive emotion ever <\/strong>and\u00a0I feel vastly embarrassed that I’ve bored the collective asses off my friends, endlessly bleating about my misery, when it’s mostly unfounded and virtually entirely self-inflicted.\u00a0 They invested hours of theirs lives into consoling me, when perhaps they should have just given me a hearty slap and reminded me of the fact that he regularly\u00a0wore polo shirts with the collar up.\u00a0 In my defence, it became pretty obvious post Break Up MkII that the overwhelming majority of my friends had figured out long before that Dave wasn’t exactly my ideal match.\u00a0 So next time, speak up kids!\u00a0 I acknowledge that I make crappy decisions, so I’m leaving it up to you to steer me clear of my future disasters.\u00a0 Unless\u00a0sad disasters’\u00a0parents have a house in Spain.\u00a0 Then I just won’t listen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"**Having written this, I now urge you to skip it.\u00a0 It’s long, it’s meandering and…<\/p>\n
Read the postMe, The Winehouse and Richard Gere<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,6],"tags":[10,14,13],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-voldemontfort","category-angst","tag-break-up","tag-dating","tag-relationships","excerpt","zoom","full-without-featured","even","excerpt-0"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.soanyway.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}