Seriously Single Part VIII: But Can He Type?

I think one of the shittiest things to see, is a friend with the wrong one. It can be blindingly obvious to you and the world (and very, very possibly to your friend as well) and there can be a pattern. Initially they tell you they have met this person and he is interesting. It appears they like your friend, always a bonus but your friend knows in their heart of hearts that really, frankly, truthfully, they want it to work so that they are no longer single.




A friend of mine has done this several times. Oh my God it terrifies me when I see it happening. I can write it like a predictive diary of what will happen because I know the prototype. It is that obvious.


She does that whole, “Met someone last night.”


“Oh cool. Nice is he?”


“Sure.”


And that’s it.


“What else?” I ask.


“Rich.”


“Nice. How old?”


“You know. Older.”


“Well that’s alright. Good personality? Funny? Nice looking?”


“Did I mention he is rich?”


“Oh sweet Jesus.”


And you almost hear her saying, except she’s not,


“Bugger it he’s my only choice at the moment and I will make it work until it kills me.”


But instead she says, “I think I could marry this one.”


“Right,” I say, “Because he is so perfect for you in how many ways and you’ve known him how long?”


“It’s not about looks.”


“I agree. It’s about something in common and stuff you like about him. It’s about not settling. Right?”


It might sound harsh and like I’m judging her or something but this is how it will go.


She’ll see him every now and then keeping that perfect distance and then she’ll drink so she can bear to kiss him and then she’ll tell her mates that she’s not real sure but then she’ll sleep with him while drunk and then really, there’s no going back from there and she’ll know this. But to her it’s important to make it all seem like it’s the perfectly logical thing to do. Which is fine if he’s the right one.


“I’ll learn to love him,” she’ll say.


“Perhaps.”


But you know the rest is yet to come. She’ll get swept away with the thought of the whole romance. Of marrying him and finally being free from that ‘singles’ title and being able to have babies in wedlock because her clock is ticking and her parents are religious.

So she’ll organise bed and breakfast stays with him, lunches with her friends, meeting the parents, planning the wedding (with honeymoon destination) and then he’ll declare his undying love for her. She will be wrapped and shit her pants both at the same time because down deep inside she just knows she will leave him battered and torn because at the end of the day, he is the wrong one. Again. And so it’s back to being seriously single.

Why did lil miss muffet run away?

Seriously Single Part VII: Sleeping Single

Most of us know what it is like to be out there looking for the perfect partner. At least at the start it’s the ‘perfect’ person we look for, later it’s just a person we are looking for and much later it can become looking for anyone at all, it doesn’t matter who as long as they are breathing and have a drivers licence. It’s okay when you want to be fancy-free living the singles life. But when it comes down to it that aspiration doesn’t last forever. Especially when the people we are surrounded by and hang with, are all cosily partnered up in some perfect world a ‘singleton’ doesn’t quite belong to.




Singles often go on about how incredible it is not to have the supposed ‘ball and chain.’ They brag about doing anything they want. They even have the whole bed to themselves and can lie horizontally in it rather than vertically if they want to. And really, they might really love it but others pine for a partner. Especially when they are ready. It’s a hard thing to be in a very happy relationship and watch and be with a friend who is looking. You can make all the suggestions under the sun and drag them around to meet your friends, even set them up on the old blind date God forbid, but you know in the end it’s all up to them.


I remember the looks on people’s faces on occasion when I have been single and they were blissfully paired up with their companion. It was that look of pity and commiseration like I was some loser from the planet, ‘Barren bitch’ or as though I’d lost all four limbs and been diagnosed with torso cancer. It seriously irked me.


They’d say gently (with that look), “How’s things? Found anyone yet?”


“No,” I’d retort back quickly, smiling and trying to sound peppy. And then there was that sigh from them.


“But I did get a massive promotion at work and won a million dollars on power ball.”


Sigh. “Wish I could help you.”


“Hmmm, never mind.”


If I’d had a gutful of them asking and snapped a vicious “NO,” back at them they’d do that sidewards glance thing at me like they were afraid I was on the edge. They’d raise their eyebrows and I could almost hear the words they thought but were too scared to say out loud,


“No wonder you’re single hon, with an attitude like that. Oh yes indeedy.”


Sometimes it all got a bit patronising and a little bit self-righteous.


I try not to give that same look to single people when I’m paired up and ask them whether they have any potential interests out there and have even practised that nonchalant bored face in front of a mirror when asking.

Close friends are different though. They want you to be happy but they don’t infer that that means ‘with someone’. They don’t patronise or look at me like I was missing out on the best adventure in the world. They even tell me stories about the shitty side of being in a relationship. Most of the time it was crap but you’ve gotta love their objective.

She is soo glad she is sleeping single!

Seriously Single Part VII: Go Get 'Em Tiger!

Sometimes I think we never get what we want most. We’re shown it but we may never get it. It can be frustrating, a lot of work and gruelling. But humans are strange creatures and rarely do we chuck it in, give it up, throw in the towel, and quit, not until the very end when we realise it’s all been a fruitless task and we are more fatigued than that blonde chick who thinks it’s a fabulous idea to swim the English channel.




I’m talking of course about trying to win someone who doesn’t want to be won. Even though you of course think that’s bullshit because you think anyone can possibly be won. Not true. Why the hell do we do it? I think we’re taught to do it by the ‘teev’ personally. Fight and struggle for people, that is. Go for gold, so to speak. We are told we can have whatever we want aren’t we? We simply just have to go after it that’s all. I’ve seen all the bank ads.


Television and movies can really be quite evil for idealists, even though they are fucking fully amusing to the bona fide cynics of the world. The cynics just sit there watching and saying out loud, accompanied by a huge guffaw, “Oh yeah, as if that would happen? A happy ending?”


While the rest of us dab at our eyes with a tissue and whisper, “Oh how lovely and sweet,” to the person sitting beside us or the cat, whatever, we don’t care it’s beautiful.


But I think that the actual difference between real life and movies (and thank God really because I’d be in real trouble if I couldn’t tell the difference) is that the whole process is so much slower in real life. There isn’t this ‘moment’ where the person you are trying to woo pulls up in their car (for example), steps out and looks up to see you standing there and suddenly realises and knows beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they love you too and oh so completely. There isn’t an intense meeting of the eyes and a running in slow motion instalment to the other person to fall into their arms for a hug and a pash that seals the moment forever. No there’s not.


It’s so much fucking slower than that. It can be so gradual and it may not even happen at all even though it’s been so close that you’ve felt it breathing down your neck once or twice (usually after the ‘wooee’ has consumed quite a bit of alcohol and think they have feelings for you or right before they… well you know if you are sleeping with them).


I mean look at that movie ‘Titanic’ (sorry to bring that up). Leonardo and Kate had one day together. One, and she loved him for the rest of her life? He probably would have loved her for the rest of his life too if he hadn’t been such an idiot and had simply worked out that if he’d only laid on top of her while she floated on that piece of board that it would have balanced and he would have lived too, I mean there’s thinking! No wonder chivalry is dead. It’s stupid. Polite but stupid.


At least ‘The Thorn Birds’ was closer to the truth, although extreme. It took about 60 years for Father Ralph to realise he should have chosen love and he died two minutes after it dawned on him. What a fucking waste and how unbelievably frustrating. Talk about an extreme case of Murphy’s fucking Law.


One can become quite obsessed with another person if they are striving to win them I think. I have often wondered whether part of the attraction with this person is merely the thrill of the chase. We want what we can’t have. It’s a challenge. What fun is there if they fall over with their legs in the air?


Well some fun initially I guess but after that?


We naturally tell ourselves that it isn’t just that at all when we are doing it but I have tired of relationships early in if my real reason for wanting them was not exactly for the right reasons. It was because someone (I have no idea who) has told me they are untouchable. Huh, I’ll show them.


The biggest lesson I have learned in life about other people and love is that just because you love someone, incredibly it does not mean they will love you back. It is not mandatory. There is no obligation or written rule saying, ‘Thou must love back.’ Unrequited love is a phrase because it’s true.


Occasionally though, it does work and you can win the one you love, eventually. Sometimes you need to go through a lot of shit before you get to that moment and I guess that is just the way it’s meant to be for what ever reason there is. By that stage you don’t give a damn because you have them. I think it’s more appreciated then though and not taken for granted which is usually the way when you’ve had to fight for something.

But if you’ve put it all into winning a person and it hasn’t worked, there has to be a point when you pick up the pieces and move on. You have tried it all. You’ve been patient and honest, understanding and fair and it hasn’t made a scrap of difference. It’s also usually after you have become conscious that you can hear something and it has been playing for a while. You realise it’s your heartstrings playing something as cheery as Pachabel Canon in D. Then and only then can you truly move on or you can kill them.




Unrequited love is when you love someone but they don't love you back. It's a common occurance in relationships and friendships. Nonetheless, that knowledge doesn't help the healing process. Below are a few quotes written by people "in the know" about love.



“A mighty pain to love it is,


And 'tis a pain that pain to miss;


But of all pains, the greatest pain


It is to love, but love in vain.”


Abraham Cowley

“Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.”


Washington Irving



“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.”


Charlie Brown




“An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.”


Harold Lokes






“The saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you.”


Anonymous






“You never lose by loving. You always lost by holding back.”


Anon


“My love is of a birth as rare


As ‘tis for object strange and high:


It was begotten by Despair


Upon Impossibility.”


Andrew Marvell




“Let no one who loves be called unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.”


James Matthew Barrie


“Self-love seems so often unrequited.”


Anthony Powell


“Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest:


Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers:


Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest,


And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers!”


William S. Gilbert

Seriously Single - Part VI: The Crush

The great thing about the crush is that it recurrently happens with people we see on a regular basis. Like work. It can make you want to get up in the morning though for a while at least. It can make you think twice about what to wear to work, how to have your haircut and whether to wear the cheaper everyday ‘work’ perfume or the ‘going out to dinner want to impress and lure somebody’ perfume. There’s more smiling and show off type behaviour all trying to impress the crushee. The other good thing is that because it is just a crush and not the bona fide beginnings of anything really, you can treat them as friends and ask them to drinks and movies without there seeming to be anything other than innocent intent behind it. And then you can resume flirting. I think some crushes originate because we find out someone else has a crush on us. You look differently at that person then and wonder. It’s flattering and great for self-esteem but we have to be extremely mindful of the line we cross.

The bad thing about the crush (and I watched a friend go through this) is when you are already committed to somebody you love and then there it is out of the blue. Whoops crush. How did that happen? It’s not a bad thing if you keep it to yourself but there can be that point you reach where you have to choose. New crushes often seem alluring because the feelings come about that you had at the very early and exciting days with your current partner, whom you love. But at the end of the day, you know that the crush probably won’t last and the feelings are fleeting. Then you go home to your love grateful and happy that they are the one you want to be with for good.


Crushes can be harmful if you are in a relationship and your partner senses something amiss. Hurt feelings can have a huge impact on any relationship because there are issues of trust and insecurities about losing what you both have. But they can be and should be fairly harmless I think and often don’t last long. It can be fun and flirtatious and often when they pass you say to yourself,

“What the fuck was I on?”               

Crush Quotes