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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?
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!
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
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
Sometimes I wished I could have started dating someone I already knew to save all the blind date, checklist, mind gaming shit and get to the good stuff. I have done this in the past and discovered that dating a close friend can be all of the following; interesting, sensible, terrifying, satisfying and fucking stupid. I think the whole ‘friend’ attraction thing can take you by complete surprise as a rule because you have known them for a while and have never thought of them ‘like that’ before. But then one day, for some reason (like several buckets of wine), your eyes meet and there it is. Lust and desperation. It has been a long time between roots. Suddenly you find them really attractive and you are really engrossed in them. You wonder why you hadn’t noticed before. “Where the fuck have I been?” Now you want to kiss them, sleep with them and maybe even be their girlfriend.
There are a lot of pros and cons around this. The good thing is, you already know them and know you like them. You know their good and bad points (and they know yours) and very little surprises you because they cannot act with you. You know pretty much what you are getting. So you figure it will all be so easy and it can be, but it can also be very tricky.
In my experience the friends who have unexpectedly found this new magnetism with their ‘old’ friend, sleep with each other first and then ask questions later. If you go the other way around and question first you know there is a good chance that it might not happen and you want it to happen because a) there is something there b) you want to get it out of your system and c) you are horny. You also find it interesting to bonk your friend and see what they are really like in the sack. Are they as good as they have led you to believe? Because they have bragged about it on occasion because they never thought they’d be doing it with you. And then the thought hits you while wondering if your friend is as good as he has made himself out to be. Jesus fuck, am I?
Afterwards the whole episode is often put down as a mistake because that wasn’t meant to happen. A line has been crossed because you are friends. Also people don’t know what to say afterwards. It’s not like you can just get up, say ‘thanks for that’ and leave and you might not have to see them again if you don’t want to. This is different. Friends, I think initially anyway, can then have issues about whether that friend is now regarded as their lover or still just their friend. It can become very confusing. Quite often, people seem to be lovers first and then the friendship comes and this seems all very acceptable. Sometimes it makes very good sense to make a friend your lover though, if it works, you can have both immediately. Also you’ve already met their parents and don’t have to go through that whole, ‘meeting the parents’ for the first time scenario.
The big danger is that there isn’t a heap to talk about after sleeping with them for the first time because unlike someone new they know all your stories. The other thing is. It changes things. What are the expectations now? If it was a ‘one off’ can you still pick up others in front of them like you used to? Do you stop telling them about new crushes you have on others? Do you start a relationship? Can you stay friends if it doesn’t work out? Are you gaining a lover and losing a friend? Or are you simply being a slut and have run out of everyone else to sleep with? These are the things that keep me up at night.
I think the friend-dating thing can come after a crush where you think suddenly you like them but really it’s just a little off balanced emotional stab at desperate dating. Oh my God, crushes can be bizarre. I think half the time we make them up just for something to do when we are single. Life gets boring sometimes and there comes a time where you say,
“Gee, I haven’t had a crush on anyone for a while.”
So you look around and find someone and think, ‘that person is kind of cute. I think I’ll have a crush on them.’ Other times I think they take you by complete surprise and there it is. The Crush.
Fuck buddy tales
Sometimes I think it’s better being single and I even considered missing both the wedding and the blind date. If you stay single there is no chance of breaking up and break ups are horrendous, unspeakable, unbearable, dire, terrible acts and occasionally an enormous relief. I would much rather be the dumper (duh, obviously) than the dumpee even though there is guilt. Luckily for me I have mostly been the dumper although karma sees to it sometimes that I get what I deserve so it all works out pretty fair in the end I guess. As it should.
Got to hate that broken hearted thing. I hate grieving for someone I like quite a bit and maybe even love and I hate feeling like the world sucks and I will never be happy. Ridiculous really that we tie up so much happiness in one person but at the time it is all we see. Like I have said before love is blind and sometimes it’s deaf. We think when we are dumped that ‘that’ person was ‘the one’. Of course there possibly really isn’t a ‘one’ but its all part of the self-pity scenario. You tell yourself you will never find another quite like that one and it’s all really tragic – at the time.
The clichés are the worst. I hate them at times like these. Your friends always sprout them off at you when crying on their shoulder because you have been discarded by your love and they have no idea what to fucking say to you.
“It wasn’t meant to be and he was an arsehole,” they say.
“There’s plenty more fish in the sea,” (yeah but they’re all carp).
“Time heals all wounds,” (but by that time gangrene has set in).
“There is a light at the end of the tunnel,” (and it’s a train coming right at you).
Oh my God. I don’t care about lights, tunnels and fish right now I just want the dumper back. But your mates are doing their best and you know you will possibly have your turn to do your best one day for them and get them back by regurgitating the same shit when they are dumped and you don’t know what the fuck to say. This thought more than any revolting cliché they come up with cheers me.
The worst part about it is getting over both the dumper and the fact that your self-esteem has taken a beating because you (of all people, you wouldn’t read about it) have been rejected. So you do that interrogating thing in your head endlessly, “What is wrong with me? What did I do? I should have been a better girlfriend.” You analyse everything you do wondering if it was this or that, that drove him away. And then you do something really stupid like forget you had no clothes on when you walk out of your apartment block (120 apartments) to the communal washing line to peg up undies, and you say to yourself, “Oh no fucking wonder. I’d dump me too”.
Time is the answer, which sucks because it goes so slowly when you are in pain. You just want to take an “I’m over you pill” and get on with your life and onto your next bonk or relationship, whatever takes your fancy as long as you have a date on national holidays and someone to go to the Royal show with.
Everything reminds you of that person. The smell left on the pillow next to yours that you don’t want to wash again, ever. The shirt that they bought you when they loved you. Every single song on the radio that came out while you were dating. Smells. Movies. Sirloin steak. The four hundred photos you have of both of you together that you have stashed under your pillow, on your bathroom mirror, on your desk at work, in your purse, and of course, car dashboard.
There is no need for physical reminders though because your every waking moment is ‘him’. Everywhere you go, there he is. Except maybe when you are drunk, although even then you feel him lurking somewhere around the fringes of your subconscious (bastard), it’s just that you are trying hard to ignore him. But when you wake up the next morning with your head screaming in pain and eyes ready to pop out of your head, the cocky cage in your mouth and bucket next to your bed (how did that get there anyway?), who is there to greet you? That’s right. It’s the dumper. And he is laughing his arse off at you and even worse, you remember something very vaguely that happened while drunk like a telephone call, tears and begging. And you scramble and look at your dialled numbers desperately (maybe I dreamed it) on your mobile. And there it is, a 40 minute call to his number. What could you have spoken about with no memory of it for 40 minutes?
“Oh God please don’t let there have been begging.”
It’s all too much.
But then one day you wake up and realise for the first time half way through a morning that you haven’t thought of that person yet today and you realise that you are no longer lying around in a miserable, dejected, gloomy, crestfallen heap with bad hair. You tread carefully in case it does a surprise sniper attack on you when you least expect it. And eventually even that doesn’t happen anymore.
Til you run into him at the pub with his new girl and you have just had the worst haircut of your life. Then it all falls apart again right there.
The revenge get back!
And then when you do start a relationship there are the games. I always go into relationships saying, “I do not and will not play games.”
This is absolute bullshit.
We all end up doing it. I really don’t know why. Because they do it? To keep the other person keen? To keep our pride? To win points? To get our own way? To stop boredom?
It can be hard work but it all seems so necessary. You notice that your current partner is a bit aloof lately, so instead of simply asking why, or being affectionate anyway you act aloof too. Why? Because history has taught us that it brings them round. People love a chase. They don’t want to think you’ve gone off of them. Of course if your partner is stubborn as shit this may take a while. It can be this back and forward, back and forward thing for ages where one is aloof and one is affectionate and then it swaps. I never liked the ‘See Saw’. I still don’t. People sometimes jump off of the other end while your feet are still off of the ground and you crash to earth with a painful thud that will make you wary of climbing back on in a hurry.
It is interesting watching it happen to others, as an outsider. When we fall ‘in love’ we pack up our bags and move to ‘Stupid land’ and although we are aware, sometimes only vaguely, that we are playing games we do it still at the cost of all our pride and all our common sense, even at the risk of possibly losing the one we want/love/sleep with. I’ve been watching a friend of mine with his new girlfriend. Initially she was doing all the chasing so he was pretty cool for a while. You know the type; if you had to draw it he’d be the one leaning against a bar with a beer in his hand, a cocky confident glow about him, barely noticing the new girl. She’s the one on her knees with both her arms wrapped around his calves peering up at him lovingly.
Then time moves on and she starts thinking that perhaps she’s doing a bit too much of the chasing. She knows he’s fairly hooked so she feels secure enough to back off a little. She doesn’t want to be taken for granted and besides her knees are getting sore.
So then he says in his head, ‘Hey what’s going on? This can’t be right. Maybe I’ve been a bit too overconfident. Better do some sucking up.’
And he does. Then she thinks, ‘Cool, that worked.’
And so it begins. She’s starting to say stuff like,
“This guy at work asked me out, you know,” to her man.
Now she knows she should never really have said that but he (being male and therefore never ever 100% secure no matter what happens) starts getting anxious and pays her a lot more attention, falls in love with her and wants to be with her every minute. She is satisfied because she has him where she wants him and can still be independent to some degree because she knows he will hang onto her for pride and love whatever she does (except cheating, that’s far too much pride damage for a bloke).
So the visual changes, she is now sitting up at the bar surrounded by men grinning at her, he is hanging around her calves and she is really liking this. It’s all about power. He’ll keep this up for a while because he wants to get back to the way they were when she adored him completely. The thing is, she does but its part of the game to hide it a bit while he is this keen.
Eventually he’ll have enough of that though and get the shits. When this happens he’ll declare he’s going out with the boys and she’ll wonder if she’s gone too far and then they’ll go ‘round again.
Until marriage and then nothing because you’ve signed papers and divorce is expensive. You’ve won most of the games already and are far too exhausted ever to go there again, which is why people possibly stay married for as long as they do.
People want to be adored and wanted but it makes us vulnerable which is why we do the game thing. We don’t want to give too much away.
When both partners are really, really secure the games stop because you know you love and want each other as much as each other. This is called the wedding day. Alternatively the bloke may have just been thinking about football all the way through and that is all he’s been thinking about.
Games We Play
I did wonder if I went along to the wedding of my new friend that I may meet someone and avoid the blind date I had coming up. I thought it would be great if I met Mr Right there at the wedding and could cancel Mr most probably very ugly loser man on my blind date.
Ugh, blind dates can be fucking awful. They are almost like a torture event. I don’t know why we go on them. Basically I think, you do it for who ever is setting you up because they are concerned about your happiness which is a nice thing really, until you see the person and say one of three things to yourself (or out loud if you are a respectable distance from the person you haven’t yet met but have laid eyes on);
‘Jesus that’s ugly, what the hell does Lucy think of me?’
‘Jesus, that’s cute, Luce must think I’m pretty special.’
‘Has potential, maybe. Not hideous but no stunner.’
I usually got a run down from my English friend Lucy about the prospective partner prior to the blind date. Although I knew it was all going to be positive from her because she wanted me to go on the date. That’s when I got my trusty checklist out of my pocket, uncrumpled it and grilled her over each point. I had already ticked ‘friend must like.’
“But how funny is he?” I ask.
“Really funny,” she inevitably says in her pommy accent, busying herself with other things in her house while I follow her everywhere to complete my investigation and scrutiny. This is a distraction for her because she can look occupied when I reach the checklist item she knows will not match with my standard.
“Ricky Gervais funny or Nigel funny?” I don’t think her boyfriend Nigel is funny at all but she does.
“Almost Ricky funny.”
“Almost?”
“Well if he was Ricky Gervais funny he’d be on fucking stage and famous wouldn’t he? He’d be taken wouldn’t he?”
Good point.
“Is he good looking and has a good personality?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm unusual.”
No comment from Lucy.
“Is he cultured?”
“Cultured? Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because although he hates opera he has been to an art gallery and he eats oysters. In my books, that’s cultured. It’s polished enough.”
“Right. What are his clothes like then?” I just know I’m pushing it now.
“He dresses well. And as far as I’m concerned if they can dress themselves at all you’re on a winner.”
Yeah right. Agreed.
“Can he…”
“Look he doesn’t pee in sinks what more do you want?”
I guess that’s a plus.
“Okay I’ll meet him then.”
“Oh,” she responds exasperated by me, raising her eyebrows, “Oh good choice.”
I ignore the sarcasm and attempt one more query. “Got any photos of him then?”
I didn’t get an answer but knew it meant no and that question time was over. Well it will be a surprise.
I just think it’s always a good thing to be prepared when going on a blind date so you don’t look like a painting by Edvard Munch when you tap him on the shoulder and ask if he is Bruce and he turns around and is something out of a Wes Craven movie. You know that your friend would never really set you up with someone like this (unless you screwed her man back when you were 19 and a half and she just found out about it) but a friend’s opinions of ‘good looking’ can really vary from your own.
I think blind dates are definitely better done as a double date thing because if it really turns out badly you have other people to talk to or at least drive you home when you get drunk in disappointment. When the person you meet turns out to be very good looking and seems almost perfect in all else you spend lots of time wondering why they are single and look for the trick. In the end you don’t care and remember that you too are single and there is absolutely nothing wrong with you.
Blind Dating for Beginners!
Blind Date Advice
It’s weird getting to the age where a partner becomes more important than the partner you had when you were 15. It’s even stranger getting to the point where they are almost (but not quite) as important as your best friends.
For years your main entertainment, distractions, amusements, communication, hobbies, sports, and whole life in general have been around your best friends and naturally, what they think. You grow up with these friends liking all the same stuff as each other. You like the same songs, ‘Smile’ jeans (80’s style of teen jeans in South Australia), the same make up, the same shops, the same sunglasses, and buckle bags (teen hand bags in South Australia). Your friend’s opinions are huge because they know you well and you believe in them and hope that they believe in you enough to steer you right. Your choice in kissing partner can be almost the first and only time that you notice that you may differ from your friends in likes and dislikes and thank God really.
This is where the perfect partner checklist comes in. Everybody has had one let’s face it. Although we have all seen the results of those that didn’t have one haven’t we? Huh? Hmm nasty. Just a few basic aspects is all it takes. It can go something like this, must be:
- Attractive but not too beautiful,
- cultured (but not more than me),
- good in bed with a reasonable sex drive,
- secure (in self not necessarily financially, I’m not shallow),
- have a good sense of humour (must be funny, must amuse me),
- a potentially good parent and finally,
It’s true. You can meet someone who fits all the selection criteria, have several dates, sex and good kissing and then a grave thought hits you. What if the friends don’t like this person? Because you start that falling in love stuff where your whole focus is on them and how perfect they are yet you know that there is that little but very important cliché out there, “Love is blind.” We know this cliché is true and valid because we have seen it happen to our own friends and more importantly to Julia Roberts when she married that man with big hair, Lyle bloody Lovett. What the hell was she thinking? He has to have a big dick! There is no other explanation.
Now the rules around friend acceptance and like of the new love commences with the best friend. If she likes and approves it is almost enough, afterwards you can move on to the other best friends and then other more casual friends and the rest, well who cares about the rest.
So you set up a best friend meets new love, summit. Drinks rather than dinner or coffee is always the better way to go because if it becomes evident immediately that they are not going to get on, or that she hates the new love, you can all get drunk and make out it doesn’t matter. If on the other hand it is a screaming success you can all get drunk in celebration. The bizarre thing you do when at this soirée is notice for the first time the faults.
‘Oh God he is slurping beer, loudly.’
‘He said something wanky, did he really say that? Make out he didn’t.’
‘Hate that shirt he’s wearing tonight. Geez, who dresses him anyway?’
‘Oh God, is that a booger, wipe it.’
And he is staring at you like you’re crackers because he has noticed all evening that you have been incessantly gawking at him closely and assessing him the whole time and occasionally kicking him under the table. Your best friend is also a bit perplexed but understands because she is your best friend. She also knows that no matter what she says to you about him when he goes for the first slash of the evening, (which you hope happens early so you can get her opinion and relax or plan the dump) is that you will know if she’s lying. If she says he’s great and she doesn’t really think so, you’ll know and she knows you’ll know so the pressure is on for all. The new love knows he is on trial and that the best friend is both judge and jury, and you are stressed because this is your dating future with this person. It shouldn’t be this way but it is. I don’t care how much you like/love this person, once your best friend tells you he’s crap. You think so too. It changes everything.
That is why, as you get older and listen to your friends heart over a particular person they’re seeing and know and understand that he is different from the others, that she is more serious about this one, that you learn to like and accept her new love for her or lie really, really well if you dislike him.
You look for all the good points and ignore the bad because there has to be something good there if your best friend thinks so. Unless (there is always an ‘unless’ in every scenario), you think he is really bad for her (beats women, has a mullet haircut, loves Lionel Richie), then you never stop telling her because at the end of the day you really care about her and want the best for her and because you are acquainted with the cliché, ‘love is blind.’ You have to be her eyes sometimes.
The Single Girls Guide
A bride’s behaviour on the day of the weddings I have been in has been very varied. They seriously change. They become neurotic; hung up on shades of nail polish, “what do you think of my Santorini sunset?” precious, fixated on panty hose and look a little disturbed throughout the morning of the wedding day.
Usually I am bowled over at the performance of the bride on the day. They suddenly turn into people I don’t know very well. They are like Charlotte from Sex and the City. Sometimes I think I just don’t get it. I know it is all very important and that all the carefully planned pieces need to come together on the day like a carefully crafted jigsaw, but really who gives a fuck if there is one flower out of a whole bouquet that is orange instead of yellow. How is that going to matter? Who will even notice? Will this impair the future happiness of the marriage? Something like this actually happened prior to a wedding ceremony that again I was bridesmaid in. I had no idea what was going on (not unusual), just that there were tears.
Let me set the scene.
Bride naturally, four bridesmaids, faces made up, dressed, hair bouffon pomped, glasses of French champagne in our hands (thank bloody God), wedding ready to go. Flowers arrived; we all did the obligatory, “wow aren’t they gorgeous,” and each took our posies. Right then there was a shriek of horror I had never heard before, even spilled my Champers. The frocked up bride in waiting was quivering over a box of flowers with mascara tears commencing their flow.
“Make-up,” someone called, could have been me I don’t know. It’s something I’d do. Something was apparently wrong with the bride’s floral arrangement.
“Jesus, is that all,” I mumbled reaching for the champagne bottle and re-filling my glass very carefully. It would have been suicide at that point to spill any on my dress.
“Top up?” I asked the others.
The thing is, and this is where I’m confused, the other three bridesmaids were all peering over the flower box too, shaking their heads and patting the weepy bride on her back in commiseration. They got it. They understood. Then I remembered two of these were married women too and another planning to take that amble down the aisle themselves very shortly. Imagine if something really serious happened? I still do not know to this day, what the hell was amiss with those flowers. I felt at that point it was best to fag up and go outside with the dog and my glass of bubbles.
After months of wedding talk, most of which I have tuned off from because hours upon hours of wedding talk drives me a bit fucking nuts and really I am more interested in the honeymoon destination than anything else, means that on the day I am just as surprised as anyone else at how everything has turned out.
“We’re going in a what?” I asked once loudly, dressed in my apricot bridesmaid dress.
“A horse and buggy to the church,” the bride said exasperatedly to me.
“Well why didn’t you say so?”
“I did. A million times.”
“Oh. Whoops a fucking daisy.”
While looking like cloned princesses on the day (the bridesmaids that is, the bride is clearly the Queen), it’s a bloody effort getting to that place. There’s the four am rise no matter what time you got to bed the night before or what time the wedding is that day, and lots of sitting around with weird shit in your hair. For some reason being engaged makes someone an expert on other people’s best hairstyles and optimum fingernail length. The bride tells you months before the wedding day how long your hair length will be and exactly what will happen to it.
“I want all you girls to have your hair up so you’ll all need to grow it out.”
“Oh right, well I was just thinking about going short actually.”
“Naa uttt. Not til after my wedding, Noooooo way.”
“Right of course, what was I thinking? Your day and all.” And it always seems to be the girls wedding. Never ‘our wedding.’ For months it has been, ‘at my wedding this, at my wedding that’.
“What does that other person think?” I ask.
“Who?”
“You know that guy who will be standing next to you at the end of the aisle? The one you’ll be spending the rest of your natural life with? What does he think?”
“I don’t know. I never asked or “He’s glad I’m doing it all.” Yeah, sure he is. But there’s that dawning on them right then and there look like, Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s actually the purpose of all this fan fare. I’m going to be with another person forever. Wow -
Oh my God.
Truth be known he probably really doesn’t care. He just wants to get through the whole thing so he can drink beers at the end of it with his mates and cuss about his life with his ball and chain (that he secretly loves).
A close friend of mine’s constant worry on her wedding day was that people would be looking at her. While many brides seem to indulge in that idea, this friend of mine was very anxious about it. In the end I don’t know why she worried, she was gorgeous and it was all very natural but I kinda see what she means. It’s a big focus.
The bride apparently should look her best ever. People are looking at everything, taking detailed notes of it all like journalists at some trial, especially the dress. The bride should look happy and radiant. Well at least happy, radiant can wait til pregnancy. It’s too much pressure otherwise and too much rouge.
Another wedding I was in was very cool because the bride was cool and unruffled about anything. She was relaxed and laid back. She told me up front I would not have to wear an upside down bowl of spaghetti on my head (traditional wedding hair) which I was incredibly pleased about because I don’t see the point in sitting for hours with heated rollers in my hair when I have naturally curly hair. I don’t feel the need to conform just because every other bridesmaid on the day has them. The point is I don’t need them. At the end of the day, to have hair that gives the impression of having an upside down bowl of spaghetti on your head is just not natural, at all.
She amused me greatly because she was so chilled out and frequently mumbled during photographs and between stubbies of VB, “Oh God, where’s my hat gone now?”
She meant her veil. I just loved that day.
Probably the most trying wedding, even though I think the world of the bride, was when we, as bridesmaids were told every few minutes to ‘fluff’ the brides dress. I didn’t even know what that meant and just followed what the maid of honour (her best friend) did a couple of times, making sure I kept the cig that was hanging from my mouth well away from the flammable tulle. It was bad enough when the horse stepped on her dress before the reception. I got sick of that fluffing early in and simply made myself scarce, along with my best friend who was also in the wedding, as soon as fluffing time neared.
“Quick,” I’d say, “It’s nearly time to fluff, let’s nick off.”
“Absolutely,” she’d say, “I’ll get the supplies,” and grabbed the alcohol and cigarettes. Besides if you need fluffing at anytime and your best friend is there, it’s her job and after the ceremony it is clearly the husbands. It is a tough job being bridesmaid. It is air traffic controller pressure.
Most people though look very happy on the day of their wedding and for the days, months and even years that follow and this is lovely. It gives me hope. I’m a great believer in love and finding ‘the one’ and spending your life with someone that ‘rocks your world.’ It’s what life is about. When people are in love they care about everyone else. They are nice to be with and want others to be in love too, which is where the classic blind date set ups come in. Ugh!
Happily marrieds set up house, plan children, do domestic stuff together hand in hand like gardening, wandering around home shows at pavilions and eat picnics in parks. They don’t even care if a bird shits on their head while eating a picnic in a park because they are so in love.
And then years down the track or sometimes it is just a few years, you sit in the same happy couple’s house while they are angrily heaving furniture at each other and you protectively hold your rum and coke to your chest and glance to the mantle piece where the mandatory wedding portrait sits and you say to yourself (rather than to them because you don’t want to break up their fight, it’s the most entertaining thing a single girl has seen in a while) “Ahh, aint marriage grand.”
Anyway, after careful consideration of all of this I knew I just couldn’t say yes about being bridesmaid again to my new friend. I would rather eat razor blades on Jatz. The one only incentive I came up with for being bridesmaid at all was perhaps I might meet somebody nice, being single and all back then. I even considered getting out my wrinkled partner checklist to remind me that I was single and I looking. Life is tricky shit.
I was supposed to be a bridesmaid in a wedding once where the event could have been compared with Lady Diana and Prince Charles’ wedding. The wedding cake alone took over four hours to choose, I mean come on it’s a cake for God’s sake, no-one ever really remembers the cake. They are too drunk by then. Most people don’t even want to eat it by the time it comes out. Usually the dear old aunts wander around with trays and pieces of cake at the end of the evening and ask,
“Piece of cake dear?”
“Gee no, thanks ever so much but I’ll take some bubbles.”
“Perhaps a piece to put under your pillow tonight?”
Jesus, what is going on there? Don’t they understand that it’s messy to put your head on top of a piece of cake for eight hours?
“Does my bum look big in this?” I ask them. That usually sends them on their way while I sit smugly cakeless and down my bubbles.
I can honestly say that in all the weddings I have been to and in, I cannot describe one wedding cake. All I know is that they’re white with plastic people on top. What more is there to know?
This same wedding was so full on that we each had to buy a pair of white court shoes (Mmm… beautiful) and have them covered with peach satin and lace. Very handy for the future I must say. I imagine I’d wear them again to plenty of places. Besides peach is a fruit not a colour. It’s only marginally better than mauve.
After spending 400 meticulous hours over each minute wedding item including wedding pew decorations and five million individual flowers and being set for launch, she cancelled. Yes, thanks very fucking much for that. How unbelievably rude!
A close friend of mine, Cianna cancelled her wedding too but it was a good idea I think. I remember going to her impromptu engagement party still shocked at the quick engagement and things just didn’t feel right. I asked her that night if she loved the guy, I barely knew him at all. She avoided the question a couple of times by telling me they were great mates and I only really got an answer to that question a few months down the track when she pulled out of it all. You can see how that can happen sometimes. She had been in big relationships before that, which had been intense, full of love and passion that had eventually worn off for whatever reason, followed by a ‘met the guy while on holiday lover’ and then a relationship that had turned bad and almost possibly emotionally abusive, as is my understanding. She was (what she thought) doing the sensible thing, assuming that those sorts of intense relationships of the past were possibly historical and never to be repeated. This particular bloke she had agreed to marry had a good resume, good family background and who on paper would impress many, including her family. Except unlike the other men in her life there was no spark and if there was no spark at that point then she was going to be in real trouble. She is not one to ‘learn to love.’ It just wasn’t her.
I think it’s intriguing talking to friends who have made the choice to say ‘yes’ when he’s asked. They have this invisible checklist and they tell you why he is the ‘one’ to marry. They say, I thought he’d be a good husband, father, and breadwinner; I don’t want anyone else to have him; he’s sensitive; he’s religious; he’s nice to me; he’s good looking; he’s here. And I sit there listening and nodding and saying,” What else?” and they look at me blankly like what else could there be and I say, “And I can’t live without him; I’m so in love with him, blah blah, blah”
“Oh that,” they say. Then I know I’ve had enough of that conversation. Maybe I’m far too idealistic. Maybe that’s why I was single for so long.
Some of these seem to be the marriages I have watched slowly falling apart not that many years into the partnership. True they often mend themselves again over time for whatever reason; kids, finance, owning a house, habit, fear of being out there again, whatever, but I often wonder if these people had actually married really for the right reasons, whether the break down would have happened at all. Sometimes its youth, which has led to infidelity, sometimes it seems that they just didn’t love and respect each other enough in the first place. Once there has been cheating involved though and the other person finds out, it seems a colossal effort to pull the whole thing back together again. The trust has gone you see and once that has gone you might as well write off the next 5 years. It’s just so much better not to do it. Or at least not get caught at it!
I have had friends who have married after short and passionate relationships and noticed that these people appear to hold it together longer. It hasn’t just become routine and the marriage part isn’t because it was the thing to do at the time or because it was simply the next logical step in the relationship and expected. It was because they couldn’t live without each other and they adored and respected each other. These are the people that others say, “haven’t they got a good marriage,” about and mean it.
Til Death us do part! Why celebrities renew vows. I think it's because they can't believe they got this far.
![can.dor [kan-der]-There, I said it!](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLP21Nr_KnqxcRqUu9QUSQMYAVqUc08Q5APya2-HpUaE9HS0JTfEPL0aNXEmFdxP_wLaJ5YSWtLX7OFdgCBblD_oZGZRb4M8z1H4Aufzw7e0vg1lmZ3kMB3oznF92_pBMtujbM0TAocXw/s215/blog.jpg)
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