I am single. I have
been single for over a year, after a brief disastrous relationship
where we both were entirely unsuited to each other, despite getting
on very well and liking and respecting each other. It's knocked my
confidence a bit, well, a lot actually as it was one of the first
relationships where I felt I was actually really honest. I was going
through a very odd head space time when I really was quite unwell
which didn't help matters along with other factors I don't feel I can
share. Before that I hadn't been in a relationship for a year, before
that, despite small flings/altercations, not for a year and a half,
and before that for a year. In my 31 years, I have had four major
relationships which have totalled six years, so I have spent 25 years
single. In many ways I have always seen myself as someone who is
single but occasionally has a boyfriend. I do feel jealousy towards
those women that have found that person, and also my take on things
is of course influenced by my experience. Ask me in a year and if I
have a wonderful boyfriend I might think incredibly differently.
I remember distinctly
saying when I was about nine or ten that I didn't think I'd ever get
married. And I've come to realise consciously now its not that I
don't want to- I just don't know if I'll ever find the person to do
it with. I had one boyfriend who was incredibly sweet, loving and
caring, who said to me that he would propose to me if he thought I
would say yes. I broke up with him three weeks later- because I've
always wanted someone challenging, which, lovely and kind and sweet
and gentle and intelligent as he was, he wasn't 'difficult'. He is
now married with a baby to a woman he's far more suited to than me,
and I'm very very happy for him. If he and I had married, neither of
us would have been happy.
I've been very
resistant to stereotyping male and female behaviour. Dismissed out of
hand all the 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus' shit, partly I
think because I have always felt that I wanted to be treated equally
to men, and also because I do believe that a lot of male and female
characteristics constitute societal learned behaviour. However, I
think as I get older I do seem to recognise very definite male and
female characteristics, whether they are learned or instinctual. And
this is from the woman whose major relationships have been with
wildly different men: a vegetarian heavy drinking trainee architect I
travelled the world with; a sustainable communications professional
who played in a 15 piece folk band, both of whose parents were
priests; a successful marathon running high earning sponsorship
marketer who voted Conservative(????); and one of the most
prodigiously well read, effusive, verbose people I've ever met, a web
editor who had a degree in History of Art, played about 10 musical
instruments he'd taught himself, acted and had been a journalist.
Eclectic no?
I know a huge number of
beautiful, intelligent, successful female friends who are single or
who have/have had relationships that have damaged their self-esteem.
I was recently engaged in an email conversation with a friend who was
berating herself for having had a go at her boyfriend for some
difficult behaviour due to vagaries of timing, (which it's not my
place to disclose). I have known this man for nearly 10 years, and we
are good friends, but some of his behaviour I have found hard to
condone, and he knows this. We mutually respect not to talk about it-
especially since we ourselves have a past. I believe he is working
hard to be 'better'. But my female friend was berating HERSELF for
having a go at him for some of his behaviour which I agreed was
inconsiderate, (though with mitigating circumstances). She had
supported him through a difficult time and then needed support
herself at a difficult time- which had not been forthcoming. We
discussed how we let things build up and build up until it's like a
pressure cooker and we blow off steam dramatically, and then feel
shit about it. My observations have been that as women we naturally
offer a caring, nurturing side, which some men (NOT ALL I HASTEN TO
ADD), simply don't realise that we're offering. And then when that
support isn't reciprocal, it makes us angry. And many men genuinely
don't understand what they have done wrong. It's because we give too
much in the hope that we will get it in return.
In
situations like this, who is at fault here, if anyone? In my last
relationship I really massively gave too much, whilst being totally
erratic. And I didn't get it back, or at least not in the way that I
needed, though I think at that time I had no idea what it was that I
needed. If women become emotional it's so incredibly easy to
stereotype us as mental. (I am mental, but that's different). If we
become upset (I remember on a trip to New York with an ex standing on
a subway platform silently crying whilst he pretended not to notice),
we are being unreasonable, over-emotional, weak. As a woman, I would
do anything to avoid such a thing ever happening to the person I
loved/was in a relationship with. It seems odd to someone who would
do that, for that reassurance or comfort not to be returned. But is
it that some men just simply can't recognise those signs? And as
women should we expect them to? Should we hold back and stop offering
that tacit or overt support? That goes against many of ours' better
nature, and stops us being who we are, but it may be a good boundary
to learn to draw.
I think one of the most
satisfying relationships that I've ever had was with an Aussie guy
who became a good friend. He was over in the UK touring with his
band, and was only in London for around two months. It coincided with
a time when I was temping before starting a university course and so
I had free time and took him on tours of bits of the city I loved. He
was an artist and I took him to the National Portrait Gallery and
showed him the Arnolfini Portrait which his mother (also an artist),
had told him about when he was a child. We stayed up until 5am
drinking champagne, swapping ipods and choosing what the other person
listened to, watching black and white films. We read Ted Hughes and
John Donne to each other. All the cliches, but you know what, when
you do them they are fucking FUN. And the reason why I think that
this was the most satisfying relationships I ever had? Because I knew
it was going to end, and when. It was about enjoying each other as
much as possible, which we did, with zero expectations. As women
nowadays, independent, successful, with our own interests, thoughts,
methods of self-expression, the one place to so many of my friends we
feel we can't define what is going on is through our relationships.
We don't ask about the future- to be seen to do so is 'clingy'. We
don't want to know about their past per se, many times due to
insecurity about not living up to past girlfriends. We're living for
the now- even though sometimes we may not want to. We're too scared
that if we ask about where things are going, that will be the end of
the relationship, which if we're with that mind-fuckingly difficult
yet wonderful person that you adore, is the last thing that you want.
So we live in a strange limbo, not wanting to live up to the
over-emotional insecure stereotype and be modern, whilst ACTUALLY
feeling very insecure about our relationships. My last boyfriend
didn't even tell the majority of people that he was going out with me
for various reasons. I would walk into situations with his friends
and no-one would have a clue who I was and I didn't know if I could
tell them. I don't think he thought how that would make me feel until
I massively exploded (the day before Valentine's Day, which he'd
tried to cancel on me, aptly enough), which I then of course, hugely
regretted as I was living up to that over-emotional, insecure
stereotype. We've talked about it since, have both apologised, but it
still fucking hurts.
It seems to be a
recurrent theme amongst my female friends that it's the relationships
with the men that are more 'challenging' are the ones that we find
most exciting/soul destroying- a difficult dichotomy to reconcile. My
most recent relationship which knocked me for six lasted only five
months. Another nameless friend of mine went out with someone for
nine months after having come out of a significant long term
relationship and it was the nine month relationship that she found
the hardest to deal with which took her to counselling. I'm afraid to
say (and I don't think five years ago I would have said this), that I
think the sad truth is that we hope to be the one to 'change' that
difficult man. Not stop him being who he is, because that is what we
love about him, but to create that instinctive caring side that we,
as women, harbour. And at the end of the day, in reality you can't
change anyone. You just have to accept their good and bad sides. As
has been inculcated into me by therapists, psychiatric nurses,
friends, you can't change what happens- you can only change how you
deal with it. So the next relationship I have will, I hope, be very
different. At the moment, for various reasons, I am following
Hamlet's advice to get myself to a metaphorical nunnery. But a
cloister where I hope my single woman's observations may assist and
empathise with the beautiful members of my sex dealing with
the head-fuck of being a modern woman.
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