apologies revisited

I decided to seek the help of a therapist to cope with some of the more disturbing fallout of my encounter and breakup with MoMD – obsessional thoughts and excessive uncontrollable crying, both of which are way out of proportion to the reality of what took place.  It was obvious to me that some deep memories from my childhood had been triggered and were exerting an effect.  As regular readers will know I have little time for conventional psychotherapy so I was fortunate to be recommended a rather wonderful Tibetan Buddhist therapist who I’ve seen twice and already I’m feeling much better – more positive about the future than I have in years.  The sessions are pretty intense and demanding but I’m a so up for moving beyond my crap that I’ve really taken advantage of the opportunity.

Some time ago I wrote about apologies and one of the things which came up for me in the recent session was that I felt angry that the people in my life who had betrayed my emotional trust had never apologised to me.   Anyway I was surprised yesterday morning by my mother who came into the kitchen and said that she had been watching a programme about a scheme which took children off on holiday breaks because their parents were very busy (this is her reporting, I have no idea what the programme was actually about) and that she had had the thought that I could have benefited from something like that as a child because she felt that she and my father had not had time for me.  I sensed this was in a way an apology – at least an acknowledgement that my childhood hadn’t been entirely satisfactory.  The following (inaccurately remembered, but generally representative) conversation ensued in the kitchen while I was washing up and cleaning the surfaces:

Me:  actually what would have benefited me was actually to have felt that you and Dad wanted me around and wanted to spend time with me.

Her: oh I see

Me:  yes, because then I would have felt that I actually had a place in the family and wasn’t just an inconvenience to your lives.  You never really made me feel wanted and valued you know.

Her: oh I see, well you were very much wanted

Me:  maybe but that’s not how you treated me.  I had to fit in with what you were doing, what I wanted to do was never of any interest, in fact it was generally considered me being difficult or demanding or inconvenient.  And Dad never had any time for me at all so I never had any relationship with him.

Her:  oh yes that’s true, but I did things with you, I took you out and did things with you.

Me:  yes, I know and I appreciate that but you didn’t try to get to know me, you were always trying to turn me into something or someone I couldn’t be.  You wanted me to be this perfect little girl who just did what you wanted and didn’t seem to realise that I was a person in my own right.  I just felt criticised all the time.  I was never good enough.  I was desperately unhappy.

Her:  Oh that’s a shame but there was something else, you never made friends at primary school.

Me:  that’s because I didn’t know how to form relationships because I didn’t learn that at home like other people do – how was I supposed to know how to do that when I hadn’t any relationship with you and Dad?

Her:  Oh I see, I suppose not.

Me:  And another thing, one of the things that really really annoys me is that we’ve had some conversations about how you treated me as a child and you’ve acknowledged that it wasn’t ideal and you know that I understand the reasons for that, but I’m annoyed that you’ve never actually really said sorry for what you did to me because it’s  made my life really difficult – I mean why do you think I have such difficulties in relationships with men for example

Her:  but you know that I’m sorry about what happened

Me:  yes, but you’ve never truly apologised for it, really said sorry to me.

Her:  Well I am sorry, I’m really sorry, really.

Me:  Thank you, I accept your apology.

Her:  I really was doing my best

Me:  (smiling)  I know, but you have to admit your best was not great, was it?

Her:  No, it wasn’t but now we can start again.

And it does feel better.  I really needed to hear that from her.  It really has made a difference.

And it made me realise that demanding an apology is about demanding respect and acknowledgement of my worth.  It’s me expressing my self-respect to myself.  It’s part of the ‘because I’m worth it’ project.  And you know what, I actually want an apology from MoMD too because he too wronged me.  I may or may not ask for one – that’s not the point.  But he misled me from the outset – about whether he wanted children, about how clean his break from his ex was and most importantly about his alcoholism.  He drew me into an intense relationship when he actually wasn’t offering me an honest product as it were.  And while, yes, I could have been less naive and less trusting, at the same time I was actually being open and taking a risk based on what I knew at the time – the person he presented to me.  And only three weeks later when I questioned it, he knew he couldn’t sustain the lie and that I actually would require honesty and so he dumped me.  Apparently because he ‘didn’t want to hurt me’.  Well, you know what, if he hadn’t wanted to hurt me he could have thought twice before even starting.

[hands on hips]

So there.

last in the pecking order

Over at Baggage Reclaim, NML is doing a series on how your relationship with your father affects your love relationships and it’s made uncomfortable reading for me.

The abuse from my mother was pretty overt – certainly the physical violence was evident and the emotional abuse became clear as I reflected on my childhood as an adult.  I’ve reflected here many times about the effects of this on my present emotional and relationship difficulties and I think that I’ve done a lot of work on moving beyond it though I suspect this is an ongoing work.

I have in the past looked at my relationship with my father and on the whole I felt quite comfortable about it.  I always felt that he loved me unconditionally but was a busy man and that was just how it was.  I had looked at the fact that he never defended me against my mother and in fact unhelpfully told me she was ‘a saint’ when I complained about her hitting me.  I kind of understood that it was hard for him to take my side because he cared about my mother so much and of course I was a source of  distress to my mother so I had to be silenced and controlled as a child.

But I have always grown up thinking of him as the one I loved who, if only my mother wasn’t around with all her demands, would have given me proper love.  The few times I got to spend alone with him (and I can almost count those on my two hands) were wonderful – he was an amazingly warm and engaging man.  Everyone loved my father because he was a brilliant mind and also a very charismatic person.  He was only 5’3″ and yet he never seemed small because his personality projected way beyond his size.  He was a brilliant teacher and everywhere we went his ex-students would magically appear and want to shake his hand and thank him.  People came from all over the world to see him because he was one of the foremost scholars in his field.  I grew up in awe of him and in no doubt of how lucky I was to have him as a father.  I looked forward to the day when I could spend more time with him and be able enough mentally to impress him and gain his attention.  As I grew older, I realised that I was never going to be able to do that because I wasn’t interested in his field of study and I grew sad that I could never really gain his approval although I never really doubted he loved me.

And then he died when I was 28 and I nurtured this fantasy that if he hadn’t died I would have been able to create the relationship I wanted with him.  I fantasised that if my mother had died instead, I would have been able to create the relationship I wanted with him.  I didn’t cotton on to the logical consequence of this thought which is that I had no relationship with him.

I was grateful for a few crumbs from his table.  I loved him adoringly from afar, longing for him to finally turn round and see me.  I ‘knew’ he loved me really but wasn’t able to show me his love because he was so wonderful – with his students, friends, extended family and my mother.  I simply had to be patient because I was last in the pecking order.  And I have never really questioned this before.

I was last in the pecking order.  It was such a ‘given’ that he loved me, that I, and other people, never noticed that he never really spent any time with me, showed much interest in my life or seemed remotely concerned about my opinions or views other than as an academic point of debate.  I was last in the queue and thought that was perfectly natural and right. In fact I thought that I had this perfect love with my father that didn’t require him to demonstrate it – it was just there and didn’t need the coarse expression of daily life.  In fact the coarse expression of daily life spoilt our perfect love because when we did spend time together it was difficult and awkward and I constantly felt that I wasn’t clever or interesting enough to engage his attention, often said the wrong thing which meant he disapproved of me (he probably didn’t, but I so desperately wanted his approval and admiration that anything to the contrary was unbearable).

My parents really never should have had children – they were piss poor parents.  Interesting and charming people, both of them, but piss poor parents.  There really is no other way to regard them.  They did a terrible job.  I did a brilliant job of piecing together a life out of the crumbs they sent my way but actually I deserved a hell of a lot better than that.

So now when I look at my relationships it kind of makes sense doesn’t it?  My willingness to put up with crumbs, turning those into chocolate fudge cakes in my mind.  My reluctance to challenge or stand up for myself in love relationships, lest I lose those precious moments of connection.  My belief in an unspoken, undemonstrated unconditional love connection – I’ve been generating that for my father for years.  My hopefulness that one day I would meet someone who would focus their attention on me and defend me in the way my father did to my mother.  My lack of understanding of men in general – not knowing how to relate to them.

It’s really hard facing up to the fact that my father essentially neglected me and actually wasn’t a great father at all.  He never made any effort to get to know me or form a relationship with me.  I was simply there and he behaved as though he didn’t have to do anything for me to love him and adore him so that’s what I learned to do.  To love and adore him without expecting anything back.  To make sure I didn’t upset my mother because that upset my father.  To make sure I didn’t say anything that would break our fragile connection when I finally a couple of minutes of precious time with him.

My father is not a bad person but he was a useless father.  If I’d had a loving mother, she would have helped my father create a better relationship with me and she would have mediated between us to help me understand him.  But she was utterly focused on him and I was an inconvenience to their relationship.  She resented every minute she had to spend with me because it took her away from her primary job which was to look after him.  She was devoted to him – he was a brilliant academic who didn’t have a practical bone in his body.  He couldn’t manage money, a screwdriver or even drive safely.

I don’t feel particularly bitter about all of this in the way I do about the way my mother treated me – maybe I should, but I just feel tremendously sad because of the effect it’s had on my ability to love and be loved by a male partner.  NML has this brilliant illogical equation in her post:

MR UNAVAILABLE DAD + MY EXPECTATION OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE + MY EXPECTATION OF COMMITMENT + MY EXPECTATION OF A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP = MY IDEAL MAN = MR UNAVAILABLE = EXPECTING UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, COMMITMENT AND A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP FROM AN UNLIKELY SOURCE

Father Image + Unrealistic Expectations = Mr Unavailable, the man fundamentally incapable of meeting your needs.

This is why we often get involved with Mr Unavailables and want them to make us the exception – they are reflections of our father with selective ideas and characteristics that we’ve added on with our expectations that have absolutely no basis and are actually incompatible creating relationships that are set to fail which inadvertently creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that caters to our negative beliefs.

There it is – my love life laid bare in a short paragraph.  MoMD is a brilliant but self-centred and impractical academic who briefly behaved towards me with the intensity of emotion which my father expressed to my mother – no wonder I experienced such intense grief when it was taken away – I thought I’d finally found my parent’s magical relationship, MrP is a lovely, intelligent man but he held me at arm’s length and conducted the relationship on his terms and I knew that if I started making demands to get my needs met it would be over – as it finally was when I did.  My ex-husband, and the L.I. were versions of my mother.  The Prince was a version of my father – perfect because he was still primarily involved with his ex-wife which mirrored my childhood experience.

The devastating message I got from both my parents is that my needs from a relationship don’t matter.  What I want from a relationship doesn’t matter.  Consequently I have very little notion or understanding of what my needs and wants from a relationship actually are and even less confidence that I deserved to receive them, let alone have the right to ask for them.  No wonder I accept so little with pathetic gratitude.

Except that some part of me has always known I deserve better.

something’s gotta give

The last year has been completely crazy with regards to relationships and I’ve pretty much HAD ENOUGH!!!  I doubt it will stop me being hopeful that I could finally meet a normal, decent male who simply wants to hang out with me and get to know me and perhaps even develop some warm fuzzy feelings towards me – enough to want to take care of me a bit and make me happy like proper men are supposed to do.

Man of My Dreams (MoMD) certainly wasn’t him despite bouncing into my life blazing with neon signs proclaiming ‘I’m THE ONE’, look no further …  It was all a glossy sham hiding one of the more potentially damaging men I’ve ever encountered.  But oh my goodness how utterly seductive he was for a while and I still can’t get my heart to be completely convinced of that which my head it utterly sure – HE IS NOT THE ONE FOR YOU NOT NOW NOT EVER!  It’s still too painful to write about sensibly but this has to be the cruellest and most incomprehensible joke the Universe has ever played on me.

Having made the (CORRECT) decision not to continue even being friends with MoMD I then got contacted by someone off Guardian Soulmates and went out on a date.  He seemed fairly nice, though within the first hour or so having coffee he did mention that ‘you’re not classically beautiful, are you?’ which left ‘but you’ll do’ sort of hanging in the background unuttered.  Well, looks aren’t everything, I rationalised, and men say dumb things so I let it go.  Walking along to the restaurant – horror of horrors – MoMD walks across our path.  I hadn’t heard from or seen him for 2 weeks so this is a nasty coincidence.  But I’m determined not to let it ruin my date.  Which it didn’t – but when I got into my car at the end of the evening I found myself wracked with sobs of grief and realised that I probably wasn’t ready to date and felt rather guilty and wrote to the Guardian Soulmates Man (GSM) and explained and apologised.  No worries – he appreciated my honesty and went off to a conference for 3 weeks.

In the meantime I grieve, and grieve and am furious, and grieve and am more furious and grieve and wonder why the hell this whole episode has affected me so deeply.  My office companion (OC) is ever supportive but I’m still furious.  I feel I deserved better, I feel cheated, I feel tricked – I feel an affinity with the Ancient Greeks who believed in capricious gods – I can see how you could develop such a belief system.  My OC keeps telling me to give up trying to control everything.  I am furious and I grieve and am furious all over again.  I keep imagining that somehow it could still work out with MoMD despite knowing that would so so so dumb and destructive.  But I just can’t let it go.  Surely that feeling, the amazing connection meant SOMETHING?  Well clearly it didn’t mean TRUE LOVE.  But that’s what it felt like.

I’m just about keeping it together – it’s younger daughter’s birthday looming and we decide to go out to a restaurant.  I need to make contact with MoMD about a research project which I need his help with.  I bite the bullet and make contact.  I find out just beforehand from a mutual source that he has gone straight back to going out with the woman he was seeing (apparently for a short time) before meeting me and I am relieved and disgusted in equal measure.  What a snake!!!  But seeing him is just hideous and he lies to me a couple of times, but I have to do this work so I take the pain.  I am furious again.  I wish I’d never met him, that he’d not declared himself to me.  I feel like a naive fool.  I’m sure he never really stopped seeing the other woman and I think he’d been seeing her for a lot longer than he’d made out.  I am like a dumb trusting animal – what on earth possessed me?  And it was like a possession.  I never want to feel that way again.  I said exactly the same after splitting up with the LCB (Lying Cheating Bastard) who was the man who impelled me to start this blog and …how many years… on I’m still making the same damn mistakes, attracting emotionally unavailable men or simply jerks.

So I go out to the restaurant with my daughters, my friend and her son and we are sitting round our table and I look out of the window and I see the LCB who I haven’t seen for 6 years, walking around looking  for somewhere.  OMG!!! I duck down and tell my friend who also goes OMG.  It is unbelievable to see him again although I’m relieved that I feel nothing when I look at him.  But something about MoMD has always reminded me of the LCB and it seems strange that I see him on the same day when I saw MoMD about the research project.  Half an hour later MoMD walks past with the other woman!!!  I turn to my friend and we laugh and start to fantasize that through the evening there will be a procession of all my exes – the Love Interest (L.I.) and The Prince, Mr P and my ex-husband.  As we’re laughing I look up and MoMD and the other woman have walked into the open door by our table and I am a metre away from him looking at his face which is rapidly draining of colour.  They are told to go round to the main door and disappear.  Now I am nearly hysterical – the Universe is banging large sticks against my head – surely the message is clear – THEY ARE THE SAME MAN!!!

The next week I have a research meeting with MoMD and it’s a bit more normal.  I think I will just about cope but there is still a terrible draw when I drop my guard.  The magnetic attraction between us is unbelievably strong.  It is indescribable.  And must be resisted at all costs.

I receive a text from GSM saying ‘I’m back so give me a ring when you’re free’.  I look at it and wonder why I have to call him.  I text back to let him know I am very busy and then off to a festival (it’s true I have cousins from Jordan over and have to drive up to Oxford, salsa class, demands from my mother and work is crazy) and I’ll get back to him after that.  When I get back from Lounge I find a long email from him telling me off:  ‘I am very surprised that you didn’t call me ….’  You what????  On what planet do you treat someone you met once as though they are beholden to you?  Planet GSM I presume, where you imagine you are the centre of the universe.  The email even told me ‘I quite fancied you when I met you’.  ‘quite fancied’???  OC jokes and says I should have written back and said ‘Oh I’m so sorry, of course I want to see you and be your girlfriend so you can subject me to daily minor humiliations which lead me to feel grateful for the crumbs of affection you might throw my way.’ and so on.  I finally laugh out loud.

But truly I’ve had enough.  I don’t know what it is about me that continues to attract men who are either addicts, emotionally damaged/unavailable or who are simply jerks who don’t know how to treat a woman.  All my male friends without exception were outraged that a man could say something as crass as ‘you’re not a classic beauty’ to a woman on a first date and yet I just had a bit of a twinge of discomfort.  Where along the way did I lose my sense of my own value and worth to the extent that I cannot spot and respond to these really obvious slights and insults.  I haven’t even told you some of the outrageous things MoMD said – and I still felt desperately in love with him and unable to say anything real like ‘have you any idea how upsetting it is for me to hear you say that??’  I mean this is a lack of self-respect at work and yet I am otherwise a pretty sorted, feisty and boundaried person.  What on earth happens when romance enters the equation?  I crumble into an overawed teenager, or a a pathetically needy insecure wretch.

I’VE HAD ENOUGH!!!!  I have to sort this out once and for all because I cannot go on getting out my heart out and having it subjected to constant hammering with a meat tenderiser.  My self-esteem and self-respect cannot sustain much more of this side to my being.  I am doing something about it – actually I’m doing a whole variety of things but I’ll leave that to another entry.  Things are going to shift – somehow – but something’s got to give because I refuse to allow people to take away my power any more.

(wow writing that has made me feel a whole lot better too)

person vs relationship focus

I had what I believe is an important insight a couple of days ago. Working with the thoughts and emotions that my most recent romantic fiasco has brought made me realise is the extent to which a lot of what is going for me is projection. I had no reason to believe that MoMD’s feelings towards me weren’t/aren’t real but what I was focused on was the relationship and my desire for a relationship. Rather than relating with the person and who they are right now and where they are right now, I am relationship focused rather than person focused. This means that I am following my own agenda rather than what I am experiencing in the moment. I am trying to create the relationship rather than actually relating to the person.

One has to relate to the person rather than try to create a relationship which is a fantasy, a projection, not yet there. Rather than wondering what the relationship might be (as if that is already set) one has to simply get to know someone and see where it goes, what emerges. This is probably blindingly obvious to emotionally healthy people of course! However to me with my screwy childhood, I am constantly feeling that I have to do something to create the relationship because that’s what I was always doing with my mother in a desperate bid to have the mother-child relationship I craved.

Just to unpack that a bit … When I was a child I was, naturally, looking for that unconditional love from my mother but I never got it. Instead I was involved by her in a game of having to be/do something in order to experience something positive from her. I seriously do not remember a single instance of feeling loved by her. All I remember is a constant desire to feel loved and my attempts to do whatever it took to gain that love. I always thought that if only I could find ‘the thing’ that would make her love me, everything would be alright – it would all be mended and we would miraculously have the mother-child relationship that I knew we should. I can clearly remember this process of me getting up every day believing that today I could find that magic key to her approval, acceptance and love and then finding myself at the end of the day crying myself to sleep with a combination of frustration and despair. Gradually over time added to this was a gradual erosion of my self-esteem and finally developing a sense of self-hatred – if only I were different person, or could find the key, everything would have been fine but I wasn’t good enough, in fact I was monstrous and unlovable. I cried myself to sleep every night until I was 20 years old and it’s not hard to see how this develops into a habitual response.

What happens to me when I get into a romantic relationship is that initially I’m fine – I can relate well because I can relate well to people (strangers, friends, colleagues, students etc) but then I start to panic and wonder how I can ensure this carries on and I stop focusing on relating to the person and I start worrying about the relationship – I see it as my role to take responsibility for the relationship. Now there is quite a lot of literature which does suggest that for a relationship to be successful both parties have to do this. I am not suggesting one shouldn’t but ONE FIRST HAS TO BE ABLE TO FORM A RELATIONSHIP. In order to form a relationship one has to relate to a person successfully. So if, in the initial stage of getting to know someone, you stop relating to them directly (just getting to know them, see what emerges) then you can’t form a relationship in the first place. The irony being that this is really hard to notice because it seems very normal and familiar (root of this word is in ‘family’) to be obsessing about maintaining the relationship rather than relating directly to the person. Whenever I related directly to my mother I got hit pretty much so that was another disincentive to do that. So on top of trying to work out how to gain her love I also spent most of my time trying to work out how to avoid being hit. And she hit me daily so I was also developing a sense of helplessness and hopelessness about my power to stop being hit.

The upshot of all of that is that by the time I was in my 20s, my entire experience of how to relate to men was based on two very important principles – try to gain love and avoid being hit. What this meant was that my entire mode of operandus was constant strategising – trying to gain control. Quite quickly I moved out of being comfortable with the novelty of the excitement of possibility one experiences initially when one meets someone one is attracted to and into an internal world of trying to work out the best strategy to keep this person interested and in love with me. And the more this didn’t work … well, I did the classic thing … I did more of it – trying to perfect a useless strategy!!! As a solution focused therapist now I can see this is the thing that pretty much creates all the major problems in the world for people!

This tendency to perfect a useless strategy is why my relationships have actually got more and more painful and shorter and shorter. This time I pretty much had my dream come true. I met someone who fell in love with me and I with him. We are extremely compatible in pretty much every way – spiritual, intellectual, and physical – emotional is trickier and probably bound up with similar issues of self-esteem on his side, but there was definitely enough to build on. I had no reason to mistrust his interest and attraction – in fact quite the opposite – he was totally open about how he felt about me. He was reliable in his arrangements, he was honest and the relationship was actually progressing in the right direction. The point at which I panicked and created the little drama that led eventually to our separating was the point at which we had resolved to be more public about our affections. Yes, there were plenty of unresolved issues but essentially they were in the future and could have waited to be dealt with when our bond was stronger or wouldn’t have needed to be dealt with because things might naturally have faded away between us.

I’m very grateful to NML from Baggage Reclaim and her 30 Day Drama Reduction Series to help me understand my drama queen behaviour which is one of the many strategies I’ve employed (this is the one my mother used most of the time incidentally – my parents are the classic absent father, drama queen mother combination). Most of the drama queen stuff happens internally for me – I don’t create big ‘scenes’ etc. which is what my mother did.  What happens to me is that I reach an internal point where the frustration, despair etc is unbearable and I then ‘have to do something’ which is usually impulsive but actually apparently quite rational (this is hard to describe but I cannot express negative emotions in relationships because conflict always resulted in violence as a child so I tend to resort to being super-rational which of course must come across as bizarre and authoritative which can’t be very attractive to a man!!).  I had read all the 30 Day Drama Reduction posts already before meeting MoMD but only really got them this time round which is a real shame but I guess better late than never.  To be fair to myself, I actually think that I was correct about confronting him on the issue I did but it could have waited till a much more appropriate time and place.

So there we are – two massive lessons learned:

1  To form a relationship one has to relate to the person not the relationship (be person-focused rather than relationship-focused)

2 Avoid drama at all costs!  Sit with those uncomfortable feelings until I am clear about what I need to do.

heal over – kt tunstall

“Heal Over”

It isn’t very difficult to see why
You are the way you are
Doesn’t take a genius to realise
That sometimes life is hard
It’s gonna take time
But you’ll just have to wait
You’re gonna be fine
But in the meantime

Come over here lady
Let me wipe your tears away
Come a little nearer baby
Coz you’ll heal over
Heal over
Heal over someday

And I don’t wanna hear you tell yourself
That these feelings are in the past
You know it doesn’t mean they’re off the shelf
Because pain’s built to last
Everybody sails alone
But we can travel side by side
Even if you fail
You know that no one really minds
Come over here lady

Don’t hold on but don’t let go
I know it’s so hard
You’ve got to try to trust yourself
I know it’s so hard, so hard

Come over here lady
Let me wipe your tears away
Come a little nearer baby
Coz you’ll heal over, heal over, heal over someday

i surrender

Just when I thought I had it all figured out, the Universe comes along and reminds me that I don’t.

I really don’t.

The thing that really annoys me is that everyone around me knew what I should have done. They were telling me, they were really trying to get through to me. Too late… maybe. And the wisdom about men and relationships – much too late!? How come when it all went wrong did they all come out of the woodwork to share the great secret with me? Huh??? How come you didn’t tell me this before?

Sigh.

Anyway this weekend has been a turning point for me. I really got the message – no I really did. Mac, my guru, Roo, Elliott – they all told me the same things.

No problem is insurmountable if there is true love
The Universe (or the Cosmos) will make it happen if it’s meant to happen.

As Elliott said, the Cosmos is SCREAMING at you.
As Mac said, just get up each day and think ‘oooh I wonder what’s going to happen to me today?’

Be my witnesses

I surrender.

I’ve finally got it

At the end of last month the man of my dreams walked into my office and declared I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen and wanted to go out with me.  A month later it was all over.  Why?

Because he wasn’t in a place to give me what I wanted – a proper relationship.  He remains the man of my dreams in every way.

Weird, huh?  Not really, because I finally, finally got it.  Unless a man is offering a relationship by which I mean he wants to spend time getting to know you in order to have a committed relationship (it’s obviously not necessary for him to know that straight off, but that is what his ultimate goal has to be or he’s not available), then there is no point wasting any time going out with him.  If you go out with him before he is ready for a relationship or while he is not able to really give enough time to a relationship due to life circumstances, then at best you become a stopgap and at worst you become a comfortable shag.  The chances are that when he is in the right place for a relationship, he won’t choose you because you debased yourself, accepted second-best and once he is looking for a relationship he will want the best.

So I said no when I realised that what I wanted wasn’t on offer.  Wow it was hard, but I knew it was the right thing to do.  And now, with my self-confidence and self-respect intact, I know that one of three things will happen.  I’ll meet someone else, he’ll come back with a better offer once he’s sorted himself out or I’ll be happily single.

And you know why I am so clear about this stuff?

BECAUSE I’M WORTH IT!!!!!!

giggle (updated)

I know I haven’t written anything for a while.  This is for various reasons the main one being that I just felt totally bored with my constant moaning about men – it might not have come across like that here, but I really felt that last year was characterised by an increasing desperation about my inability to form an intimate connection with someone who wanted to be in a relationship with me.  I learned a lot along the way though and this year I am determined to live differently.

I kept this funny picture of the penguins on the blog – it never fails to make me laugh, but today I looked at it and thought that it pretty much sums up my experience of life.  I am the naive little penguin bobbing along thinking all is well, daydreaming and then gets swiped by life and ends up face down in the cold waters of humiliation or despair (or both!).

Something happened last week AGAIN which epitomised this process which I won’t give details about to protect the innocent.  All I can say is that those icy waters just get colder and colder each time I fall in and I become more and more determined to find a way to stop that happening.  There is a brilliant song by KT Tunstall which has the lines,

Well I don’t see no holes in the road but you find another place to fall

and I have to admit that I really do seem to have a talent for finding another place to fall.  Actually the whole song could pretty much be written for me.  I’ll post it at the end.

Now I hasten to add this isn’t a depresso post – I am fine, things are ok, I have lots of exciting news to share, particularly my recent 2 week trip to Australia!  I have a determination about life and am 100% committed to my wellbeing and to creating a more wholesome approach to life for myself.  But maybe this post is kind of a line I am drawing.

“Another Place To Fall”

Are you blind
Blind to me trying to be kind
Volunteering for your firing line
Waiting for one precious sign
The flicker of a smile
You should try it just once in a while
Maybe it’s not quite your style
It’s simply too easy to do
And you might not see it through

Are you proud
To have founded a brand new behaviour
With hatred and hurt as your saviour
But nobody’s choosing to follow
So you choke back the tears and you swallow
Men who have ruined your life
You consume them with minimum strife
But now you have got indigestion
The antacid comes as a question

Find yourself another place to fall
Find yourself up against another brick wall
See yourself as a fallen angel
Well I don’t see no holes in the road but you
Find another place to fall

Are you alive
Is there a young woman hiding inside
Does she know that we’re trying to help her
Is she totally frozen with fear
If you let her come out for a day
She might even like it and stay
But it’s gonna take you to invite her
Coz you seem so determined to spite her

Find yourself

There isn’t much more I can say
For I don’t understand the delay
You’re asking for friendly advice
And remaining in permanent crisis
Affection is yours if you ask
But first you must take off your mask
When you’re back’s turned I’ve decided I’ll throw it away just like I did

Find yourself

The Limits of Control – film review

This is a stunning film of extraordinary beauty.
Opening with a quote from Rimbaud:

As I descended into impassable rivers
I felt no longer guided by the ferryman

the film grasps the viewer’s attention and never relinquishes its grip.

A hit man is commissioned to carry out an assassination in southern Spain, and the film follows his journey across Iberia through a series of stylised meetings with a cast of enigmatic contacts in the most photogenic locations. Isaach De Bankolé delivers a mesmeric central performance as the assassin, coolly pursuing his mission armed only with a selection of sharp suits.

Not overburdened with distracting dialogue or action, the viewer is able properly to concentrate on cinematography, composition and soundtrack.

Perfection. Film of the year. Essential viewing.

control vs creativity

“I have nothing against control, it’s when control exceends creativity that I get worried.”

I heard that on the radio this morning, spoken by the CEO of Conran.  He was explaining why he thought that Financial Directors should never be CEOs.  He used a nice metaphor which was that FD was like the brake in a car and the CEO the accelerator.  You wouldn’t want two brakes (or two accelerators).

I have a friend who is an accountant (and was talking about accountancy to someone else yesterday) and I recalled that she was saying something similar about accountancy and why she enjoyed it so much.  She prides herself on her logic and realism but really loves people who are creative and quite clearly sees the accountancy role as not simply limiting but also supporting creativity.  For someone like me who hates constraints on my creativity I have learned to value the input from people like her and people at work who bring reality to my projects.  I used to think they were dampening my ideas but I’ve come to realise that actually they make them possible albeit sometimes in a reduced way.  But they happen rather than remain fabulous ideas in my own head or conversations with colleagues.

It also put in mind of the the wonderful film MrP and went to in December – Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control.  I await his review with excited anticipation

[hint]