The Real Thing?

I’ve heard before that the second you finally stop thinking about someone, they’ll pop back into your life, but when John appeared next to me in the pub the other week, I literally couldn’t have been expecting it less.

“Hey, what you doing here?’ I sing-songed - trying (and failing) to sound nonchalant.

“Well I live practically next door so you know…” Bollocks. There I was being all ‘what you doing on my turf?’ and actually I was on his.

“Oh of course! Well how are you? You good?”

“Yeah, pretty good. You?”

“Yeah, great. Well apart from my dramatic morning,” I began, launching into a nervously babbled version of the porch swing tragedy.

“Wow, heavy, well it’s nice to see you, I just have to go upstairs and catch my friend up but we’ll talk, yeah?”

“Yeah, cool. Okay.”

And that was that.

“Well that was awkward,” Liv quipped. “You okay?”

“Um, yeah, that was weird.”

“You upset?”

“No not at all,” I answered – and shockingly I meant it. Given that I’d not laid eyes on John since he kissed me goodbye on his doorstep after a particularly frantic quickie, you might think I’d be overcome with passion on coming face to face with him but as it happened, I felt absolutely nothing.

“Talk about an anti-climax,” I laughed, shrugging my shoulders, and following Liv outside to where the rest of our friends were waiting. “Time to find a new man to obsess over!”

Still, something was bothering me. I just couldn’t fathom how for the past few months, I’d somehow convinced myself that John was this massive missed opportunity. There was no spark there, no chemistry, barely even any conversation. And looking back, if I’m honest, I’d known from the beginning he wasn’t right for me – I’d just chosen to ignore the facts and go for the fairytale. The whole relationship had been dreamt up by my over-romantic imagination.

Realising this was liberating but also a little disturbing – mainly because I suddenly saw that this wasn’t the first time I’d done it. Truth be told, there had been many men I’d convinced myself I loved when in actual fact, there was nothing real between us at all.

First there had been Harry. I was 13, he was 17 and I thought he was magnificent. When he dumped me, I cried myself to sleep for months and, true to form, just as I finally started to feel normal again, he knocked on my door and begged me to take him back. It was the moment I’d been dreaming of but suddenly, I realised he wasn’t what I wanted at all. While I’d originally told everyone he was sensitive, deep, and intellectual – in reality, he was just dull. The real reason I’d gone out with him? To impress - a girl in 2nd year bagging a 5th year prefect was unheard of and, against all odds, I’d managed it. But did I actually want to be in a relationship with him? God, no!

After that, there was with Michael– for 2 years, I spent every moment I could with him, tortured my parents for forbidding me to see him during my exams, and shed many a tear at the thought of leaving him behind for university. In the end, I met someone else before I’d even started my degree and unceremoniously dumped him. Truth is Michael and I had nothing in common, spent most of the time we were together watching TV, and barely even fooled around but if I scrunched my eyes up, he looked a little like Noel Gallagher – and back then, that was reason enough for me.

After Michael, I had what I now recognise to be my only two real relationships. Both pretty serious, both long term, and both ending in broken hearts (in one case, his. In one, mine). You might think that after that, I’d have learned the difference between actual love and my imagination – but you’d be wrong.

Next, I spent two years imagining myself to be in a relationship with a boy who had a girlfriend that whole time. We’d sit up till 5am talking, drinking red wine and smoking before tumbling into bed together - then I wouldn’t hear from him for a week. I was convinced he’d wake up one day and realise I was his soulmate. In actual fact, I woke up one day and realised he was a narcissistic twat.

I moved on to Alex – possibly the most obvious mismatch of them all. An uber-trendy tattooed punk who rode a BMX, drank whisky, and played guitar in a metal band. We literally had nothing in common but the moment I slept with him, I decided I loved him. After a few more sleepovers, he disappeared into the ether – probably after noticing that my CD collection wasn’t quite as similar to his as I’d made out.

So what was it that had done it with John? He wasn’t older than me, he looked nothing like Noel Gallagher, and he definitely didn’t have the dark tortured artist thing going on. No, he was just nice to me. And it had been so long since someone had been that I’d decided that was enough.

Sad, huh? Well you’ll be pleased to hear now I’ve realised the error of my ways, I plan to settle for nothing less than the real thing. No more faking it…well not outside the bedroom anyway (come on, sometimes it’s just polite).

Older...and wiser?

It’s official people – I’m thirty and single. How the hell did that happen? A couple of months ago, it looked like I might actually meet the milestone with a man at my side (and wouldn’t that have been a novelty?). Even when things with John started to go wrong, there was always Rob…wasn’t there? Well, no actually, as it turned out, I was wrong about that too.

It seems five months of being my beck and call guy was about as much as Rob could take. And who can blame him? He might have pretended he was fine with the whole ‘friendship’ thing but what we had was never really a friendship. He thought if he hung around for long enough and made himself indispensable to me, I’d eventually fall in love with him. And part of me hoped he was right about that but the other part of me – the selfish part – just loved having someone around I could depend on.

Every day he was there on email making my working day oh-so-much less dull. At night he was either at the end of a phone, or he was there at my side - in the pub, in the cinema, in a club, in a taxi, on my couch. The days of him making romantic proclamations, trying to hold my hand, going in for a kiss – they were mercifully gone but our relationship probably couldn’t strictly be described as platonic. Was it platonic when I cuddled in beside him on the couch and slept there? Or when I rang him at 4am crying because some other guy had tried to kiss me? Or when he’s spend hours compiling playlists he knew I’d love and we’d both pretend he hadn’t made them specifically for me? Or when he’d scare off every other man that came near me with a proprietorial stare? Er…maybe not.

People talk about friends with benefits, but we were more like boyfriend and girlfriend without benefits. “I’m not going anywhere,” he’d assured me on numerous occasions. And I believed him. Of course, when he met someone else who would hold his hand and didn’t relegate him to the couch, that promise kind of went out the window. It was the daily texts that dwindled first, then the emails became fewer and far between, then I realised a month had passed since I’d seen him. I knew I was in no position to complain. He didn’t owe me anything. He’d done nothing wrong. Yet I felt completely abandoned. And when he sent me an email to say he might not make it to my birthday party, I finally lost it. “You officially suck. Drop me a line when you can fit me into your itinerary” was my very mature and not at all irrational response. Of course from there it descended into an email-nightmare-athon, which reached a crescendo when he called me a brat and said he wouldn’t bother coming at all then. I mean WTF?

Yes, admittedly he couldn’t make it because he was busy shooting a video with his band all weekend and yes, apparently his missus wasn’t even around, she was holidaying in India till the Sunday. But the night of my birthday would make it two months since I’d seen him. TWO MONTHS! Couldn’t he see why I was upset? He’d ditched one of his best friends the moment a girl had come along. That was just rude.

In the end though, after having a rant to my poor mother about the whole thing, I had to admit that I might not have been entirely reasonable. “Well it sounds like you were being a bit of a brat,” were her wise words. “You can’t expect his life to revolve around you when you don’t really want him and someone else does. I’m not surprised he reacted the way he did.” So I swallowed my (already battered) pride and sent another email telling him the cause of my brattish behaviour: “I’m sorry. I just miss you.”

Of course, he didn’t make it to the party, and much as I hate to admit, after having a fabulous night surrounded by the people who love me, I still went home, crawled into bed and called him. We spoke for ages and it was nice – but it was also the last time. That night, I finally realised I had to let him go. Truth be told, I never should have let him get so close in the first place. It wasn’t the healthiest relationship for either of us. Besides, I managed perfectly well on my own before he came along, and I can manage perfectly well on my own now – particularly now I’s all grown up!

And just to prove how strong and independent I am, I’m taking control. In the last few weeks, I’ve asked for a promotion, been commissioned to write a piece for an actual glossy magazine, and begun the process of getting a mortgage on my flat. Who needs a man to get ahead? I have a feeling 30’s going to be a good age for me.

Oh yes, and I have a date on Friday with a very handsome man.

So there.

Festive frustrations

After the drama of the last few months, I had idyllic fantasies of my Christmas with the folks in France. I had visions of myself coming over all zen, realising that there were more important things in life than pesky boys; that I was perfectly at ease with my own company; and frankly way too good for either of them. Of course, that’s not exactly what happened.

What did happen was a catalogue of disasters, beginning with getting so ill on the plane that I spent the first three days of my trip in bed. This unanticipated period of convalescence gave me way too much time to think, resulting in my mooning over the whole thing with John way more than the dalliance deserved and sinking into a heavy fug I just couldn’t seem to lift.

Thankfully come Christmas morning I made a miraculous recovery and was just preparing our annual Champagne breakfast when the mood was ruined by an unwelcome text. As soon as I saw his name on my phone (yes, HIM – as in John, as in the man who wimped out of our relationship weeks before, and whom I’d not heard a dicky bird from since), I lost it, hurling the phone and several expletives across the living room as my bemused parents looked on. “I’m sorry but he doesn’t get to do that! He doesn’t get to remove himself from my life then pop back into it on bloody Christmas day! And he certainly doesn’t get to call me by a nickname, and ask how ‘Damo’ and the family are – what’s he playing at?”

“Er, think I’ll go and set the table,” mumbled Dad, shuffling off while I looked demandingly at Mum, as if she’d have the answer. “Maybe he was just thinking about you, sweetheart…” she suggested. “Well he doesn’t get to,” I huffed, sulking off to the shower. “And he needn’t think I’m responding!” *Door slams*

Of course, I did respond. And by the time, dinner was done and Dad was forcing me to watch the Michael MacIntrye DVD, we’d exchanged several chatty texts and I was feeling pretty perky about the whole thing. Sadly, a family fallout over breakfast the next morning (my mum had overcooked the eggs – an error which somehow escalated into talk of divorce) put an end to my short-lived positivity and any hopes I’ve had of cosy family bonding. Instead, I passed the hours surfing the net – a seemingly harmless pastime, which inevitably ended in disaster.

Perusing my emails, I realised I’d overlooked the latest newsletter from Meddlers of Honour – the monthly dating night where J and I first met. Laura had tried desperately to get me to attend the December event but given the whole mess it had gotten me into last time, I’d refused. Still no reason not to check out if any potential hotties had attended, I thought, clicking on the link to the photogallery. And it was then that my heart literally plummeted into my stomach.

There was John - who, just to recap, didn’t want to be in relationship with “anyone” and was too busy “getting over a long-standing virus” to be physically able to maintain anything casual – caught on camera, with one hand grasping a bottle of beer and the other draped languidly around the waist of some blonde (yes, I know I’m blonde but that’s no reason not to use it in an accusatory tone towards other blondes – besides, mine’s real). I was livid.

The anger threatened to spill out of my eyeballs but I managed to transform the tears into rage. “Lying little fucker,” I yelled. Mum was at my side in a second: “What’s he done now?” I pointed at the screen, waiting for a similarly outraged reaction to mine, but it didn’t come.

Instead, she turned traitor on me. “But Carrie, that doesn’t mean he lied to you. It means he was never there looking for a relationship in the first place. And didn’t you tell me he texted you a couple of weeks ago to say he’d been forced into a kiss with a girl and that all it had done was make him miss you?”

“Er, yeah.” (Okay so we had been in touch that one time).

“Well there’s your girl.”

It was plausible, but I still couldn’t let it go…hence the irrational text: {So I just saw the pics from meddlers. Hope you had more luck this time round than you did the last time.}

I knew I was provoking an argument but wasn’t it about time? I’d been pretending I was okay about everything all along, but why should I? He hurt me and all I’d done was reassure him, and tell him it was okay to treat me that way. Well screw that, it wasn’t okay.

Of course, his explanation pretty much exactly mirrored my mum’s theory – with the additional fact that he’d been dragged there against his will, and a question: “Why can’t you understand that it’s because I like you so much that I wish circumstances could be different?”

“Because that’s bullshit’ seemed an unreasonable response so instead I typed the following: {All I understand is that things were great until you decided you’d rather be miserable and alone than have anything more. And the only ‘circumstances’ there are, are in your head.}

His answer: {I know this}.

And thus we finally reached stalemate. There was nothing left to say so I deleted his number and every text he’d ever sent me, and I did what I always do in times of need these days – I called Rob…

Me: I’m back in town tomorrow – fancy meeting up for a drink?

Rob: Er, yeah, but, well…I can’t tomorrow. I’ve sort of got plans. Actually I’ve met someone…

Me: *silence*

Rob: Carrie, you still there?

Shiiiiiiiiiiiit……………

Nothing serious?

A few days after our lost weekend, John headed off to New York on holiday, unwittingly leaving me to fall foul of temptation. It all started innocently enough; with a few of us girls going along to a party one of Rob’s friends was throwing in a nearby bar. But a few hours later, when I let him kiss me, I knew I was on a slippery slope. Realising I’d made a mistake, I wasted no time in telling him that all I could offer was friendship. But his reaction wasn’t at all what I expected. “You’ll come round,” he assured me. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

He was true to his word too. When John got back, we picked up right where we left off, but Rob was always there in the background, charming me with his banter via email, sending me playlists he thought I’d like, asking me again and again to give him a chance. Most of the time, it was easy to give him the brush off but then John started acting weird. He assured me it was simply because he wasn’t feeling well, that he’d felt wiped out ever since he got back from New York. And sure enough, when he went to the doctor, they informed him he had glandular fever.

But I knew there was more to his sudden distance than an illness, and over lunch one day, he dropped the bombshell. “What do you think about what’s going on between us’?’ he asked. It felt like a trick question. “I thought we were having fun,” I offered.

“Yeah, good, me too,” John agreed. “I just can’t get into anything serious right now.” I tried not to look like I’d just been punched in the stomach, and attempted to figure out in my mind where I’d got things so wrong.

It didn’t add up though. John had never exactly played things cool. From the very beginning, he’d made it very clear that he was keen. Keen enough to want to talk everyday. Keen enough to dub Fridays ‘our night’, to dub the pub where we’d had our first date ‘our pub’, to confess that he’d told all his friends, his work colleagues, even his parents all about me. And what’s more, he’d been on at me to meet his parents for weeks. And now this?

“I bumped into my ex last week and it just made me realize how much I still haven’t dealt with the whole thing.”

Of course, I should have known there was another girl involved. He’d told me about the ex before – she was his only serious girlfriend and they’d split up when he left her in India and flew to New York because ‘he needed space’. He’d told me he felt awful about it, that she’d never forgiven him, and that they’d never met to talk it over. But why now, a year later, was it an issue again? I had no idea, but I knew one thing, I wasn’t letting him have the upper hand here. He’d been honest with me so it was time for me to come clean too.

When I told him about Rob, he looked confused. “So are you like dating this guy?” No, it was nothing like that, I assured him. “Have you slept with him?” No. “Are you going to?” No. “I just wanted to be honest. He’s around, I like him and he’s made it clear he’s not going anywhere. He made me a mixtape for god’s sake!” I joked, attempting to lighten the mood. “Which was annoyingly good.”

Now it was John’s turn to look like he’d been punched in the stomach. “Lets go for a walk on the Heath,” he decided, regaining his composure, and putting his arm round me. “I’m glad we’ve talked about this.”

“So what shall we do on our night this Friday, my dear?” he asked a while later when he’d taken me up to the top of the heath to see his favourite view of London. “And how do you feel about pet names?” So we were back on.

Of course, it didn’t last. A few weeks later, after many more perfect dates, many soppy text messages, a romantic night in a hotel for John’s birthday, and even his suggestion that we go on holiday together, he went cold on me again. Bizarrely, he’d introduced me to his mother 24 hours before bombshell number two came… “I think we should have a break for a while. I need to focus on getting well, and I still feel like I’m not in the right headspace for all this.” So we were back to the ex-girlfriend.

That night was horrible – I hadn’t realized quite how much I’d let my guard down till I found myself in tears on the floor of my bedroom. I’d agreed to this ‘break’ but I knew we were never going to go back to the way things had been, and finally, my self-preservation gene kicked back in…“I can’t do this, John. I can’t pretend I’m okay with this, and I can’t wait around while you decide how you feel so I’m going to make it easy and walk away.”

And that was that.

And you know who was there to put me back together again? Rob, of course. He’s been an absolute gem, making me laugh, taking me out, and somehow charming every single person in my social circle so it feels like I’m being indoctrinated into some strange Rob-loving cult. I know he’s not doing any of this because he wants a friend but he’s stopped pushing me to give him more, and if going along with it means I have someone to take me to the cinema to see It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas eve and text me in the wee small hours to tell me I’m beautiful, then it’s pretty hard to walk away from.

I just wish I could give him what he wants for Christmas. And I wish I wanted the same thing.

It's true what they say about men and buses...

Spending a week consuming my body weight in cheese and wine at my parents’ new home in France was something I’d been looking forward to for months – but now John had arrived on the scene, I can’t pretend I wasn’t a little worried. Could the initial buzz of a successful first date last all that time when I was hundreds of miles away? I wasn’t convinced.

However, much to my surprise, it didn’t seem to be a case of out of sight, out of mind. Every day, without fail, there he was in my inbox saying all the right things. And by the time I touched back down on the asphalt at Stansted, I had just a few inconvenient hours in the office to get through before date number two: a couple of after-work G&T’s by the Thames.

Sadly our Indian summer wasn’t in evidence that day and when I started shivering, we thought it best to head back to The Lock in Camden – scene of the first date…and as it happened, scene of our first fight.

Well fight might be over-stating it – it was more of a debate resulting over John’s shocking confession that his all-time favourite band was Coldplay. I mean, come on, Coldplay? The least ‘rock’ rock band of our time. Here I was thinking I was dating a musical genius, and yet he seemed to have no discernable music taste at all.

Okay, yes, I may have been a little harsh – it was the gin talking – anyway, he seemed to take it well, simply silencing me with his lips every time I overstepped the mark. We reached a truce when we discovered one band for whom we both shared a liking. “See the difference between Coldplay and Elbow is that Elbow have throwdown,” I preached. “You know that raw passion that just grabs you? As opposed to sending you to sleep which seems to be Chris Martin’s forte.” (Yes, I’m annoyingly opinionated when I’m drunk). “So would you say I have throwdown?” John asked, as we left and he cornered me for another kiss. “It would appear so,” I laughed, managing to prise myself out of his arms just long enough to throw myself in a taxi as he looked on pleadingly.

“I think your boyfriend misses you, love,” laughed the driver. “He’s NOT my boyfriend!” I fired back, shocking even myself with the force of my response. But It was true…things with John were great – I felt totally at ease around him, he made me laugh, and there seemed to be a mutual struggle to keep things decent once our lips touched - but there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on that made me think he might not be boyfriend material.

However that little puzzle wasn’t to be solved this weekend. Much as we were both evidently keen to tear each other’s clothes off, V Festival beckoned for John and as he drove off for a few days of debauchery with his mates the next morning, I was headed to a friend’s birthday BBQ in London Fields. A day where I expected to get a little tipsy, acquire a touch of sunburn, and have a laugh with my mates – what I hadn’t bargained for was meeting someone new.

But somehow after 8 hours of solid drinking, I found myself spending most of the evening sat in the beer garden with a personable young chap called Rob. The gin had brought out my feisty side again and looking for another debate, I started probing his taste in music. Only Rob surprised me on that front – his was flawless, and we soon abandoned the debate in favour of a mutual love-in over our shared favourites. Still, when it came time to leave and Rob asked for my number, I was genuinely surprised. I hadn’t been looking at him that way at all, but could I? Maybe.

What to do? While one side of my brain was saying: ‘Don’t do it. What about John?’ the other was putting forward a convincing case for the other side: ‘You’ve been on two dates, he’s not your boyfriend, you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, what harm can giving him your number do?’ The second voice won out and as Liv and I drove off in a cab, I tried to ignore her staring at me incredulously. “Well you’re becoming quite the little femme fatale, aren’t you?”

“Hardly,” I scoffed, “besides, I’m not very good at it – I’m already wracked with guilt.” And on cue, my phone rang…

“Hello? John? Are you there? I can’t hear anything over the music…” then I realised he wasn’t actually listening, he was in the middle of a crowd at V festival holding his phone up so I could hear the song that was playing.

“It’s looking like a beautiful day….” Elbow sang out, as I groaned and dropped my head in my hands.

Things were about to get complicated.