Last week I was ‘invited’ to take a quiz on Facebook: ‘how happy are you?’. I was in one of those procrastinating kinda moods so I went with it. The questions were all like: ‘are you single?’, ‘are you in full time employment?’, ‘do you own a house?’. Easy to see how they classify happiness. I got a 50% happy result. This is balls. I’m actually incredibly happy at the moment, perhaps the happiest I’ve ever been! My dissertation’s on track, I’ve worked my last shift at that horrible, horrible job, I’m starting a PhD in just over a month, I’m moving back to my favourite place in the world in a few weeks ... You see where I’m going with this. I’m feeling very content with my life right now. And what annoys me is the fact that people assume singleness constitutes unhappiness. In my (albeit limited) experience it’s more often the other way round!
My ex best mate, who I mentioned in a previous post, was always utterly boy crazy: if she didn’t have a fella on the go then she wasn’t happy. She’d have been the right kind of person to take that quiz. She’s still like that now: our sporadic phone calls used to centre on which lad text her, which lad smiled at her, which lad breathed in her half of the hemisphere … I never really got this. She had a string, and I mean a string, of wanker boyfriends: one that hit her, one that cheated on her then dumped her by text, one that ignored her, one that continually put her down … Every time she met one of these guys she launched into this spiel of ‘I’ve never met anyone like him’, ‘I’ve never fallen for a bloke this fast’, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’. It got a bit predictable. Growing up with someone like this eventually put pressure on me to think more about blokes. I’ve never really been the type of girl that chases after men, maybe that’s why I’ve never had a serious relationship, hey ho. My first boyfriend was a lad called Danny: we went rabbiting together, went to the Auction Mart together, went riding together … It was a lot of fun. Then he dumped me after I put the phone down on him for cancelling our plans. He grovelled over text a few weeks later with the immortal line: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch, it was the middle of the sheep season and I was knackered’. My parents found this hilarious! But yeah. There were a few candidates after ‘ferret-boy’, as my cousin named him, but nothing serious. They always said or did something that I (rightly) took exception to and told them where to go. THEN there was Ryan. We worked together in a pub in Chester, he was pretty, South African, funny, good cook … Everything was funky dory until we went for a drink after the gorgeous meal he cooked. I did my usual trick of getting pissed and going on about Shakespeare, to which he said ‘Shakespeare … He wrote the Great Gatsby didn’t he?’. OH. DEAR. GOD. I sobered up in an instant and said ‘what?!’. ‘Yeah! Yeah! He definitely wrote the Great Gatsby!!’. Argh. That relationship was over shortly afterwards. I don’t think I’m a snob, but anyone who thinks that Shakespeare wrote the Great Gatsby is definitely NOT upto scratch.
Being Sarah’s best mate meant being there for all the family occasions to which the three eldest girls would bring out their newest man flesh and Anita (her mum) could get to know them. Anita loved this, and seemed to take real pride in the fact that all three of her eldest daughters had attachments. I started feeling a bit guilty, probably a few years ago now. I worried that my mum was missing out on something that other mums would get: a daughter bringing boyfriends home. I brought Danny up to our canal boat to meet them for ten minutes, but that was it. She told me I was being silly, but it still preyed on my mind for a while. Last year I had a couple of months where I felt like I really wanted a bloke. Any bloke. A lad who I knew had liked me for ages who I really wasn’t interested in rang and asked me out, and I said yes. It was when I described him to my parents that I realised what I was doing: ‘he’s not the best looking bloke ever, but he’s a nice guy’. I was settling. When this prick stood me up on this date that he’d been pestering me about for years, I came back to reality. For a short period of my life, I thought that it would be better to be with a nice, reliable, maybe not that attractive guy than to be single. I was very wrong. I refuse to settle. I’m not the best looking person ever, I don’t claim to be perfect, and I probably annoy people sometimes, but I think that I deserve better than a relationship for the sake of a relationship. Fair enough, I don’t have the kind of lifestyle where I go out on boozy nights every weekend and meet some random guys, but I don’t want that. I met a bloke a few months back who I really thought things would work out with, but he was in the same position as me in terms of workload and busy times. And thinking about it, I really wouldn’t have been able to commit to anything at that time anyway. But who knows. Maybe he’ll ‘come to his senses’ and spare me an hour :)
I think there’s a lot of pressure on people to be in relationships: I know a lot of older people who are with men/women they don’t want to be with, but they just don’t want to be alone. I can kinda see the logic in that, but I’d hate it. I really don’t think I’ve met anyone so far in my life that I could contemplate spending a whole year with, living with, buying a dog with. When I was going through my ‘I need a bloke’ phase, I kept thinking ‘I’m 22, single, and have never had a long-term relationship. Sarah’s had loads of serious boyfriends’. But that’s the point. Sarah HAD loads of serious boyfriends, none of them stuck around. A relationship doesn’t guarantee longevity. Fuck me, I’m cynical. My parents met at university, fell in love, married, and are still disgustingly soppy. Maybe that’s had an influence on me? Maybe not?
My ex best mate, who I mentioned in a previous post, was always utterly boy crazy: if she didn’t have a fella on the go then she wasn’t happy. She’d have been the right kind of person to take that quiz. She’s still like that now: our sporadic phone calls used to centre on which lad text her, which lad smiled at her, which lad breathed in her half of the hemisphere … I never really got this. She had a string, and I mean a string, of wanker boyfriends: one that hit her, one that cheated on her then dumped her by text, one that ignored her, one that continually put her down … Every time she met one of these guys she launched into this spiel of ‘I’ve never met anyone like him’, ‘I’ve never fallen for a bloke this fast’, ‘I’ve never felt this way before’. It got a bit predictable. Growing up with someone like this eventually put pressure on me to think more about blokes. I’ve never really been the type of girl that chases after men, maybe that’s why I’ve never had a serious relationship, hey ho. My first boyfriend was a lad called Danny: we went rabbiting together, went to the Auction Mart together, went riding together … It was a lot of fun. Then he dumped me after I put the phone down on him for cancelling our plans. He grovelled over text a few weeks later with the immortal line: ‘I’m sorry I didn’t get in touch, it was the middle of the sheep season and I was knackered’. My parents found this hilarious! But yeah. There were a few candidates after ‘ferret-boy’, as my cousin named him, but nothing serious. They always said or did something that I (rightly) took exception to and told them where to go. THEN there was Ryan. We worked together in a pub in Chester, he was pretty, South African, funny, good cook … Everything was funky dory until we went for a drink after the gorgeous meal he cooked. I did my usual trick of getting pissed and going on about Shakespeare, to which he said ‘Shakespeare … He wrote the Great Gatsby didn’t he?’. OH. DEAR. GOD. I sobered up in an instant and said ‘what?!’. ‘Yeah! Yeah! He definitely wrote the Great Gatsby!!’. Argh. That relationship was over shortly afterwards. I don’t think I’m a snob, but anyone who thinks that Shakespeare wrote the Great Gatsby is definitely NOT upto scratch.
Being Sarah’s best mate meant being there for all the family occasions to which the three eldest girls would bring out their newest man flesh and Anita (her mum) could get to know them. Anita loved this, and seemed to take real pride in the fact that all three of her eldest daughters had attachments. I started feeling a bit guilty, probably a few years ago now. I worried that my mum was missing out on something that other mums would get: a daughter bringing boyfriends home. I brought Danny up to our canal boat to meet them for ten minutes, but that was it. She told me I was being silly, but it still preyed on my mind for a while. Last year I had a couple of months where I felt like I really wanted a bloke. Any bloke. A lad who I knew had liked me for ages who I really wasn’t interested in rang and asked me out, and I said yes. It was when I described him to my parents that I realised what I was doing: ‘he’s not the best looking bloke ever, but he’s a nice guy’. I was settling. When this prick stood me up on this date that he’d been pestering me about for years, I came back to reality. For a short period of my life, I thought that it would be better to be with a nice, reliable, maybe not that attractive guy than to be single. I was very wrong. I refuse to settle. I’m not the best looking person ever, I don’t claim to be perfect, and I probably annoy people sometimes, but I think that I deserve better than a relationship for the sake of a relationship. Fair enough, I don’t have the kind of lifestyle where I go out on boozy nights every weekend and meet some random guys, but I don’t want that. I met a bloke a few months back who I really thought things would work out with, but he was in the same position as me in terms of workload and busy times. And thinking about it, I really wouldn’t have been able to commit to anything at that time anyway. But who knows. Maybe he’ll ‘come to his senses’ and spare me an hour :)
I think there’s a lot of pressure on people to be in relationships: I know a lot of older people who are with men/women they don’t want to be with, but they just don’t want to be alone. I can kinda see the logic in that, but I’d hate it. I really don’t think I’ve met anyone so far in my life that I could contemplate spending a whole year with, living with, buying a dog with. When I was going through my ‘I need a bloke’ phase, I kept thinking ‘I’m 22, single, and have never had a long-term relationship. Sarah’s had loads of serious boyfriends’. But that’s the point. Sarah HAD loads of serious boyfriends, none of them stuck around. A relationship doesn’t guarantee longevity. Fuck me, I’m cynical. My parents met at university, fell in love, married, and are still disgustingly soppy. Maybe that’s had an influence on me? Maybe not?
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