I seem to have got stuck at some point this week. I’ve had the title for today’s entry – and what I imagine the content will be too – right at the forefront of my brain ever since about Wednesday, and been meaning to write it, and been knowing that I have to in order to move on. But for some reason I haven’t done it. Part of it’s because of busyness – increased workload, time spent looking for other work, a bit of social interaction – and another part of it’s because of thinking about some of Paul McKenna’s ideas. But, interestingly, I got stuck on his thing too, on Day 2, and I guess I felt I needed to get this stuff out of me to progress in that.
There were a few things he’d written in his book about negativity that intrigued me. One was to take the voice of the inner-critic and put it outside of you, pretend it was coming from the thumb on the end of an outstretched arm. I made mine come from a talking hand, like a naked sock puppet, and it does have a good effect. Makes everything it says sound kind of laughable. Like if you were listening to it from someone in the street you’d just think they were an idiot. Easy to argue with and/or move on from.
Another thing he talks about is a “negativity fast” and using various techniques to switch out of a habitually negative way of thinking into a more positive one. That made me think about my blog and the way I mainly write the negative aspects of my life, the things I want to get out of me. Has doing so, and doing so much, trained my brain to think of life in a negative way? To focus on the things I don’t like? Certainly, that’s been one of the problems in my relationships, for some reason zoning in on the 5% bad and failing to appreciate the 95% good.
Funny thing is, though, when I did used to write only about the positive things and how amazing my life was I got feedback saying, yeah yeah, blah blah, that’s not interesting, nobody cares, and I stopped it. Except now I come to think of it that was only one person who said that and that person was on anti-depressants. Weird that I would choose to take on board that lone voice when it was a voice of discouragement…
And none of this is what I really wanted to write about, just the preamble, the introduction to…
His Day 1 exercise was about the various aspects of self we have within us and getting to look at those. One thing I realised from doing that was how big an ego-investment I have in thinking of myself as being different from others, and how that perhaps impacts on me negatively. The final part of it was in thinking of someone you dislike and looking at the reasons why. In truth, I couldn’t really think of anyone, save for a couple of authoritarian bureaucrats – cold, inflexible, made me feel powerless and impotent – but of course there was always Nicky…
I’ve been trying not to think of her. I’ve been trying not to think of her in negative ways. I understand so much of it’s projection and karma – maybe all of it – but what I’ve realised is that understanding and accepting that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t go into it. Many of Mr McKenna’s techniques may be about minimising negativity, but another thing he says is, if things keep recurring there’s probably a very good reason for it and a lesson for us therein. And the words I have in my head have certainly been recurring. They don’t disappear when I refocus or my mood changes. I can run around a field and feel awesome and free – but when I settle down to sleep or think about what I’m going to write next, they’re still there. And I’m a little bit annoyed that I’ve waited until now, Sunday morning, to set them down. But better late than never. For the truth is…
I hate her. I hate what she’s done to me. I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve come to realise that she’s been treating me really shittily, for quite some time now. Always content to come over to mine and take my love and attention and affection – to take my sex, too – sometimes getting herself an orgasm or two and leaving me with none and then going home straight afterwards – but blanking me out of every other aspect of her life. One time she said she was going to a party and I said I was lonesome and sad and could I come too and she said no. Another time she mentioned having a fire and would I like to come – and then when it came to it, and she did it, she didn’t bother inviting me. And then when she’d tell me about going for meals with friends at the curry house at the bottom of my street or sledding in the snow and all the other things I would have liked to have done – her knowing that I wanted to meet people and get out and was going through a bad time – she could have introduced me to people who could have been my friends – but she excluded me from all that, kept me at arm’s length, just took what part of me she wanted and rejected the rest. Kept me dangling and stringing me along all this time. Fucking me and using me for sex and companionship when she herself was lonely. Cried her tears when her own life was confusing and had me console her. Fuck! How I used to write about her being “too nice” – when it was me who was too nice. And still I carry on being so…
She makes love with me a week last Wednesday, the day she flies off to Ireland
Her going to Ireland Rockies – they were always individual plans, never things that we did together. And then she had the nerve to complain ceaselessly to me about the lack of “togetherness” in our relationship and scorn any suggestion I wanted to make about her possibly “projecting” that. Fuck me, she was ridiculous. I knew she was a free spirit – as am I in some regards; it’s probably what brought us together – but her levels of non-commitment were far in excess of mine. I can’t believe I gave my heart to this girl. And therein lies lesson number one.
Paul McKenna says when a negative emotion keeps on recurring and won’t be shrinked away it means there’s something for us to learn from it. And, certainly, I need to learn to not give my heart to someone who doesn’t deserve it. To get to know them first. To find out who they really are. Every single time I end a relationship I say the same thing: get to know them next time. Take six platonic months to find out the real person. Go beyond that period of infatuation and lust and thinking them perfect because that’s all they’ve ever shown you. And then maybe you won’t get your goddamn fool heart broken when they shit on you.
She, on the other hand…
Tuesday I’m all done with her. I’m committed to washing her out of my hair and I’m moving on. But that evening she calls me up and says things about missing me and how one day everything seemed to remind her of me. She cries and asks herself why she is the way she is, why she can’t commit or take the love that’s offered, that she believes she wants. It’s giving me hope, I guess. Or at least helping to lead me back into confusion, stringing me along. I wonder what happened in Ireland
I call her Wednesday morning and ask her if she slept with him. She hesitates. She says, “I’ll be honest with you, I did.” “In the end,” she says. In the end? What the hell’s that supposed to mean?
But all I say is, well thanks for telling me and good luck with that, and then she says maybe we can talk about it later and we say goodbye. I’m glad I got to know. But instantly I’m right back to…
…that night she lied to me right to my face so she could go off with that other guy at the beginning of February. To the thoughts and words I was having then. Go fuck yourself! Bitch! All that kind of thing. Kind of wishing I’d left it there. Kind of ruing spilling my heart and my guts and doing things with her while I was doing my damnedest to not let another relationship die due to silly mistakes. I danced with her, I made love with her, I took her on a beautiful memorable date – big wheel and bowling and lavish sushi – and it was all for nothing, save me getting to experience me in a really good and beneficial way. But the fact that I did it with her…as though the memories are forever tarnished…of big wheels and sushi and of dancing with another woman. How I wish I’d saved myself, not given my heart. But time heals all and we forget these things quicker than we can imagine.
She’s fucked up. She’s insane. That she would nearly impregnate herself with me and then go off and sleep with some other guy and yet still be telling me she would have had my baby and raised it together. That she’d been so goddamned adamant about not flying – and then flown to see him anyway. And that night after I’d read High Fidelity and decided in my bones that I needed to stop fucking about and step out of the fantasy and into real life and had pretty much proposed to her – how she’d said, I want to be alone right now, I need some space, I don’t want to jump into anything, want to take my time with the next person – how all along in her devious bitch heart (I hate to type the word “bitch” there and don’t really mean it, just giving voice to the expression) she was already plotting to see this guy and texting him and skyping him and how I had to intuit it and suspect it and ask her outright to get the truth of, “did you meet someone you’re interested in?” and – how many hours anyway would they have spent together before she jumped in the fuckin’ sack? And we two supposed to be some sort of ‘spiritual’ and ‘enlightened’ people – but so, so lacking in the kind of basic teenage morality that even the drunks in the pubs seem to possess. How could I be such a fool? How could I believe all the lies she told me?
Those last questions are all lines from a Mothers of Invention song, by the way, which kind of sums up exactly how I feel about all this at certain points in the day. Fucker.
And what else? Now I’m letting it all out and everything’s done and finished I might as well go the whole way. Pissed off about her bullshit about money, how she’d invited me out one night for pizza and then when I said I just ate she said, okay, well that’s probably good ‘cos I need to save money anyway for when I move to Ireland and don’t have a job – but then how much was a frickin’ last-minute plane ticket to see this guy she wanted to bone three days after nearly having my baby?
All I can do is shake my head. Fuckin’ women! And they wonder where they get their reputation for deviousness. Though I guess they’re not all like that. I hate her I hate her I –
Well I guess this is maybe the point where I turn it all around and say, “yes, but it’s all my karma and projection” – which is basically the truth of the matter. Indeed, I can’t think of anything in there that isn’t a reflection on me. Sure, there’s lessons, like the one already mentioned – don’t give your heart away to somebody before you’re fairly sure that they’ll treasure it – but even that’s more about me than her. I can’t change her, only myself. I can’t make her the kind of person who won’t shit all over some guy’s heart – but I can make me the kind of person who won’t give my heart to someone all because I like the curve of their breasts…
I got pissed off with her the other week ‘cos she was talking about when she was really in love with me and it was all from when we didn’t even know each other, when her ideas of me were far stronger than the reality of me. I guess she wanted to say it as some kind of show that she did once want me, had once fallen for me – but what consolation was that when it wasn’t really me but just her imagination of how I was going to be? And even when I pointed that out all she could do was say, no, but when I really fell for you it wasn’t in my head, it wasn’t before I got to know you, it was that moment sitting in the kitchen at St Anns when you were playing guitar and I was knitting and…and I was like, yeah, that was after we’d spent about ten hours together. Fuck me! This crazy ass world of falling in love so quick and giving so much of ourselves and our time based on such fleeting little moments! I can’t believe it. And I can’t believe I’ve done the same. Three years I’ve wasted on this girl! Three years, all because I liked the swell of her breasts and imagined she was a good person and imagined that she liked me. Three years when I could have been with someone else building something real instead of squandering precious time on some flighty non-committal hippy traveller who was never really in it for real and didn’t have the first clue about what it meant to truly be with someone…
But I really hope you see the irony in that sentence. For even as I type it I know what it really means. Yes, she may be a flighty non-committal hippy traveller, and that may be bloody annoying – but she’s not the only one. Everything I’ve said about her – every little hateful thing – is naught but a reflection on me. The world is a mirror. You attract what you are. You learn from everyone and everything and you absolutely get what you deserve. I deserved her. I got what I needed. She was me – at least a part of me – made manifest in the external world so I could see it so clearly and make up my mind about whether I wanted to continue to be like that. And, Lord knows, I don’t.
I’ve been so non-committal. I’ve run away from love. I’ve been avoiding it for such a long time. I’ve always had one foot out the door. And – Christ! how those words come back to me – pretty much everything I’ve said about her above has been said to me at one time or another. How Sophie would accuse me of mindgames. How for years afterwards Eve would want to know if I wanted to be with her and all I could say was, “I don’t know.” I thought I was being honest, but all at once I see the cruelty is stringing someone along, and understand exactly what Nicky’s going through. I can’t be too mad, wounded though I am, because I know life isn’t so clearcut, especially when you’re a commitmentphobe. You never do know because you’ve always got to keep your options open. I don’t think I’ve ever closed any door, and perhaps that’s why I stay friends and lovers with all my exes for years after the relationship ends. I just thought it was ‘cos I was a nice and cool modern guy, but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe it’s a lack of that good simple teenage morality I keep talking about. Like…
Fuckin’ Nicky, man! How could she fuck me one day and then go fuck some other guy the next? How does she think that makes me feel, or him? What kind of basis is that for a new relationship, even beyond me? I think, God, how did we become such hussies? But the real question is, how did this happen to me? How did I lose my moral compass to such an extent? And what can I do to get it back?
I never used to be like this. I never used to go from woman to woman. I was always a strict serial monogamist and though I had a few one-night stands when I was younger once I stopped drinking that pretty much stopped and sleeping with someone you liked generally meant being in a relationship with them. Aged 22 to 24 I went something like 27 months with only one brief one-month relationship sandwiched in the middle, basically celibate. I shake my head now remembering how I used to share beds with girls during that period – even with the pair of us naked – and not want to have to sex. I’d say, we’re not missing anything, and turn them down. Just wanted pure friendship and love. No complications. Back then I was acutely aware that sex brought headaches into your life and without it life was groovy and good. But I guess I lost it somewhere along the way. All for an hour or two of sweaty pleasure! What the hell went wrong with me?
I met Eve, and when we made love I felt like she was every woman I’d ever been with, a kind of seal and summation of the experience, and a moving on. It was beautiful and good. But then of course I put my heart into it and tried to make it into a “relationship” and my heart got broken. I was with Laura and Sophie and after Sophie I had that moment of wishing I’d never been with anyone, envying the Christians their pure-eyed virginity and the innocent fumbling joys of their wedding nights and then years of learning together, with not another soul in their heads. Still I tried to be monogamous and at some point I decided it was screwing me up. I’d lost Laura because I didn’t want to be dishonest about wanting to sleep with Sophie again. And then I lost Sophie because I didn’t want to keep Perlilly from her. I believed in honesty and not screwing more than one person at a time and I tried my hardest to keep everything above board and not hurt anyone. But when I looked back on all that and saw how I’d lost opportunities for love by being so upfront and open I changed my mind about it, thought maybe it was okay to sleep with more than one at once while you decided which one to go for, and maybe it is. Indeed, recent troubles with Laura and Nicky were probably again caused by my being upfront about it. Except, what I’ve realised is…well, now that I’ve been on the receiving end I’ve realised it fuckin’ sucks. That sex does mean something. That it’s not just like playing squash with different partners and why can’t everyone just be okay with that? That it’s not just some New Age idea about non-attached “energy swapping” like I once read in some book somewhere and thought was probably the way it should be. It means love and acceptance and wanting and intimacy. It means sharing and giving yourself and saying to another, you’re special and I trust you and I pick you out. It means heart and emotion and honesty. And it fuckin’ hurts when the whole thing is turned against you.
I look at Nicky and I wonder about her morality. How one I felt could be so “good” could use sex so flippantly, so promiscuously. But all she is is a reflection of me and I know without a doubt that’s exactly what I’ve done. I was even in bed with someone the first time she went to Ireland
Nicky was my teacher. She embodied all the crappy, relationship-busting parts of myself and served them on a plate and said, here, take ye and eat, see how you like it. And she served me up my past karma too, of how I had been with Sophie and with Perlilly and with Laura. She shovelled it down my throat until I choked and was sick, could take no more. Made me scream out for morality and commitment and something true and truly loving. I’ve been such a goddamn ass. I’ve been everything I’ve said and felt about her. Insane, unreliable, flighty, non-committal. I’ve been impractical and dwelled in fantasy. I’ve always had one foot out the door, lost half my life to dreams of travel and other places, other people. I’ve strung people along and confused them and given them false hope. And I’ve fallen in love so many times without really knowing what I was getting into, without thought, just going with the flow. But I want so many different things now, and I want to be different too. I’ve been thinking about the kind of person I want to be with after Nicky and what I’ve realised is that that’s not really what it’s about. I have this list, I guess, and it goes something like: I want to be with someone honest and committed and truthful and sexy and funny and loving and open and willing to work at things and truly together and not running away and moral and sharing – a kind of anti-Nicky really – but what I’ve realised is that, actually, the thing to do there is lose that word “with” and then read it again. And then it all becomes clear: I want to be someone who is honest and committed and truthful and loving and moral and…
It’s more about who I am than who they are. You attract what you are. Everything she was, I was too. The slowly dawning truth that we’re all one and that the reason you should do unto others as you would have done unto yourself is precisely because everything you do unto another will one day be done to you. Everything she did to me, I earned. Everything she did to me I’d already done to her or to someone else I was romantically involved with. Every little thing. I can’t bemoan – well, I can, but only as part of the process of coming to this truth – because even though it hurts it’s a hurt I’ve already unleashed into the world, through my own unknowing and ignorance. I thought sex meant nothing and could be splashed around willy-nilly – if you’ll pardon the expression – and I see now I was wrong and, probably, all those devout religious types were right. It is something special and sacred and…well, the thing is, though, that they don’t tell you why you should keep it sacred – or at least not the right reason – that it’s displeasing in the eyes of God; that you’ll go to hell – no, no: no such nonsense of that – but purely and simply because it can cause a lot of freaking headaches and heartaches for yourself and for others – not to mention wasted time – and that given the rewards it’s just not worth it. I mean, maybe it’s okay purely for fun – though I’m not so sure about that – but…well, this is all just a reflection of where I’m at right now – and where I’m at right now is not wanting it except in a committed relationship. Wanting lots of it, yes – but with a woman I love and with a woman who wears my ring. And I’m starting to think I know who that woman is, and probably always was…
I guess I should thank Nicky for bringing me to this place. By showing me what I didn’t want from another, or want to be in myself, I feel more clear than ever. At some point in the middle of our relationship – yea, even when we were happy – I became convinced I was no good at them and maybe never would be. Funnily enough, through this one failing, I now feel more confident than ever. I seem to have finally grasped the idea that it’s not how the other is – obviously it’s important to be on the same general page as your partner – but how you are to them. And in grasping that I realise how that not only makes things better for the relationship and for your belovéd other, but also for yourself. It’s lame to go around thinking your partner should be this or that – but it’s awesome to go around knowing yourself to be a loving and good person, and demonstrating this in your daily life. I’m not saying you ignore abusive behaviour with blithe smiles and flowers. But I am thinking it’s what you bring to the table that enables your joy, not what you expect and demand from another.
Nicky once wrote me a little thing about “what love is” while we were together, probably in response to my foolish musing on it and whether it really existed or was important. It was kind of sweet but, I felt, a little bit shallow. Kind of like her, I guess (he winks). It said stuff about watching movies together and giggling at trumps. Cuddles and sitting by the fire. Which is all good stuff but I think there’s more to it than that. I found that again the other day and had a think about it. I wrote my own list of what I now think love is, of what I want from a relationship. It went a little something like this:
Love is…
Being honest with one another
Making the effort
Sticking at it through thick and thin
Laughing lots
Working as a team
Commitment and not having one foot out the door
Being brave and showing vulnerability
Saying the difficult thing
Cuddles, kisses and affection
All kinds of sex, but something more than lust
Making plans and decisions together
Saying “I love you” and showing it too
Encouragement and compliments
Gratitude and appreciation
Treasuring the good things and seeing past the bad
Sharing time and troubles and joy
Helping one another through the trials of life
Being the best you can be
Dancing together
Having fun
Giving yourself, your heart, your everything.
Love is for giving
Not for getting
Obviously much of that has come out of experiencing the opposite with Nicky, and deepening my realisation of what I actually want and what I’m determined to try and do next time. All those things may change, of course, but I’m pretty happy with them as they stand. When I got with Nicky my only thoughts about the person I wanted to be with were that they were decent and attractive and didn’t give me hassles, so I suppose I’ve come a little ways at least! And I guess typing that I realise that, in her, I got what I wanted back then – but now I know there’s more to it than that.
Wednesday morning, after finding out she had indeed slept with the guy in Ireland
“Rory,
It’s pretty rude to return people’s gifts to you back to them. Your version of love that you have written in your poem is perfect and I feel saddened that we missed lots of those aspects together. Hopefully we can both enact this more in the future. Rory, I wish that I could feel now the love you feel/did feel for me and I don’t know why I have so much resistance to returning to it. Fear? Mistrust? Stubbornness? I’m scared really – that things will just return to how they were before, scared that I’ll get hurt again, scared that what you were presenting me with these last few weeks was too good, scared that our connection would get lost when we took it out of the confines of your flat and into the world, scared that I’ll lose myself again, scared because I found such a kindred soul and now I can’t handle it? Rory I miss you and I love you but I can’t seem to do anything about it.”
So naturally that made me feel good, and feel like I’d gotten a little bit of the power back in this relationship, that had been so one-sided of late such was the crushing nature of her victory over me. Then I called her and apologised for the ‘rudeness’ (rude?! ha! what a crazy word that is – especially when you consider some of the things she’s done to me of late) and she cried and said she missed me and didn’t know why she was the way she was. I listened. There wasn’t much I could say really. I felt totally done with the whole thing, and accepting of my pain and lessons and karma, and ready to move on. I’d lost her and, for better or for worse, she’d found another. Maybe that would come to nothing – and perhaps even be a reflection of things I had recently lived – but, you know, that’s her karma to deal with. I kind of hope it does come to nothing and that one day she’ll come back to me and say she was a goddamn fool and expression a realisation of the same kind of mistakes that I have. At which time I’ll be with someone else and be happy. I guess that’s kind of shallow but, ya know, what the hell. Whatever gets you through the night, right? Except I’m starting to believe that women don’t do regret and remorse and apologies and realisations in the same way that men do. At least not in my experience: they just want to project and make us feel bad. And they’re good at that. And I don’t even mind. Just sometimes wish it was something approaching a two-way street.
In any case, I’ve got to go referee football now. I’m not sure how to proceed with Nicky. I was all done with her and feeling awesome yesterday after some I Ching readings that seemed to clear everything up – but then like a goddamn fool I called her up to “make sure she was okay” (read: “listen to her cry some more and say how she misses me and made loads of mistakes”) and, wouldn’t you just know it, she was. Or, at least, she was keeping herself busy with loads of other things and dreams and schemes and the re-connecting made me feel bad. Probably I did wash her out of my hair but then put her right back in it. I wonder if I’ll ever learn. And I wonder what’s going to happen next…
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