Love, and all that.

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since the end of a relationship I was having with someone I like very much, but who's still attached to the past, and so hasn't been able to be present to me, nor realise what a great catch I am. C'est la vie! What I failed to do when entering the relationship - my first significant one for some time - was to follow the "six month rule". That's to not date anyone who's broken up with someone less than six months previously. Why? Because they're inevitably carrying something from the past, whether it's hurt or sadness, or anything that keeps them in the past rather than be in the present - with me. At one point she cried about some poem he'd written, and I saw the anger and bitterness. That should have been enough of a red flag, there and then. But you know...love is blind, and hindsight is 20:20

Lucky I identified the issue when I did, rather than let it drag on. Thing is, when you like someone that's great, but at the end of the day if they're not fully committed, then it's a waste of time. I don't do waiting any more, and I don't do doormat either. In fact, what I did was buy her a doormat on the last day. She'd spent the evening with some guy she'd dated before, and was hung over. Like I wanted to spend time with that?

Still hurt, though. At least for the time. But happiness, of course, is the best revenge.

It occurred to me that "If you can't hurt the one you love, hurt the one you're with" applies here. It really does come down to ego. I wonder how many beautiful people have been passed over because their lover has been stuck in the past? I know I've done it several times: met someone who was great, but was absolutely determined to not fall in love with them. So we use them as a "spite fuck", never really getting to know them, and objectifying them, because it's easier that way. Like in Last Tango in Paris, when everything was fine till they decided to actually get to know each other. Just fucking from image to image is sometimes the best way to go, perhaps. If the real thing - the intimacy - is going to be too painful to feel, then what else is there?

Funny, though, how we seem to want attention from a certain person, yet get all disappointed when it doesn't happen. We may as well demand it's sunny on Tuesday rather then Wednesday, and feel pissed off with The Universe cause it's not.

But it's odd that love so often seems to need to be one sided. One does the giving - and paradoxically receives more in compensation - and the other does the taking. In some respects, it's so much easier to love than be loved. There's something satisfying about cloying when you're doing the cloying. And it's so much easier to love someone when they don't love you back. Especially when you're a commitmentphobe.

So there she was, treating someone the way she'd been treated herself, as if punishing someone who loves you because someone else failed to love you somehow corrects some wrong.

Heigh ho! Life's a funny old game, innit?

Now I suppose I'll find some nice, happy woman who has tons of love to give me, then hurt her in return.

And so the cycle will go on.

In the mean time, of course, I'm determined that the relationship's over. I know that I have to be in order to A: get what I need from her and B: To actually be strong enough and attractive enough to win her back. Again, one of those paradoxes. I'll need to hear the right noises, see the right behaviours, and feel good enough about her to want something again.

But relationships are like that. I used to maintain that they were constantly changing, or needed to have to if they're going to be any good. I'm still inclined to think that. What I'm not prepared to do in this relationship - even if it was going to turn into a friendship - is accept shitty treatment.

Rant over.

I thought I'd add this blog entry from her blog. It seems she suffered the same kind of treatment from someone else. Funny old gane, innit? We pass the shit along.

All ego. All of us give then want attention. I mean, why the fuck isn't she reading MY blog?

We're funny old creatures, us humans.