Doing it for the girls (who can’t)

I was stuck in the check-in queue for over an hour at the airport so I had no choice but to look around at everyone else waiting. Mostly families, then couples and a few single people squeezed in between them all. I watched on as most of the men were doing the heavy lifting. There was some really tall, strong, long haired men… ahhh there’s a flight to Auckland.

Maori men. Think Jason Mamoa but the New Zealand version without as much personal training. Still strong.

https://bookingagentinfo.com/celebrity/jason-momoa/

I was on my way to Indonesia, Bali, for a week of relaxation and adventure. These men were balancing bags, kids, and societies expectations of strong men, doing a wonderful job. I happened to be behind an Indian family: two males, two adult females and a young girl. The men did nothing but hold up the queue. However I ignored them and focused on the strapping young- middle aged men looking after their families. My heart ached a bit for that. I felt a whisper of desire. If I have an aura, it turned green and spread out enveloping them as if I could turn that into my own life.

I stood alone. Balancing my bags and dragging them along with my singledom as we took miniature steps around the walkway like a cattle call. A bad back and type 1 diabetes, I would have loved someone to help me. I imagined my invisible partner placing his hand on my lower back..

“You going okay?” he’d check on me.

“Here babe, I’ll take that bag. You take this lighter one,” he’d say.

It took over an hour but I’d be sprinkled with little reassuring kisses and a few stops for a hug as we tried to be patient and shuffled along together. It would be fine, it was an adventure together. We’d give each other funny glances, reading each other’s minds as we watched other people. Oh we were so in love!

Then I noticed a young family. A couple and their daughter. The man stood in front of them with his ear phones in and ignored his daughter pulling on the back of his trousers for attention. He had two bags but the mother had a bag, a pram and was looking after the young girl. Hmmmm this was more realistic. I remembered the fights I’ve had with previous partners. The stress of getting two people packed, out the door and at the airport on time. I only had to worry about one person. I suddenly felt lighter and that seeking aura of jealousy snapped back, quite quickly, and returned to me standing alone.

I’m powerful on my own. I can do things in my own time, based on my own decisions and there’s no one to argue with or make me feel bad.

Source: https://thesugarpatch.shop/products/rosie-riveter-type-1-strong

So maybe those families and couples were looking at me with jealousy.

“I wonder where she’s off to on her own and what delightfully free adventures she’s going to get up to?” they’d ponder.

“Look at her smaller bag” they’d glance at each other.

“Oh to not have anyone whinging at me or pulling on me”, they’d dream.

Every time I said to someone that I was going to Bali their response was “Who are you travelling with?”

The driver that picked me up said that it’s unusual to travel alone in Bali for the first visit.

I’m alone, but I’m free. I am financially independent, I am strong willed and I’m curious. I know there are thousands of women that can’t travel alone. They don’t have the money. They are too sick. They are scared. I’m doing this for you. Because I can. Yeah okay, it’s for me. I’m relatively fit and able, so I must. However I think that in doing this for myself, it says to everyone, everywhere that it’s okay to be alone. Or to try something new.

As a Dad was handed his families six passports to look after, I walked down the aerobridge swinging my arms free. Because I can!

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He was a skater boi

It’s been awhile friends but this is a story that had to be told! Please help me out… what happened??

He was a skater boy
She said, “see you later, boy”
He wasn’t good enough for her

-Avril Lavinge

It didn’t go quite like that… I met ‘J’ at a local pub after talking online for 24 hours. (You’ve got to meet in person to see if there’s a real connection.) I was the first to arrive so I found a table inside that I could also look out the windows and see his arrival. My dating fear is that they don’t look anything like their profile so I was on high alert.

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Just sitting alone casually waiting for a friend (is the air I exude). I watched a man come in and look around, look at me, do a lap of the bar and walk out again. I breathed a sigh of relief ‘that doesn’t look like him’ as this older man didn’t pinpoint me. I had a fleeting thought that he had looked around and didn’t like what he saw so had promptly left. I wondered if many people did that?

My date was 7 minutes late- I’d messaged several friends, checked Facebook, Tinder (could have studied a new online course as the time dragged)- but he finally walked up to the table as a living, breathing profile pic, phew! We had just exchanged pleasantries and sorted out our beer preferences, when that same man walks back in again. After another lap, he turns to J and says “Do I know you from somewhere?”.  J looks reasonably perplexed for a few minutes as he tries to place him and then the two of them break out into smiles. They are mates and had been drinking in this same bar til the wee hours of the morning. I look at J and now the man named Ty as J tries to figure out what to do and whether it’s appropriate for him to sit down with us. He says something along the lines of “I’m just catching up with Starfish” and I throw out an awkward offering “Give us 10 minutes.”

In that 10 minutes, J leans in and whispers across the table “Don’t tell him we met on Tinder!”. We come up with a backstory of meeting at one of the local pubs… but that’s about it before we realise Ty is sitting alone, about one metre away from us. Come on over.

I was so ameniable to his friend- this is normal, this is fun. I’m so easy going and casual… what fun.

In between Ty’s stories, I piece together bits about J and whether our ‘date’ is going well. We both like history… he likes my tattoo. Oh you have eight tattoos I say, well my fav number is eight. “Me too” he says. He plays bass guitar, so does my Dad. He skates regularly and was filming last night. I’ve got total respect for people that have practiced enough to do things on wheels. Chatter, chatter about music… I listen to Ty’s conspiracy theories as J goes to the toilet and disappears (smoking) for a good 10 minutes. J also goes to the bar a lot, he drinks fast. He gets a phone call from a mate that talks to both of them. I think I’m talking to Ty more than J.

“I like your dress. It suits your face.” Okay, one more point to J. But something has to change. Now Ty goes for a smoke and I lean over to J that it’s time to get our date back on track, “can we have some time alone now”?

We make our way outside to decide our next move and to let Ty down lightly. J asks “So are you into me? Do you want to kiss me?” So we have a little kiss. He tells Ty we are leaving…

See ya!

He’s very indecisive but we put together a rough plan of grabbing some beers from the shop and going back to his place. As we stand in front of the beer fridges his phone rings again, same mate. He mumbles to me “Let’s do this another time.” Um, okay. I’m over this! Outside he says again “Let’s pick this up again another time” and I start walking towards the bus stand, shaking my head, as he heads back towards… Ty.

WTF?!

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Part Two

At home I’m a little confused so I message him on Tinder that it was the weirdest rejection I’ve ever had. He says “come back”. Um, what! Oh he’ll pay for a taxi if I come back and stay at his house for a snuggle. I said, no. “You’ll have to live with your decision now.” I’m trying to think of the best here. Okay, maybe we had our first date and he was trying to decide if he likes me and was a bit distracted. So we could meet up another time. He can make it up to me. I look back online and he’s deleted me!

 

Mr Tix all boxes except mine

I was raised with optimistic and caring parents and find I now run around with a generous dollop of positivity (life still sucks don’t get me wrong). When I tried to ‘rescue’ my ex boyfriends with my positivity in the past, it failed miserably! I wouldn’t do that again. Unfortunately one of them was an addict and looking back now, it was an incredibly unhealthy and toxic relationship.

Now what I fail at is the casual, loosey goosey approach when I find a potential partner rather than a project. But I’ve tried. Man was I a loose goose with Mr Ticks All Boxes (let’s call him Tix for short).

This time last year, I dated Mr Tix for 6 weeks and then he strung me along for another 4 weeks ‘on hold’ before he finally told me he’d met someone else.

For 10 weeks I tried to be positive. I tried to be easy going because he ticked all of my boxes.

Social and friendly (had a great smile and was quite positive)

 Close to his family and a good group of friends. We actually had some friends in common!

Fit-  playing sport rather than being obsessed with the gym

Job satisfaction

Very attractive with a great head of hair and nice, neat beard

 Easy to get along with- we laughed a lot and talked about all kinds

His story was that he had just got out of a long term relationship of 10 years with his first love. They also owned a house together but had been broken up for approx 4 months.

I was seeing him at least once a week and we grew close quite quickly. I went to his house after 2 weeks but he asked me to park down the road as his ex was quite difficult and he didn’t want to cause waves whilst they still owned the house together. Of course. I was casual, positive, easy-going.

After about 4 weeks, he cancelled on our weekend plans as ‘the shit had hit the fan’. His ex found out he was seeing someone and lost her mind. She supposedly declared her love for him and asked him to take her back. When he said no, she used the house against him. She demanded more money in the buy-out settlement, threatened he would never see their dogs again and took all the remaining furniture. Even their bed! He said he needed time to process this and sort things out. Instead of our plans, he had a few friends (that I didn’t know) over to his place to help him drown his sorrows in beer.

That week he said he couldn’t see me anymore as it was all too much at the moment. I was so understanding (casual, positive, easy going).

Two days later, he said he couldn’t stop thinking about me and we had to give this a chance. We were on again.

We kept seeing each other for another two weeks but there was quite a few nights he had to try and sort things through with his ex. They allegedly had to meet to try to negotiate the sale of the house and split assets. That’s cool.

At the 6 weeks mark, he was very stressed. He was trying to fix up things around the house to add value, clean it all, and then meet a range of real estate agents (that his ex also had to meet and approve) and then arrange for the house to be ‘dressed’ for inspections as she had taken all the furniture. It came to a head. He couldn’t see me anymore until this was sorted. We agreed to keep in touch and when the timing was right, if it was right for both of us, we could resume our romance.

We kept in touch and he text me and called me and said how amazing we were together but wouldn’t meet up.

At 10 weeks, he finally arranged a date with me!!!!!!! But I got strange texts all day. One of the last ones was worrying about wasting my time. He finally admitted, he was meeting up with me to give me the courtesy to tell me he had met someone else. I told him don’t bother and don’t contact me again.

I recently read Drew Barrymore’s book “Wildflower’ and there is chapter called ‘Door One’. She had just started seeing her now husband, Will and was over analysing everything.

Would sharing a life with someone mean I was no longer my own person but a ‘we’?….

How could I stay one of two, rather than becoming half of one…..

Just like anyone who is about to settle down, I started to examine everything.

I had already made my mind up about Mr Tix but he hadn’t and I just wanted to be in the running. Upon reflection, I think he had two girls ‘on the go’ and was weighing us up. The drinks with ‘friends’ to drown his sorrows included the friend he hooked up with. I worked in recruitment for 11 years and you always advise candidates of the recruitment and selection process, let them know of their status and provide them with feedback. Dating is the same process: several candidates, a couple are shortlisted and only one (should be) successful. But you never know the status of your application!! Its a blind process. 

Drew Barrymore’s friend, Liza, gave her this advise:

Everyone wants to overthink and analyse and take all the fun out of it and freak out, but the truth is you pick door number one. You choose the great person in front of you and you don’t play the game of Let’s Make a Deal and see what’s behind door number two because we are so conditioned to seeing what else is out there.

Of course Mr Tix was behind door number one. I was just waiting for him to choose me. Perhaps I was behind door number two and he wanted to give the other girl a chance first. I suspect he kept us both in the dark til he decided. My theory is that girls give door number one a chance and guys want multiple doors to open and like to play Let’s Make a Deal!

What’s your thoughts?

 

Speed dating

Online dating is starting to wear me down so I challenged myself to consider 200 guys in 7 days. My version of speed dating. One last energetic foray to see if I can burst through some of the barriers and get any results.

With a 25 km radius and age range of 35-42 years on Bumble, there seemed to be plenty of guys to look through. These guys had already looked at my profile and swiped right (yes) so if I liked their profile it was a guaranteed mutual match.

However, I was only into about 1 in 4 and swiped right for 54 of them.

Out of the 201 I said ‘no’ to, I had seen 23 of their profiles or chatted to them before! Two of them were in open relationships and stated that they were poly so there was no misunderstandings. As I continued on Sunday afternoon, I noticed that the distance of the matches grew significantly. One guy was 1 hour and 42 mins drive away in a place I’d never heard of! Bumble must expand the location so that you have always got matches. It’s kind but inconvenient.

That should have left me a lot of guys to talk to and plenty of dating options. Bumble requires the female to make the first contact and then the guys have 24 hours to respond or the match expires. Well, that meant that many of the matches disappeared. By Sunday night, I’m left with 13 that I have been talking to, and another 14 pending reply.

I’m talking with a puppy dog that I asked on a play date today, but he was busy.

I’m also talking with a (very well versed) 35 year old guy that I’ve planned to meet next Friday night for a drink in the city. This one excites me!

I turned down the guy who asked me over to his house on Thursday night to ‘play games’. Sometimes they turn me off straight away if I think that’s their M.O and don’t really care who I am. But this time, I tried to give him a chance. I get that the sexes communicate differently, maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to judge. You really need to stay true to your values though. I stand strong that I’m not going to go to a strangers house. If they want to meet me, then date me.

I feel confident that I will have two dates out of these matches. Let’s see what happens next…

	Yes	No
Monday	10	23
Tuesday
Wednesday	7	41
Thursday	8	33
Friday	7	18
Saturday
Sunday	24	86
TOTAL	54	201