A friend of mine lost her husband 6 years ago yesterday. Yesterday also she received a text from a man she had been seeing for several months confirming that their relationship was over and there's no way back.
She had a great relationship with her husband, the father of her children, and for several years after his death licked her wounds and tended to her children. But then she decided that she was lonely and wanted to find love again. And in the time since then she has met a number of men who have dumped on her in a big way from a great height.
There has been a weirdo who checked her mail and her texts and God what else and who frightened the bejaysus out of her, a lothario who visited her but found excuses not to have her visit him and was probably married, and a couple of cowards who fizzled out with pathetic excuses.
Then lately came this weakling who crowded her, squeezing out all the oxygen around her, integrating himself into her family's life so that he occupied a central place, ingratiating himself with her kids. He came to take her out to lunch from work. If she had a night out without him he was often there to take her home. If she went away he might collect her from the station or the airport. He came around to cook for them, or brought goodies. The children enjoyed having him around. My friend felt spoiled. But the deal was that she was not allowed to ask to share his life; her access to him and his time was rationed. Lord knows that their short relationship would have been much shorter had she behaved as he did, because one night they had an argument about an arrangement he'd made and lied, or at least flim-flammed about, and he decided that he felt crowded and dumped her. After a few days silence, mealy-mouthed texts and emails arrived about how it wasn't her, it was him; how he needed to be on his own; how he hadn't had time since his divorce to sort himself out. How he needed to find himself. He's nearly 50 for crying out loud! Don't men realise what a laughing stock when they talk like that, especially when such a statement is going to make the hearer unpick the facts of the case and that will always, ALWAYS, make them look bad.
The lack of imagination of this man as exhibited by what he has done is breathtaking. He probably coungratulated himself on how well he was getting on with the kids. He thought he was doing a really good job. His ego was masturbated.
A message to all those divorces out there: if you need to find yourself, do it on your own before you involve some poor woman in your self-indulgent navel-gazing. If you feel you must indulge yourself and avail yourself of the attentions of some attractive and engaging woman, but you suspect that there might be some possibility in the future that you might feel the need to find yourself, then choose a woman without commitment. Don't sink yourself wholeheartedly into the life of a family and do all you can to put yourslef at the heart of it. And if you can't avoid that simple rule, avoid at all costs choosing a woman and children who have lost the most important thing round about the anniversary of that loss.
Decide if you need to find yourself before you do these things. Because it is not honourable to do so. It is not respectable and it makes you less of a man.
Now if anyone in the Bristol area would like to meet an engaging, lively, slightly crushed woman and her lovely family, see me, because I'd like to vet you first.
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