We have fallen down again tonight
In this world it’s hard to get it right
Trying to make your heart fit like a glove
What it needs is love, love, love

Everybody, everybody wants to love
Everybody, everybody wants to be loved
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh….

My older brother and his wife have been together for 15 years, my sister and her boyfriend have been together for 9 years, my brother and his girlfriend have been together for about 7 years and my youngest brother and his girlfriend are getting married next year.  I’ve had 2 proper boyfriends and both were essentially shits.  There’s been a smattering of almost men and I’ve asked out a fair few male friends who I’ve had crushes on only to be (very politely) turned down.

I go through phases of not particularly being *that* bothered and others of being completely annoyed that I’m on my own.  I know one of the factors is that I don’t go out and meet people much so when I start the new job I’ll be doing that, but in the meantime, I’ve joined an online dating site.

For some reason, this seems to be something that you aren’t meant to talk about – nearly all the profiles you read has something like ‘don’t worry, I’ll tell people we met in a supermarket’ or something else irritating like that.  Why should you have to hide the fact that you’ve intentionally gone out looking for someone tog go out with?  Isn’t it better in a way to try and find someone you might have something in common with than to start a relationship with a random you snogged whilst drunk in the Sound Exchange in Banbury?  (I’ve only once snogged a random when drunk, he was a rugby player at Gatecrasher when I was 18.  He was pretty. I don’t know who he was.)

I’m not overly confident with men, which may seem a bit of a surprise to people who know me in person because I’m quite outgoing in many ways but, as for many, school experiences have scarred me.  I wasn’t the pretty thin girl, I was the girl who was slightly over-weight – probably less so than I imagined at the time – I thought most of my friends were prettier than me (it’s ok, I’ll grow into my face eventually).  I was clever and that puts teenage boys off.  I did go out with my first boyfriend during school but he was a bigger geek than me and not a very nice person, as I’ve mentioned in the past.

I thought that all of that would change at university, the wild parties, all the new people, creating myself a new image 250 miles from home.  There were flaws in this plan however:

1) On my 19th birthday I got really drunk on vodka (Sound Exchange in Banbury again) and put myself off alcohol for about 2 1/2 years.

2) I studied folk music and whilst there were some fun parties it wasn’t exactly the American frat lifestyle that the films would have you believe in.

3) I just wasn’t confident in myself.

I did meet one guy in my first year of uni and we talked about going out, then I found out he had a girlfriend, I broke things off, he said he’d break up with her and came back engaged.  So that went well.

And then…. nothing.  Nothing for bloody years. No interest from anyone (that I’m aware of) so when I met my last boyfriend I thought (again) ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’.  This is not a method that has proved successful so far, so when we broke up I signed up for a dating website.

I didn’t tell anyone, it seemed embarrassing at 28, living in a city that I was quite familiar with to have to go on line to try and find a boyfriend.  I got emailing a couple of people who seemed perfectly nice, but to be honest, I’m not sure my heart was in it.  I was trying to get over the fact that I’d been cheated on and lied to for years, I was a little bit afraid of actually meeting up with people in case I got stood up or rejected or something.  So the result off that early dalliance was actually a lasting relationship, but with a TV show!  One of the guys I was talking to suggested I might like the show Community, which I now love as it’s brought Jeff Winger into my life:

So why am I giving it another go?  I’m in a new city and even if I don’t meet someone to go out with I might make some new friends.

I’ve been chatting to a few people and trying to get a sense of whether we’d get on.  There’s one that I might meet up with in the next month or so if we’re both free and there’s two that I’ve had to say, sorry I don’t think this is going to go further.

The first one was really friendly and enthusiastic, he’s even found this blog and had a read (hello if you still are) and has now discovered a love of folk after asking for recommendations.  I don’t know quite why I wasn’t feeling it, but sent a message saying so and he was really good about it.

The second one was very full on from the start and I wasn’t quite sure, but when he mentioned a couple of things about wanting to have kids reasonably soon and wanting to have his mum (who has cancer) see him meet someone special I had alarm bells going off.  He said he’s got some social anxiety issues and that’s a big thing to admit to a stranger, but that’s the thing that really put me off.  It feels harsh, but I know that’s not something I’m willing to deal with in a relationship right now.  My last boyfriend had social anxiety and it meant that I became more isolated from my friends and not quite myself anymore and it’s taking me a long time to get back to who I think I am or could be.

Let’s have a quote from Grey’s Anatomy, because I always fall back on them…

Dr. Cristina Yang: Burke was… he took something from me. He took little pieces of me – little pieces over time, so small I didn’t even notice, you know he wanted me to be something I wasn’t, and I made myself into what he wanted. One day I was me, Cristina Yang, and then suddenly I was lying for him, and jeopardizing my career, and agreeing to be married and wearing a ring, and being a bride. Until I was standing there in a wedding dress with no eyebrows, and I wasn’t Cristina Yang anymore. And even then, I would’ve married him. I would have. I lost myself for a long time, and now that I’m finally me again, I can’t. I love you. I love you more than I loved Burke. I love you. And that scares the crap out of me, because when you asked me to ignore Teddy’s page, you took a piece of me, and I let you. And that will never happen again.

Well I wasn’t quite in that deep, but you get the idea.

So I emailed the second guy and didn’t hear from him for a couple of days and then got a really long rant asking if I could detail exactly why I didn’t think I was right for him and he used words like ‘Newsflash’ and ‘hot off the press’ and ‘assumptions that every woman has about me’ and ‘would someone give me a ruddy chance!’.  I was a bit surprised but it confirmed my gut feeling that it wasn’t a good idea to keep in contact with him because I’d end up agreeing to meet him because I felt sorry for him and that’s not a good enough reason.   I left it an hour before responding that I thought his reaction was a bit extreme, given that we’d only exchanged about 3 emails each and that if I wasn’t keen to progress things beyond emails then surely it was better to stop it now, before he got more invested.  He’s now deleted his profile, so perhaps I was the only one talking to him. Oh well.

I’m not sure that anything will come from joining the site, but you never know and it gives me something to write about too!

Any other suggestions of what I could try?