I seem to write a lot about relationships, it's not intentional, it's just the stuff I struggle to understand the most. I can normally figure people out pretty quickly (some women obviously excluded, but they don't even understand themselves), and give me long enough with most physical problems and I'll get there, but the most intrinsic people problem - it still vexes me, I am most vexed. I probably just need more experience - or who knows....maybe there is no answer...???? nooooooooooooo, can't be true, woulnd't fit in with how I know it must work! People can figure out anything.

Break-ups

As far as I have experienced, there are several stages to a break-up. I also mean to include the prior stages. A sure sign of an impending break-up is a serious dry spell in the sack - this is not me just being a guy and I can prove it...the dry spell is also coupled with the fact that one of the couple, or both is really not fussed. Around this time there can also be a sense that everything the other person does is irritating, more so than normal and you realise this. I know there are other signs, but I'm talking about a proper relationship, so avoiding each other doesn't count. These 2 are the sure signs the end is near and not only that, but it's also past the point of fixability.

Now, moving on to the post break-up phase. Once you 2 have finally got around to severing the continuing arguments, however you've done it, there is an immediate sense of regret. But since you are still quite angry at each other or/and upset about it, this feels like it should. this doesn't have to last for all that long, it depends on how you've split and which side you may have ended up on. But anyway, this feeling is followed immediately by a sense of freedom. something you haven't felt since some way into the previous relationship (when you were lost in the other person and didn't notice it slip away...). The freedom is overwhelming, often leading to regrettable occurrences - which you can put down to whatever seems like a good excuse at the time. Now you really can do whatever you want (and not feel guilty).

The freedom-feeling can last a long time, it all depends. This is when how much you cared for the other person decides how you feel. You go one of 2 ways - either you start to feel lonely and begin to reconsider how things turned out or (and this can be mistaken for the first option - or is it the other way round?) you begin to really miss the lost lover and regret the way it ended up. The trick to telling the difference between the 2 is if you just want someone there or if you want them back. It can take a lot of figuring out. Typically going back rarely works, if ever, and you only really forget about how you felt about the other person when you start to care for another.

On the major plus side, option 2, although a killer and torturous barsteward, does eventually degrade into option 1, so it all fades - which is the time thing - but it's up to you if you forgive, sometimes that's too much to ask, if you have to ask for it you should know you won't get it.

Gettin over someone

No, not just getting over being dumped....it's about how to deal with them being gone, it being over and what the hell to do with yourself in the mean time. I've enquired a lot about this, no-one has an answer. Everyone has their own trick though. Some eat, some cry, others sleep around (the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else) you can of course bury yourself in something like work or hobbies or friends or booze. Then again I've been told "time is a healer" to which I always seem to reply "Time heals all wounds, except the deepest", which I think is the whole point. Time heals wounds, precisely, if you cut yourself, it gets better, fair enough, also things like people dying, that hurts, hell yeah, but you just have to accept it, no matter how unfair, there is nothing you can do about it. When you split with someone it's far more torturous, as even though things can be irrevocable it's human nature to hope for something, this is just a taunt. All that assuming you subscribe to option 2, above. It's also why it hurts when you hear they are doing well or have met someone new (god forbid it's someone you know, or you get the jealousy, depends on the situation though and how you handle that). So it comes back to the last point above, find someone new, it's the easiest and probably the only worthwhile way. Sadly the first person you find tends to be the rebound person, only a bad thing. But you need to have one, or you'll never know if you're with them for the right reasons.

Why won't you listen??

I know I argue a fair amount, call it "constructively discuss", but that aside, I'm not often so far wrong. Really, I think about everything enough, and I'm not stupid, so I do get the answers quite often. So why does no-one listen to me? I couldn't count the endless number of times when exactly what I'd predicted would happen, does. And it's not cos the number is 0. Seriously, what do I have to do to get people to trust me? Ok, so trusting me and believing me are 2 separate things, but tbh I think I'm worth both. I've forgotten more secrets than I can remember and I have been there and done that with so many people situations. Sure I probably got it wrong at the time, but come on, that doesn't mean I didn't 'get it' afterwards! So why do so many dis-regard my sage-like advice? heh. Why do some listen at all? Who knows; a better question is why do I care? Is it because I'm desperately looking for some validation in the form of trust? or is cos I just need some people to listen, for my own ego, or self esteem or something? Maybe it's a Freudian thing, I never got paid enough attention as a kid and now seek it from anyone who will listen? nah, I ignore people too. It's a sin. I suppose a good question is why do I feel like I have something worthwhile to say? That, I truly don't know. I just know that there are frequently situations where I can see the outcome long before it reaches climax, and had they listened they would have done different. Of course I also am witness to situations where if I'd done what I'd told myself, then I would have ended up better off - like staying away from certain people I know will hurt me. But don't do as I do, do as I say! That's what they say, isn't it?

The single life

Now here’s a question: how easy is it to get stuck in the singles way of thinking? Enjoying yourself - doing what you want, when you want - is, of course, the entirely appealing nature of not being tied down. But what happens when you’ve been single for a long time, you’ve gotten used to it and you find yourself in a non-single situation? How long is too long? How easy is it to break certain habits? I suppose this question extends to living on your own – you get into your own groove, with your own (largely self serving) routines. As much as living with someone else (we’re talking partner here, not flatmate) gets you into a certain frame of mind, which can easily be reverted back to a single life – can it go the other way as easily? I somehow doubt it. But it’s something to look forward to, I suppose. From past experience, I really shouldn’t worry. These kinds of alterations in lifestyle seem to happen quite naturally. My concern is probably founded in the fact that I’ve not been single this long, in a long time. I’m getting to really enjoy those habits significant others really do dislike e.g. leaving stuff everywhere, not doing the washing up as soon as the plate hits the work-surface, squeezing the toothpaste from where ever I deem fit, toilet seat lives in the ‘up’ position, guys mags are allowed (anywhere), I can listen to whatever music I like/watch whatever I like at silly o’clock and gawking at females is permitted at anytime of day and any location. Just the start of the list, I’d imagine. I understand none of these are significant revelations, mostly just guy stuff, but still they are the things you miss getting away with, when you’re not single. They are also the kind of things that really do become innate in your behaviour, well ok, it’s not that serious, but they are the sort of things that drive someone else nuts and you don’t even realise your doing half of them. I should work on flat tidiness etc. just for myself, but I’m always gonna be behind on the washing front, that’s never going to change. The others are just a matter of compromise, I guess.

What should you do?

So, I find myself in domestic bliss. I have no dependants, no one to consider other than myself and nothing binding me to anyone. I just have to maintain the monotony of urban life. All that is really asked of me is attend my job, see to my domestic tasks and maintain whatever lifestyle I can afford. Now affording a lifestyle is a challenge in itself, but financial concerns are here to stay. Attending the job attempts to combat the lifestyle issue and is something of a given, so those 2 are almost the same issue really – making and spending money. Now, the domestic issue; why is it such a drag? All the domestic chores are just that, chores. They rarely have an instant tangible benefit; people in general have issue with anything lacking any instant impact. This applies to everything, maintenance of anything from your car to your house to your money or even your own body. There is no sudden improvement or change, so these things always take a lower priority than they should, such is the way of things. If I dwell on those examples a little though, I might make my point. Take the car example, you are eventually forced to maintain the car to a minimum standard through things like the MoT testing etc. so that one is out of your hands; although I’m willing to bet you probably don’t maintain the car much further past the minimum. Moving on to the more important matters; in general (this may be a social/cultural issue) people do not look after themselves. I’ve noticed the recent marketing drive of the gyms and fitness centres, but if you look at the attendance levels, although they are enough to allow the businesses to survive, they are hardly encouraging. Back to the original point….all the domestic things, like tidying, cleaning, washing, ironing…the things you are loathed to spend your precious free time on, the things you really should do. How do you get away with doing as little as possible, in the same vein of thought as maintaining the car to a healthy but minimum standard? Is it a skill, to know what you can and can’t get away with doing? Or is it a case of having to lump it? Is this the one case where there isn’t really a path of least resistance? Probably; they are just annoying little tasks when it comes down to it. I tend to just do the full shebang, get it all out of the way in a big batch. Some people prefer the little at a time approach. Meh, personal indifference - evidently.

Who are you looking for?

I don’t believe in love at first sight, how can anyone? Lust at first sight, attraction, intrigue, all of these things, yeah, sure I can buy that – having experienced them. But the whole idea is that you ‘fall in love’…how can that happen just by a glance? You don’t even know the person. If it can happen then I’ve fallen in love ten times this week. But that’s more of a quirky proverb than the aim of this topic. Is there someone for everyone? Does ‘the one’ exist; you know, the one you’re meant to spend the rest of forever with…? It looks like there might just be, the chances of you meeting them at the right time, or in the right circumstances seem very, very slim, but quite a few folk have managed it, so the conclusion: there must be more than one person you could end up with. Unless you believe in fate? I believe in luck, but that’s something different, something almost mathematical. Fate is at odds with how I see the world. Some kind of plan? Unlikely. Coincidence is a common occurrence and things seem a lot less coincidental if you break them down. I think the one you end up with, is the person who can put up with as many of your imperfections as you can theirs. I heard a soppy quote that backs this up nicely: “you like someone for their good qualities but you love them for their flaws”. Soppy as hell, horribly sentimental, but it sounds nice and is easier to use than explaining further ;-)

And now you’re even older

To tackle the loneliness subject, I do begin to wonder – do your chances of finding ‘the one’ diminish with age? As far as I can see (I agree that may not be very far) as you get older there are more people (in theory) to choose from i.e. age becomes less of an issue. To explain, when you’re 18, you would only really be looking at people a couple of years either side of your own age (legal reasons not withstanding), but if you’re 35, conceivably you could be looking at people around a decade either side of your own age. That’s a lot more people on offer. Until you then consider that as time passes, more of the available ‘pool’ of people disappear as a result of either death or relationships. I’m sure some statistically obsessed academic must have made a rough calculation of how this works – they’ve calculated the likelihood of life on another planet, surely this must be simpler? To tackle why you’d limit the age range of those you’re interested in, in the first place, it’s fairly easy – generation gap: You are only ever going to last with someone you relate to; can an 18 yr old, really relate to, say a 30yr old? Or vice versa? Likely not. There is a big difference in how you think when you’re 18 compared to how (I’d imagine) you think when you’re 30. Even now, I know (and I’m only half way there) that I view the world and the people in it quite differently to how I did when I was 18, not even considering the vast changes in my priorities. I also understand a lot more about how things and people work, in the world. When it comes down to it, you do a lot of growing in your late teens/early 20’s, even after you’ve grown up physically. Once you’re out of this age range, things start to open up (relationship wise) and so does the range of people you can relate to. Maybe I’m just cynical? I digress, again. Does the pool grow, shrink or stay the same? You could say that since you invariably meet more people as you get older that the pool must grow, on a personal level. It’s probably a function dependant on cultural conditions too, as we’ve seen from the divorce rate; people’s ideas of how long things have to last are changing, along with how permanent that whole marriage thing really is. At least I know that if you don’t get on well enough with someone, it doesn’t matter what the age difference is, you’re not going to last.

Enough with relationships

Generalisations

Throughout this monologue type deal of a website, I’ve made a lot of generalisations. It’s the only way you (I) can sum up, or even explain most principles/ideas/thoughts. I don’t mean for it to sound brash, rash or unthoughtout, but sometimes it is, so it just comes out like that. Erm, yeah, what I meant to say was that I appreciate the scenarios I use to illustrate these things are usually simplistic or general, but how else do you exemplify them? There seems little point in using a specific, well defined scenario to describe a general idea or principle. You’d end up just defining that explicit situation, besides, generalisations allow me to leave out naming and shaming and to extend the implications beyond my experience. Well that is my intention anyway.

Muzak

I heard one of those cheesy TV album adverts some time ago, for some reason I think it was for “The Album” (compilation thingamabob), but I may be wrong, anyway the tag line was “the soundtrack to you life”. I thought that actually summed up my music collection quite nicely. How frequently do you hear a song that remind you a specific incident or person or even just a time period when the track had some special meaning – then again it could just have been played a lot near the time. But still, that little quote suits perfectly the way music works. I can actually see the advantage in buying that kind of compilation too: it has the songs you hate as well. They typically remind you of parts of your life as well, but you’d never have them in your collection!

I also started thinking about making a compilation, in the same vein as John Cusack in ‘High Fidelity’, where he describes using someone else’s art to convey a message. In truth I thought about all the times I’ve tried making a decent compilation for myself and failed because I’d either only put my favourite tracks on and it got boring or the mix of tracks is too diverse and you don’t get into a rhythm when listening. It turns out that it’s not such an easy thing to get right. So if it’s such a task to get a small number of varied tracks to mesh, how would you do it for your whole life? It’d be a nice think to hear, seeing the progression of tastes changing, along with every memory triggered by each song.

I think it’s odd how much music defines our lives, it doesn’t really, it’s just always there in the background, the same way that in films it doesn’t affect the actual plot or content but adds to the experience never the less. That’s why it’s such a good way of putting it – life’s soundtrack. The coolest thing being that everyone’s soundtrack is different, even if there is commonality it means something different to everyone.

Technobable 

Is the proliferation of technology a good thing? There are many scenarios where technology is responsible for bringing people closer together and aiding social interaction, but what about the broader impact – ultimately it causing distance and less physical interaction? I suppose it comes down to a simple point – at one time if you wanted to interact with someone you HAD to go and see them, now you can simply pick up the phone, or get on the internet. But does this change the ‘quality’ of the interaction or indeed the frequency? Can you compare physically seeing someone with a conversation via txt msg and because you can simply give them a call, does that mean you interact with them more often? It’s a yes and no type answer, for me anyway; there are some people I know whom I wouldn’t be able to interact with at all, were it not for technology, but I would trade it for being able to see them. The real question is: would I see more or hear less from my acquaintances, without our technological sub-culture?

People are lazy, it’s human nature, and the path of least resistance is the most commonly trodden. So I think I would suffer, were it not for the ease of modern living. C’est la vie.

Closeness

 How well do you really know anyone anyway? In the big rant, I complained that few people know me. But I’ve considered what it actually means, to know someone. You obviously never know what someone is thinking, unless they tell you (one way or another). It all comes down to how much time you spend with someone, I fear. If you know someone’s stories, their habits, their preferences, what type of a person they are, their opinions, I think that’s about as good as you’re going to get. In fact is that not all there is to know about someone? Add in there ‘desires’ and there can’t be much else. All that stuff is what you get out of spending time with someone, nothing more. Depressing though it may seem, if you spend enough time with someone, all of this stuff wears off on you, whether you like it or not. The only thing that seems to separate friendships and acquaintances from significant others, is the level of feelings you share, although I agree there is probably some commonality.

And now it comes down to the annoying truth…growing apart. Sure, I know some distance can make you appreciate your relationship with people (I mentioned growing fungus before), but if it’s a progressive/constant thing, then there’s little you can do about it, you will simply lose touch.

Multi-tasking

Now this one goes out to all the women who seem it’s their appointed duty to rip into guys, cos someone once told them that their sex could multi-task and mine can’t. Right, for a start, how can you concentrate on more than one thing at once? By definition you can only concentrate on one thing, period, it’s what that means. And as such, people (of either sex) who do more than one thing at once, are (by definition) not concentrating on what they are doing. And what happens when you don’t concentrate? You don’t do tasks as well. So what’s the whole big deal, then? By trying to tell me I can’t do as many things as badly as you, all at the same time, not only being a generalisation, doesn’t seem like much of a bragging point to me, or am I wrong? Anyway, I don’t have much of a problem ‘multi-tasking’ but I tend to prefer to concentrate on something of importance, than half concentrate on 5 things at the same time, this might be a valid gender observation. For the record I can watch tv and iron as well as talk while driving, doesn’t mean I’m doing any activity as well as I could if I were concentrating, does it? Then again I also tend to juggle doing about 5 things at once, do you call that ‘parallel-tasking’? No, I’m not a geek having 3 monitors on the go, it’s not only because I can, but also because I have too many things happening at once! Grrrrr  :oP

Thoughts on veggies 

This one isn’t going to be popular, but what is the deal with vegetarians? Now I know the whole ‘killing something for food’ argument, but I don’t buy it, not one bit. If there is a more robust argument, let me know. I get the vegan philosophy, it’s fairly clean cut – if it can move, don’t eat it. But the vegieburgers ideals are more of a challenge to fathom, in the most patronising sense they seem to not eat things that are furry (dare I say cute) and this seems to be where the entire ideal stems from! So fish, yeah, they aren’t furry – cool, get ‘em frying! But cows…nah, they look kinda cute, stupid, but totally defenceless…awww, we couldn’t eat them – that would be wrong?!? And there lies the crux of it. If it has a face, you’re meant to feel some sort of guilt, I wonder if you get many vegetarian naturists? I mean since they are so against what is a primary biological function/need, how could they? Lol. So I don’t see the point in vegetarianism, indeed I find it a bit pointless, ignoring my occasional desire for red meat, the dietary needs speak for themselves. Yes we’re ignoring my lack of sufficient desire/commitment* (delete as appropriate) as well, at this point.

Maybe the whole ‘don’t kill your food’ thing is just a cover story, maybe it’s actually some kind of proof of spirit/will-power? Where it exists in organised religion, I can understand it, ok - I can understand it as much as the need for organised religion in the first place, but aside from that here – have some lovely BBQ’d ribs, a venison burger and some stir fried chicken….mmmmmmm – you know you want to.

Yargh 

Oowar me ‘arties, for I cud tell ye stories that wud blo that wind right out ye sales and knock ye clean aff ye feet, yarg. For I’ve seen the bedevilment thou canst be done to ye fellow man, ain’t no evil on this fair ‘arth ain’t done by none but men. Yarg indeed, me fellow traveller. Twas known to me long afore ye set foot in this land, the evils ye can see plain as the eye. Ooowar