How ‘New guy’ went from lust object, to fuck buddy, to out of my life….

Long title, I know.  It should actually read: How ‘New guy’ went from lust object, to fuck buddy, to friend, to me-realising-he’s-a-waste-of-my-time.

Things were going well: the sex was great, and when we were together I felt appreciated and included in his life.  I had been introduced to friends, and as we worked in similar fields it was great to talk to someone who knew what i was rambling on about.  Reading back on this last paragraph, all these qualities, except the ‘sex being great’ quality, identifies a friend.

As the long distance and our work prevented us spending greater periods of time apart, we relied on emails, texts and phone calls for communication.  But even after a while I would go days, sometimes a week or more without hearing from him!  This brought back my old feelings of insecurity and worthlessness.

Thanks to a few wonderful friends, I realised this wasn’t actually a relationship.  If we met up one weekend every two months, that was just friends with benefits.  There was no basis for any real emotions to be going on, and I had entered the realm of friendship (with sex) instead of an intense, passionate relationship.  I cut to the chase and told him that if he wanted to continue seeing me (albeit sparsely) he should make an effort to communicate more.

I got a reply at 1am the next morning saying he didn’t get in from work until 11pm and was tired and going to bed.  How else to take this?  I suggested we remain friends.  Which is what we’d wound our way to being in the end.

However, I was happy that we still chatted.  I was grateful for his advice on how to handle office politics and just the general chit-chat.  I actually thought I’d managed to do something that had previously eluded me – keep a ex as a friend.  All this changed when I told him I was dating someone new.  He went a bit, well….weird and made a sarcastic comment on it and proceeded to compeltely ignore me.

How to lose a guy, even as a friend, in a few easy steps.

The men in my life

Why hello there.

I have returned to England!  I have a tan, of sorts, as much as I can tan really, as my skin is so pale it just normally burns and never tans.  I digress.

France was lovely, but I didn’t have nearly enough time to do everything I wanted to do!  Although, it has given me the travelling bug again.  This was the first holiday I’ve had on my own ever, and also the first holiday I’ve had since before I went to university.  So about three years.  Felt amazing to do what I wanted and not have to consult the family first!  So am contemplating what to do next year after completing the MSc (oh yeah, my university officially sucks.  Will be PhD-ing elsewhere!)

Look at this sea:

Don’t care much for French men (sorry).  The selection that I saw didn’t really do anything for me.  Then again, I am still very much in the stage of comparing every man in existence to Johnny.  He is currently in deepest darkest depths of China climbing mountains again.  I managed to keep up to date with his travels while I was away, which was a bonus, but still not as good as talking to the man himself.  Soon, I hope!  I have so many fantasies running through my head, I’ve just got to pick which one I want to put on here first 😉

The other men in my life are mainly Barry (yes, him) and Guy.  Barry appears to have dragged himself out of his ‘I’ll ignore you constantly’ phase and has actually kept his word about being friends.  We have been having conversations (not all the time, perhaps once a fortnight) of decent lengths, just to catch up, or leaving each other silly messages on facebook.  I am very pleased by this, as I hate not talking to people, unless they absolutely deserve it, obviously, so this has turned out well.  I think, in the end, it took him to get over us than it did me.  But then again he perhaps went about it the correct way….

Which leads me to Guy:  bless him, he still talks to me when he can, dropping me messages just to see how I’m doing.  I do feel bad about how things turned out, but he seems happy enough so I am happy too.

Barry and moving on

I met up with Barry yesterday.  This was after him going ‘I want to see you’ followed by ‘Oh, but I’m busy then, how about then?’ and then canceling.  We just met up for a drink at the pub for a bit to chat about everything.  It was good to see if I still felt anything when I saw him.  I saw him walk into the pub ahead of me, and I did sort of look up and think ‘yeah, he;s good looking’…but then I thought about everything else, the person he is behind the good-looking exterior.  And I didn’t feel anything.  He’s just a friend, a person I knew, I person I thought I knew.

So we talked for about an hour, mostly him talking about himself.  Things don’t change, even when you break up.  He never used to ask me how my day was when we were going out, why change now?  The only thing he asked about was my Oxford application (I’ll mention that later), as sort of a side-note, but he still managed to turn the conversation around to him.

I don’t mind talking to him about his life.  But, call me selfish, I like to talk about myself too, about what’s going on in my life, my problems, not just him, or whoever I’m talking to.  That’s something I picked up on with my time with Barry.  He’s quite willing to talk about himself, his day, how it sucked, how it went great.  But when it comes to anyone else, he doesn’t care.  My nan springs to mind:  when I was dealing with her death and all he could say was ‘I can’t deal with this right now, I’ve got more important things to do, talk to someone else’.  All these things came to mind as we sat there, and I realised something: I deserve better.  Barry’s a nice guy.  Shame that he can’t see past his own nose.

About the Oxford application.  It’s not happening this year.  My tutor wrote a damning reference saying that I should do an MSc first before starting a PhD, so Oxford have ‘advised’ me to stay where I am, and apply next year.  No loss, it’s only a year.

ShyGuy (I really must think of a better name for him!) and I talk daily.  Not in a girlfriend/boyfriend kind of way, and certainly not in lengthy conversations every day.  Somedays it’s just a few texts, asking about my day, sometimes it’s proper conversations on MSN, but just as friends.  I think that perhaps he is a nice guy, but I don’t want to jump to conclusions.  Maybe when we return to uni after summer, we can get to know each other a bit better.  But strictly as friends, to start off with.  I’d rather him know who my closest friends are, and what my favourite colour is by the second date, than what my favourite position is.

Other stuff has been going on in my life, deep, dark, heavy stuff.  I will save that for another post!

Summery-ness

Or lack of it.  We had a nice day, now it’s tipping it down!

The Oxford application is going slowly.  It is very hard, and am stuck on the hardest part (naturally) where I have to write a research proposal.  I know what I want to write, but my brain is in Summer mode, and doesn’t want to string words together.  Also, reference collecting is a very difficult thing to do once term has ended.  I was very excited about the prospect of going to Oxford, I still am, but it’s being overshadowed by the fact that I probably won’t get in.  It’s not pessimism, it’s just being realistic.  Still going to try though, nothing bad ever came from trying.

ShyGuy and I have been keeping in contact despite being hundreds of miles apart and in different countries.  Sometimes it’s just a text a day, sometimes it’s a proper conversation.  But he always asks how my day has been, something Barry didn’t do.  I am being totally selfish here and have decided that there’s no point pursuing something if I’m just going to end up at a different uni to him.  Plus, I think it’s nice just to spend this summer staying in touch and being friends, learning more about each other.  If I stay at my current uni, which isn’t all that bad (tbh, the advantages or staying here far outweigh Oxford, financially, for contacts and PhD projects wise, but Oxford is Oxford), then I have decided we will do things properly and see how it goes.

I have a lot on my plate atm.  I am so busy, busier than I have been during my entire degree I think.  And it the summer holidays!  I’m meant to be resting!  But I have family and friends to see, places to explore (Thursday’s child has far to go….), applications to write, books to read (for pleasure and PhD), shoes to buy, graduations to attend, a job to find, and attempt to get rid of 3 years worth of clothes (I came home to find I had enough to fill three wardrobes).

Don’t even get me started on sex toys/books/bondage stuff etc.  I had enough to fill a whole suitcase (and mine aren’t small).  Another problem was finding somewhere to keep them all at home.  I don’t think my mom would question it if she found any of them.  Well….not all of them.  I think she may look at me funny if she found the double ended dildo.  So putting them somewhere out of sight but somewhere I can get to easily if the moment arising that I need one of them was quite a strategic event.

Enough rambling!  I have a message from ShyGuy to reply to and an application to fill in (boooo)

Results day

I GOT A 2:1! Am so ecstatic.  I even got a text from Barry congratulating me and saying he’d like to see me before the end of term.

This is me, being ecstatic

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

Am also jumping around a lot, causing injury as I crashed into the kitchen door

So yeah….Undergrad degree all done!

Pole dancing and men

One of my male friends has just discovered I do pole dancing. I don’t know how he’s gone so long without knowing this, as I thought all my friends knew that that’s where I disappear off to a few times a week. But he’s been reading my facebook profile and sent me a message going something along the lines of ‘You do pole dancing?! That’s so HOT!’

I have suggested he come with me to a lesson, as men are allowed to the lessons. But (and I’m not being sexist) it’s not really a male dance form. There are certain moves that would, erm, hurt their tackle. Even if they do it right, it’s gonna hurt.

Anywho, back to my mate. I’ll call him Shawn. We had a ‘thing’ last year, and by thing I mean I was drunk, he was drunk, we kissed and then he kinda followed me around like a lovesick puppy for months, even though I made it clear I wasn’t interested in him in that way. I felt very bad, I know it was only a kiss, but I was newly single and realised that if I wanted a snog, I should’nt have picked one of my mates. I tried to be as unbitchy as possible. When I started going out with Barry we sort of got back to the normal friends stage. I do hope he doesn’t start looking at me like some sort of lust object again.

But, at least I know the affect pole dancing has on men. If me and Barry ever split, I know just what to say to men 😉

Oh, and whilst on the Barry front…..dissertation are ruining my relationship! Would it kill him to tell me before 9pm that he’s not coming round cause he’s working on his dissertation?!

The end of two friendships in one day

Ok, this has nothing to do with sex or my relationship with Barry, stuff like that. Well, it partly does.

Here’s the thing. My ‘friend’ who I shall call Lucy has never liked Barry. She has never met him. This may seem weird, that my best mate and my boyfriend have never met, but because Lucy lives back home, and Barry lives with me at uni…well, they never really cross paths. I haven’t seen the need to, Barry has met all my friends at uni, and I’ve met his at uni. And I’m happy with him so surely this should be enough? But no. Because she hasn’t met him, our relationship is doomed and I should dump him NOW. She text me today asking if I’d dumped him yet. Wtf?! I then informed her that he’s going to a different uni to me for the next 4 years and we’re hoping to do the whole long-distance thing. Instead of being like every single one of my mates, who have said ‘yeah, it’ll work, you two are so good together, you’ll last the distance’ she just turned around and said ‘oh, well, that’s it then. Might as well get rid now and find yourself someone else’. Now, I have never EVER cristised her choice of boyfriends, and have always been there for her when they’ve broken down. Hell, I even held her after driving home from uni one night to find her beaten up on the kitchen floor by her boyfriend. And even though I told her she should go to police and she didn’t I stood by her. So now I get this, just because me and Barry aren’t living together or talking about getting married, just because Barry just happens to have gotten into the best goddamn university in the country. I really can’t be arsed any more. To add insult to injury, when I told her that my nan had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, all she could say was ‘oh’.

Another friendship I wish to end: my housemate from last year who is now living back home. There were 3 of us, and we try to meet up every so often, just to catch up and have a gossip. We were due to meet up last Saturday, and whereas E managed to trek cross country to meet up, J, who had to travel the shortest distance, cancelled last minute saying she had a flat tyre. Fair enough, she couldn’t get it fixed until the afternoon, so couldn’t meet us in time. So she said she’d come and see me this weekend, due to the whole situation I’m dealing with, with my nan having cancer and all. Imagine my annoyance when I discover she blantantly LIED about the tyre, she just didn’t want to meet up, and ‘forgot’ she’d said she’d come see me this weekend. She is another one of these people who, despite me thinking she can do better than the guy she’s with, I’ve kept my mouth shut, cause she seems happy, and I’ve always been there for her to take her to the station so she can go home to see said boyfriend cause he couldn’t be arsed to drive up himself to see her, and I was there at the station waiting to pick her up when she got back. I was there when her dog got put down. Where is she now when I need her? Sorry, got a dinner engagement with friends that I arranged AFTER I said I’d come up and see you.

Generally pissed off with both of them.

It’s sad that it takes something like this to make me realise that some people just aren’t worth me spending my time on them, whereas there’s friends who I’ve had for years that I don’t see enough. Time to re-address my friends list, don’t you think?