I'd hate to be in your position....

WARNING! I wasn’t in a great mood when I wrote this. This is something of a rant. Apologies.

‘I’d hate to be in your position’. That’s what one of my colleagues announced as I sat chatting to a friend about the date she’d lined up for herself at the weekend (it went very well too – just in case you were wondering…)
‘Oh yeah?’ I replied as I looked up from my (interrupted) conversation. ‘What position is that then?’ ‘Ah you know….Back on the dating scene and all…Particularly for you two….with kids and exes and all. It must get a lot harder as you get older…’
Gee thanks! That’s the sort of vote of confidence I could do with right now. NOT. Why don’t people talk to me about how exciting meeting all these new people could be? How I might finally wind up with my soul-mate? (I don’t really believe in soul-mates, so that might be tricky…But you know what I mean…) The doom and gloom story, that’s peddled out to me with alarming regularity. I sometimes think some of my colleagues think I’ve been some sort of nun since Husband No2 vanished. Not true. I also think they believe me to be somewhat stupid.
‘Have you tried on-line dating Michelle? Something like Match.com? I've seen their advert on TV - it looks lovely!’ No….I’m a reasonably intelligent woman who is not living under a rock somewhere and who has been mostly sort-of-single for the last three years... ‘OF COURSE I HAVE!’ I always reply. I just hate it!
‘But my friend’s sister’s friend met their long-term love/live-in partner/husband on Dating Direct/Match/PoF! You just never know….!’ they add wisely, as if to solve all my problems. Really?? Well for every lovely, happy story (and yes, I even personally know a few), I can give you 200 horror stories. 200 stories that, in a good frame of mind would make you howl with laughter. But God, in a poor frame of mind, could make you reach for the razor blades.

I’m pretty sick of the platitudes to be honest. The ‘you’ll find someone when you least expect it’, the ‘you’re a great catch – any man would be lucky to have you’ and my personal favourite; ‘it’ll happen when you’re not looking’. (How the hell does that work?? Trust me, if you’re single, you’re looking). They’re all bullsh1t. And the fact that they’re usually dished out by people who have been married for…oh, around 100 years doesn’t help. What the hell do they know? And yes, I realise that people are only being kind, trying to boost my confidence and make me feel slightly less of a social misfit. After all, they don’t know that I have a near pathological fear that I will die alone (and in true Bridget Jones style, be eaten by my very large and rather haughty cat). They don’t know that I really don’t deal in platitudes (particularly when they’re prefaced with the ‘poor you – it must be awful for you’ type bollocks).

Now I don’t want you reading this and thinking ‘Oh dear God, she’s desperate’. I’m not. There are things I could’ve taken further but chose not to, just as there are things (well….actually…just the one) that I’d like to have run with to see what happened, but as I’ve learnt at my cost over the years, you can’t make someone want you. I’d been in relationships in one way or another continuously from the age of 16 until three years ago, so I’m pretty sure I can be in another. It’s just that I don’t want to live out yet another platitude; ‘you have to kiss a lot of frogs Michelle, until you get that prince’. What a pile of crap! I’m pretty sure I don’t have to date a load of losers to find someone I actually want to be with for a prolonged period of time. I think, after all this time, that I’ll know whether the man in question floats my boat or not. (So to speak…)

So there you have it. Rant over. Being single sometimes sucks. Being single sometimes rules. But if you’re going to talk to me about it, please don't tell me how you're soooooo glad you're not me and also please remember; I deal in honesty – not platitudes.

Phew! I’ll shut up now.