The Relationship Phobe: Why I Shouldn’t Be Allowed To Use Email Unsupervised

So bad luck everyone but I’m using this week’s column as something of a confessional. I did something that I really shouldn’t have. Now don’t worry I haven’t killed anyone or stolen anything, but it ranks up there on the things that you really shouldn’t do.

Let me set the scene, it’s been a tough day I’m a tad fed up and begin thinking back to the “good old days” of my past where everything was lovely and I was as happy as a bean. Yes you know what’s coming. I decided to try and recreate this “good old days” feeling by getting in touch with one of my exes. Now for some of you who keep in touch with your exes this would be easy. Not so with this one. I had no contact details at all (this really should have been a sign it was a good idea) so there was going to be be no popping a name into an email and pressing send.

Cue me not giving up on the idea but instead spending the next hour trying desperately to remember the password for a now defunct email account and then doing random ridiculous searches trying to find her on the internet. And damn you internet the worst thing that could possibly have happened, happened. I found it. By now I really should have come to my senses, but no I then proceeded to write her a nice little email and press the send button.

And just as I did the horror of what I just did hit me. What on earth did I do just that for? This was truly not a good idea. Now when I thought back to the “good old days” all that I could remember were all the very good reasons we weren’t together or in touch any more, and yes I am about to put you through what is essentially a very dull relationship, but fear not I’m not just going to drone on about it like everyone else I am going to immerse you into the emotional highs and lows of the relationship by adding a musical soundtrack to it.

And so I suppose the best place would be to start would be well at the beginning, which would see the much younger (I would say less mature, but I’m not actually convinced I’ve grown up at all in the last 10 years) me doing that ridiculously stupid thing of ruining a perfectly good friendship by falling in love with them. Cue me being really rather angsty, not quite sure what to do, deciding I will tell her, deciding I won’t tell her, getting annoyed when she went off with other people and basically being a living example of Celine’s “Alone” (I say Celine’s over Heart’s because I feel I was probably during this period like Celine under the illusion that I was really cool when I wasn’t… )

And well obviously for the fact I’m writing about a relationship I did finally get round to the “I love you. Do you love me?” conversation (well maybe I was a bit more subtle about that… though actually probably not) and for what is not a frequent occurrence in my love life she actually seemed to quite like the idea of us moving from being a me and her to an us too!

Cue the clock striking soppy o’clock and us being that really annoying happy couple that makes you want to be sick, something equally well represented by Celine Dion’s “Dreaming Of You” which are something of a musical representation of Bette Porter’s (aka Jennifer Beals) puppy dog eyes (don’t worry I’m stopping with Celine now…):

(WARNING: This Loving Annabelle video contains some nudity so is probably NSFW (not suitable for work) unless you work in a strip club, however when put to the vote by Queeried Twitter followers for some reason the result was 100% in favour of the Loving Annabelle clip over a less risque one… really can’t imagine why..)

Right so now stop watching the sex scene on repeat and get back to paying attention to my relationship. So we’ve done the soppy stage, however with me in the relationship that’s not going to last long, and so soon it’s not long before I’m starting to feel our cute little arguments aren’t so cute anymore, and that perhaps her previous girlfriends weren’t so wrong when they told her she was too controlling. Cue me feeling the relationship is all going a bit Anastacia “Left Outside Alone” .

Please note I am now at the point in the relationship where I’m beginning to fling my hand to my forehand Michael Hutchence style in desperation of what to do… (I should perhaps admit right now that I have over the years made the “I am the victim in all this and how could they be so evil to a poor soul like me” role totally my own. Really it’s so convincing half the time even I start believing it’s true..)

So sadly my hand flinging makes no impact whatsoever and essentially now we’re on a one way street to the end of the relationship. She continues with the wishing I did more of this, that and the other whilst I now fully immersed in my perhaps not as innocent as I like to believe victim role am feeling all emotionally battered and bruised and tell her whilst I’m willing to do a bit of this, I just can’t do “that” and “the other” because that isn’t how I am and she needs to think about whether it’s really me she wants to be with.

Obviously this would be an excellent time for her to play her Get Out of Jail free card and leave, but oh no we’re a lesbian couple so that’s not going to work. We have to do it by the rule book and sign up for the long painful haul where one of us either cuts the other one up with a machete or well basically we split up (I will admit the latter tends to be the more usual outcome…).

Cue the ridiculous part of any doomed relationship where any person outside the relationship knows this fully well isn’t going to work, but both people in it are convinced that if the other person just suddenly changed their personality radically and basically became a carbon copy of themselves everything would be alright. We are now at the Levi Kreis “Nothing At All” (which should also include a bit of sliding down a wall in dramatic despair whilst listening to it to really get you in the mood.)

Except let’s admit it, the keep working at it thing never really works does it. All that actually does happen is both people get more and more angry with each other, say more and more hurtful things and start believing that the other is not really putting the time into the relationship that they are. It’s “Lay All Your Love On Me” time people (You know where we’re still smiling at each other but throwing daggers at each other with our eyes.)

And then it descended into a farce where the only reason we’re together is obviously for research purposes to make sure we build up a library of despairing and angry feelings that will ensure all the songs we write are guaranteed smash hits (the only flaw to this plan is that neither of us are songwriters…) and so began, amongst other things, a battle of playing frankly mean songs at each other to try and get our point across on how hurt we are. The only downside though is whilst I do admit to having used this tactic since I found myself at a rather big disadvantage in this relationship, mainly because this bit of game playing was new to me and whilst she seemed to have a music library full of angry / I want out of this relationship songs (you know Kelly Clarkson “Because Of You” kinda of stuff… though sadly I have to admit I’m so old that wasn’t even out then..) mine were quite the opposite and would appear to start off in the right direction but by the second verse would have gone all soppy and romantic and really weren’t the direction I was going for at all!!

And so finally the day everyone wished had come months before came. Fireworks night. Except it was in the middle of Summer and there weren’t any fireworks, but it still was a spectacular occasion (though maybe not for small children as there was a tiny bit of cursing) as doors slammed, accusations flew and well basically we split up totally and utterly sure we never wanted to set eyes on each other again.  And we both went off thinking each other had some major personality and attitude problems… all a bit Pete Murray “So Beautiful” then…

And goodbye it really was. We didn’t speak after that and it’s been like that ever since. Well until this older and a tiny bit more mature and less grudge holding fool suddenly had a loony moment and decided she was going to wipe the slate clean, forgive all the fools of her past and email her.

Well I can tell you that moment soon passed, every annoying thing about her popped right back into my head and then I started panicking about the email… but it looked like it was all alright. A good few weeks passed, nothing happened and I forgot all about my moment of madness. Phew!

That was until last week when a name popped up in my email inbox that I didn’t want to see. Hers. She’d replied. Drat. Now I’ve lost that unforgiving feeling I had and have no idea what to do. Maybe I could go down the email virus excuse route and pretend it sent everyone an email about smoothing things over…. Yep that’s not going to work is it…

Photo credit: Lel4nd