I Don't Want A Relationship

I don’t want a relationship, they hold you back. I want a best friend I can sleep with and make love to, hustle with, travel with, shop with, go out and about with and live with. I want a partner in crime, a life partner. Someone that I can laugh with and build with. Somebody that I can trust with my heart, my money and my life. Somebody I’m not afraid to lose because I know they will always be there. Relationships just aren’t for me but a partnership, I’ll take that any day.

I probably should have tried harder to stay married. But my ex and I did not want the same things, and to add to that he became physically abusive when he had too much to drink. I was not prepared to stay and be the punch bag that he needed to take his frustrations out on. So I left and got divorced. I opted to raise my son on my own after finally realising that I was not going to get the financial support I needed from my ex-husband after our divorce. After the divorce I was much too interested in my own career and where it was going. I wanted to build myself up in life and give my son the stability and financial security he needed. I was on an express train all by myself. I did not even notice that no one else was on it, and I didn’t care back then, although I do now. I’d like someone on that train with me, it’s not going quite as fast. It’s going at a good clip, but there’s room for someone else on board. There never was before. The relationships I had after my divorce were really empty one’s. No one was on board for the long haul. My interest in finding someone for the long haul eventually dwindled. Probably what I regret most now is that I didn’t put any time and effort into finding someone else. Actually, in retrospect, I did try a few years ago. I did and said something that ended the relationship, to this day I am still not quite sure what that was, only some idea. One minute I thought I was in a relationship and the next I was out in the cold. One day I woke up and found myself all by myself, and there’s no one in the station wanting to get on the train anymore. I’ve just been flying by too fast. I don’t want to end up alone one day, when I am really old, but it could happen. I didn’t stop at enough stations and let anyone else on board. By the time I figured that out, well, it’s probably too late to change that now. I have raised my son, I am in pursuit of a new venture, but if I am all alone, I’m not sure the accomplishments mean that much. Perhaps it’s not too late for someone to get on that train with me. I guess I just have to slow down long enough for someone to get on board. Perhaps I need to change tactics and instead of being on the train, perhaps I should get off the train! I just have to believe that things will turn out okay for me and in my life someday. I ask myself what does “turning out okay” mean to me? My answer would have to be that I just want to be happy, peaceful and have no big drama in my life. Sharing my life with someone, IF it’s the right person, not if it isn’t. I don’t want to do that anymore. Good health obviously, but that is kind of an old fart answer. Mostly just being happy and loving someone and being loved by him, and feeling good in my own skin. I also realise that life never happens on the schedule you want, and I think I am kind of past all that now. Why would I say that you may wonder, well it’s simple really. Let’s face it, women my age are not a high commodity on the market. Men my age want to go out with women much younger. No one’s looking for a forty seven year old woman, except maybe ninety-year-old guys! The eighty-year olds are taking Viagra and also looking for twenty-five-year-olds. That’s simple fact. I just don’t have a lot of illusions left about it. I used to, but I don’t anymore. I used to go to psychics and they  would tell me that I would meet a terrific man. I think they just said that to give me hope. It never happened, or hasn’t in a hell of a while. I guess I have also realised that it is no fun in getting old. You just cannot lie to the camera anymore, although God knows I try. I also find myself exercising a lot harder than I used to. The vanity of it is a little embarrassing, and I think my son thinks I’m pretty silly. It just makes me feel better if I look a little younger. I actually don’t know why we are so obsessed with age, but we are. It’s hard to live up to any age. I know thirty-year-old women who feel old.  Someone suggested the other day that I should perhaps look at a younger guy. Like thirty five or twenty five. Demi Moore set the trend for that. I actually know a fifty-five-year-old woman who has a twenty-five-year old boyfriend. She says she loves it. I would feel stupid. I have never seen a boy that age who appealed to me. I like grown-ups, and I think that would just make me feel older. I don’t want to sleep with a man young enough to be my child. Besides, I want to share common life experiences, similar points of view and concerns. What do you have in common with someone that age? That’s really about sex, not love. I may be old fashioned, but I’d like to have both. And if I were going to sacrifice something, it would be sex, not love.  In that respect I am true to myself and always have been. I know who I am and what I want and what I am willing to sacrifice. I don’t think it is easy to find anyone at any age anymore. Look at all the people in their twenties and thirties trying to find dates on the internet. That already tells you something, that it’s not as easy to find people as it used to be. I don’t know why, but I think it’s true. People are better informed, more particular. They also know themselves better. Women don’t just want a guy to pay the bills, and they are not willing to put up with anything to get it, they want a partner. That narrows the field considerably. There are always the guys out there who throw the balance off, dating twenty-year-olds, which leaves the women in their early, mid and late forties, even early fifties, with no one to go out with, except some Neanderthal who’s watching TV and drinking beer and does not know who the hell he is or care. So what is the answer? I don’t know what the answer is. I suspect I will probably find the right person by accident one day. And ten to one it will be someone I never thought it would be, or what I actually wanted. I think we have to stay open to what comes along. I think that is the real secret to life, staying open, interested, excited, learning about life, trying new things, meeting new people. Whatever happens, have a good time, and if the right person turns up while you’re doing that, terrific. If not, at least you’re having fun. I think it’s when we start to shut down, give up, and limit our options that life starts to be over. I don’t want that to ever happen to me. I want to keep opening new doors till the day I die, whenever that is, whether it’s tomorrow, or when I am ninety-nine. The day you stop opening doors, and give up on those new opportunities, you might as well be dead. That is what I believe anyway. I will keep opening those doors until the day I find that man, my partner.

A man who can navigate the wild tangle of my mind, past the castles it builds and around the mythical creatures it conceives, to pursue the truth beneath my story.

A man who can kiss me both tenderly and fiercely. Whose hands I can trust to know my every freckle and fold and to hold me as I shudder with ecstasy or with grief. A man who can magic away all hurts with those same lips, and teach the ultimate art of fort-building with those same hands.

A man who anchors me.

A man that can look into my eyes and know my quiet power but patiently wipe away my loud, impetuous tears of frustration at things that don’t matter. Even when he knows I know better, am better.

A man who adores my flesh and bones, who sees my heart, but doesn’t shy away from my ugliness, my realness. Who isn’t bothered by my morning breath and in emergencies only, lets me poop while he’s in the shower. A man who holds my hair back when I’ve had too many mojitos on our first night out together in years. Who paints my toenails messily just to help me feel sexy again.

A man who rides the waves of my volatile emotions like an expert seaman through oceans of confusion, pain and self-pity. And he knows just how to steer me calmly back towards the shore of reason and balance every time.

A man who always sees my strength and beauty, even when I can’t. But who will call me on my bullshit too, even when I fool everyone else.

A man who knows that I can be marvelous and mundane at the same time and without conflict, because he understands the magic of the ordinary. He is the same.

A man who reads, questions, fantasises and philosophises but also has X-box binges, leaves his underwear on the bathroom floor and loves a good dirty joke. He is no less magical because of these things.

A man who will debate and sometimes argue with me way past midnight. A man who will walk through life by my side. Through mistakes and heartbreak. Through charmed times and hard times, from holidays on the coast to eggs on toast for dinner for the third time this week because things are tight. Through births and death, from deepest loss to greatest triumph and on all the ordinary days in between.

A man who will be my son’s hero, a man who ‘knows everything about the world’, according to him. A man who will encourage him to be curious, to find out how things work and how to improve them.

A man who loves me for all that I am. Who is by my side not because of some vows he made or a spell I cast over him or because I am his fairy princess but because I am “home”.

A man who understands that what we have will be sometimes messy, sometimes difficult, sometimes complicated, not always magical but always, always real.

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the one worth suffering for." - Bob Marley