Isabella’s ramblings
Why are men so predictable? I wish for once I could meet a man who takes me by surprise and shows me that confident, uncomplicated, decent ones do exist. Instead, all my friends and I seem to meet is one insecure, feeble, spineless wimp after another.
The modern man seems to have so many issues. I was recently told that men are built to “fuck it or kill it”. It’s in their DNA apparently. Another friend elaborated and said you can only “fuck it” if it’s not in your family. The fact that society has forced them to get in touch with their emotions has supposedly screwed with their heads because it goes against their nature. That’s why they’re so mixed up, the argument continues. Whatever. That sounds like a really lame excuse for a lot of bad eggs out there.
I once heard all the good men are either married, in committed relationships or gay. I’m starting to think that may be true. Well, partly true, since I’ve come across a lot of lying, cheating husbands and boyfriends in my time. The worst is when they go out without their wedding rings and try and pretend they’re single. That is the lowest of the low.
Thankfully Cyprus is so small that you usually end up finding out he’s married before you even get to the part where you exchange phone numbers.
Then again I recently heard this frightening story that puts a spanner in the works as far as that theory of mine goes.
Basically this woman was living with her boyfriend for about five years when she found out she was pregnant. Thrilled that they were on the way to starting a family she rang him up to share the happy news. At this point he said they had to talk. When he got home he sat her down and told her he was already married and had three kids.
So how does a man keep a secret like that? Not for one day but for 1,825 days. How does he manage to lead a double life? What sort of job did he have to juggle two relationships at once? A policeman? A nurse? A waiter? A barman? A taxi driver? A pilot? A 11892 telephonist? Anything involving shift work is my guess. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.
My friends and I still can’t get our heads round it. How does someone manage to keep a secret like that unless both women in his life are incredibly na?ve or extremely stupid? I mean could it seriously happen to anyone? Do we really not know when a man is full of shit? What about that female intuition or instinct we pride ourselves on; that infamous gut feeling?
I think we likely ignore it. I really do. I know so many women who’ve ended up heartbroken, yet when they look back they realise that the signs were always there but that for one reason or another they chose not to read them. Even when it’s as clear as day, such as unexplained phone calls in the middle of the night.
“Sorry honey, it’s the hospital. There’s a patient I’m worried about.”
I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen, but aren’t there times when you just know. You can’t explain it but it’s this feeling you get. Something just isn’t quite right and you can’t quite put your finger on it but it’s there, like a niggling headache that won’t go away.
I have a highly attuned intuition. I haven’t had a single boyfriend cheat on me – and get away with it. I know something is up and then I start to pry. I won’t let up till I get to the bottom of it. It’s no wonder I don’t trust men. The amount of times I’ve been right that something is wrong is unreal. It’s just a feeling I get.
How often has it also happened where I’ve met a man and instinctively felt there wasn’t something right about him? He was too frivolous, too slick or simply more interested in himself. Instead of saying ‘next’, I found myself making excuses for him. He’s got a very busy job. He’s not frivolous but interesting. He’s not slick just very experienced and polished. He’s not into himself but a good conversationalist. He’s not a poser he’s just confident.
As for all those other telltale signs that he’s a waste of space, well they’re just conveniently brushed under the carpet. So when he turns out to be a total loser why is it I forget I never really liked him to begin with? Why do I forget that deep down I knew something didn’t quite fit? Why is it suddenly my fault? I’m not good enough, thin enough, pretty enough, funny enough, witty enough, clever enough, stylish enough, young enough…
A girl I work with was recently left heartbroken over this guy she’d been seeing on and off for seven years. Basically he’s studying medicine in the UK and she’s here. While he’s in the UK he’s got another girlfriend. Although my colleague knew about this other woman, she told herself that he was just using this woman to keep his bed warm at night and that as soon as he came back they’d be together. Try as I did to tell her that he sounded like a real bastard who would do the same to her, she wouldn’t hear any of it and made one excuse after another for him.
“He’s lonely, he and I have great chemistry, he’s only using her, he really likes me and there’s a connection…”
Her arguments sound as hollow now as they did then. What ended up happening was that she went to the UK for work and he never once tried to see or ring her. She suddenly realised that the love affair she’d thought she’d been having for the past seven years was nothing more than a lie. She’d simply been used for easy sex during his brief visits to the island.
The thing is I find it really hard to pity her. It makes me really angry to think that she let him use her like that when it was so obvious from the get go. Why do we let ourselves be used like that? Why don’t we have more self-worth than that? Then again haven’t we all been there at some point? Haven’t I? Unfortunately more times than I care to bloody remember.
