So I guess for me this instalment is probably a little close to the heart. I have previously written about the scares of my past relationships and how I have really found it difficult to get over the hurt I have experienced in the past – not that I have had really bad relationship or been with really evil blokes, its really just that I have had a huge amount of “issues” as a result of my parents nightmare of a split.

Essentially what has happened is that I have developed a chronic fear of the end of a relationship, even if I am unhappy in a relationship which I have been many many times, I will just stay, until the bitter end – and I have NEVER initiated a break-up EVER.

I do however undermine the situation, its not normally a conscious effort but I know I do it. I will be nasty, defensive, difficult, irresponsible, disrespectful and generally treat the victim at the time like complete shit in an attempt to get the person to “prove” how much they love me and want me by putting up with it and staying – but eventually they leave, and why the hell wouldn’t they!??!

The day my husband packed all his belongings into the back of a moving van and drove away I sat with my father crying, I was basically catatonic and I felt empty but full of pain at the same time. Strangely I also felt some level of relief as well. My father said to me ‘you know, you will be a better person for this, its going to be the hardest thing you will ever do but you are going now to be forced to face you fear, a fear that is so crippling that you have never even enjoyed a real relationship. So when you get through this, and you will, you will find some happiness in you life’.

Dad was right. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, and probably will ever do, and it didn’t kill me but most of the time I wished it did because I didn’t see much point in going on, there was no joy in what I was experiencing. But I faced it and I did not get into a relationship immediately because I really wanted to do it properly and not move into something else which would be a temporary fix and where it would be inevitable that I would repeat the same mistake again.

So staying single wasn’t that hard to be honest. I was not at all an attractive proposition for anyone, I was thin, malnourished, drunk, hurt and angry all the time – plus I never got asked out so I never really had the option placed before me so I need to be honest about claiming that I “resisted” the temptations of a cosy hook up, because they just didn’t exist.

I don’t think I have ever been that chick who gets chatted up. I don’t know that I actually have ever been chatted up, and only once have I been asked for my number. I have never been able to figure out why….I know I am no oil painting but I am not as ugly as a horses arse either – and you only need to step out the front door to see what’s out there, some fucking shockers – and they get dates!! Perhaps I am just not really a very nice person, my personality repels people, but then I have heaps of friends so that’s kind of unlikely too.

I asked my best male friend about this one evening and his reply was ‘Rachie, blokes want to fuck a party queen but marry a princess – you are the party queen’, and I guess that’s true.

I am the one who is always the first to suggest drinks, I am the first to accept the invitations and I am always the last one to go home – normally after I have dominated conversation, made people laugh all night and if there is music playing there is usually no hope of keeping me from dancing until the sun comes up – The Hot Man said to me once years ago ‘you’re the fun one, everyone is here because we all want to hang out with you because its always going to be a guaranteed great night with you’ –

This was sweet and probably true but during the years on my own I realised that nobody loves a party queen when she is sad and not “fun” anymore, so whilst I have heaps of friends, I really found out during this time who the great ones were. They were the ones I could call on at 4am when I was crying and thought the pain would never leave, but mainly they were the ones who wanted to hang out with me even if I was a sad sack of shit.

So after being on my own for three years, except for the odd short thing here and there and plenty of random sex with strangers which is predictably messy and generally not very good, and basically I got sick of the hassle of it after a while and made a conscious effort to go home alone and break out the vibrator, at least I knew I would be guaranteed and orgasm and a good nights sleep, but I suddenly find myself in a “relationship” a scary word for me, with someone who is a very old friend.
Basically the way it happened was that I had been having a dry spell after my decision to cease all one night stand activities last year, so it had been a good six months since I had had sex with anyone else but myself and it was kind of getting me down, not the sex so much but the lack of even a pash and just getting some attention to boost the ego every now and then was really lacking. He (The Hot Man) had fallen in love earlier in the year – HARD – he had even cut off all the bits on the side which he has always had as a fall back position should he ever need them and then the girlfriend dumped him. He hadn’t had sex in six weeks and for him this was like life sentence, I started to wonder if he was going to start fucking random holes in the ground or loose it when we were having a drink or dinner and start humping my or some strangers leg like my dog does every so often.

He has always banged on about shagging me, so it was no surprise that he was once again trying to convince me to “help out a mate” as he called it and often questioned my true commitment to our friendship because I refused the alluring invitation to give him sex or a quick blow job at the end of the evening – call me a prude but I didn’t have much trouble showing resistance.

So one fateful evening when last December, when as usual, everyone else had gone home and there was just the two of us we decided to head to The Dirty Swan – for old times sake – and a dance to some bogan tunes. We danced for hours and ended up over the road getting shit food at some stupid time of the morning and he pashed me while we waited for our greasy delights.

This was not really a big thing, we had pashed before, a few times actually, but it never did much for me, although it was nice. So on this occasion I was not overly concerned about it but as usual told him to cut it out, he persisted and somehow managed to convince me that going to his place for some sex would do us both the world of good. It didn’t.

It was weird and felt odd and although he was fantastic, it wasn’t working for me. I made an excuse to leave, but he insisted on coming with me to my place because he wanted us to spend the night sleeping in bed together – I never do this with anyone and I kicked him out at 7am on the dot, his phone was flat, I didn’t call him a cab and I told him to walk home – lucky for him he only lives a short distance away, but it was still a little rough when I look back on it.

So I am not sure what happened after that, I told him I never wanted to do it again and to just forget that it happened and go back to normal. We did and it was fine, but we had the odd pash here and there over the next few weeks and then on Christmas day I felt weak in the knees when I saw him when my dad and I went to pick him up to go to our family lunch. I have no idea what happened, but I definitely felt something.

We had a great Christmas day, we pashed a few times when nobody was looking, we smoked joints and drank shitloads and it was fun. The next day we had the Boxing Day session and once again we shagged that night, and this time it was amazing, it blew my mind and it all felt different.

Anyway, the next few months get really messy and actually probably quite boring so I will get to where I am now.
Right now I am realising that I am essentially in a relationship with someone. Someone who I care about with an intensity that I never imagined was even possible to feel without the person being your family, or in my case my dogs!

I am no longer undermining my relationship, I am investing time into it and trying to do things differently to any other time I have been with anyone before, although I think this is an ongoing process and I continually doubt and question myself about this.

The truth is that I am scared, really scared. My dad was right, it was the hardest thing I will probably ever do, but he forgot to tell me about this bit, the part when you are totally and utterly consumed by fear, the fear of letting someone else into your life, because if you do that you will change your routine, your patterns of behaviour, you will loose the sense of loneliness that you have become accustomed to and comfortable with.

But I have made a commitment to myself that I need to do this, I need to invest myself in this in order to invest in myself – to grow as a person and learn how to function in a relationship – regardless of the fact that it may well not be this relationship that is the lasting one.

Right now I am feeling things I have never felt before for anyone. I truly and utterly adore him. Life is just better when he is around and even when he isn’t I feel happy that he will be again. I am fully aware that this relationship may not last and whilst I am worried about the sadness I will feel if and when it ends it is no longer an all consuming fear that keeps me locked into something that does not deliver what a relationship should – a feeling of happiness that just isn’t possible when you are on your own, a feeling that when you look over and see the person on the other end of the couch when reading the weekend papers you feel like they are an extension of yourself and that your world would simply not be right if they were not occupying that space.

The most important thing for me is that even if it ends, I know I will be ok, I will be sad, probably even devastated for a period of time – but it won’t kill me – because it didn’t last time. I have faced my greatest fear.