On the market

So I have become extremely organised and resurrecting my RSVP profile, signed up to every singles event newsletter and singles evenings and even contemplating some 'holidays for singles', but my beautiful friend Geraldine tells me that all of this is a waste of time and that the secret is that it’s all about networking.

Her theory is that at my age, ready to have children and wanting something meaningful in my life, it’s a waste of my time to be doing all of this other stuff, she reckons it’s all about putting the word out with friends that its time to be set up on some dates with some like minded men who fit with my requirements and being selective about WHY they are single at this stage of their life, presuming that they would be older than myself…….

We have decided to draw the line at anyone past 40. Clearly this may knock out a large proportion of the market but it has been decided that, especially in light of my recent experience with a very dysfunctional 40 something then its probably best to raise the standards and not date anyone who is single for all the wrong reasons.

So Geraldine is out there finding single men for me! She is asking all the men and women she knows if they know a single good-looking man who fits my criteria, and also wears decent shoes, as there is nothing I hate more than a man with shocking shoes! She tells me that I must do the same with all those I know, so I have done, and we have all the girls at work and their husbands on the job to find candidates!

Already there have been some mumblings of some possibilities and one certainty, a friend of my cousins, although he is fabulous for all the right reasons he is also very young, but I have decided to give it a shot anyway because I really enjoy his company, he is smart, witty, ridiculously good-looking and a completely decent bloke.

Now I’m not going to say that he is my dream boat, that he is going to be my next husband or that I will even like him in a few weeks, but this is just the start of my search for true love and I am willing to give anything a go, clearly I failed miserably before so I figure that trying new things and new people out for size is the best way forward.

I was discussing this with my shrink at our regular Friday date last week and she asked me what I have learnt from my recent heartbreak. I started to speak and then realised just how much damage it had really done. I started seeing my shrink because I was having a great deal of trouble trusting the x and his intentions and actions and don’t think I ever truly believed that he cared about me (as it turned out I was right, however) and this was a reflection on many situations and relationships of broken trust as a child and compounded by the grief of the loss of my grandparents.

So the irony of the situation is that in order to improve myself and my ability to trust and trust the person I was in a relationship, I sought help, and during this time I was deceived and lied to and experienced such a huge amount of horrible treatment that what I have now learnt from the situation is not to trust even more, I have actually gone backwards. I think I will be less tolerant, more defensive and less emotionally available that I ever was before!

What else have I learned from the situation? Well I am not completely sure yet, but I am certain I will figure it out and not make the same mistakes again.