Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 12:27 AM GMT

(1)
You could have had a cry if you wanted - I have a large stock of tissues.

(2)
New Kids on the Block: Danny, Donny, er Delroy (no, I'm getting confused with Five Star now), Dave Dee, Dozy (no, that's Danny), Beaky (no, *that's* Danny), er, Mick n Titch?

(3)
Hope your car got done outside your place and not mine. I'd feel guilty if it had happened when you came round.

(4)
Do you know anyone handy with soldering irons and turntables? Sorry about the lack of music tonight. With both turntables *and* CD player on the blink, I'm amazed you put up with the amount of Hindi film soundtrack cassettes I foisted upon you.

(5)
I threw salt over my shoulder last night. It was just after deciding not to throw my chips away, even if the pikey burger van had cooked them in the same fat as the minging hot dogs.

(6)
I was about, having checked the time on your blog entry, to ask how you posted three hours into the future. However, it really *is* 00:27 already?! I'm amazed - how the evenings fly by, eh? :-)

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 6:15 AM GMT

(1) You could have had a cry if you wanted - I have a large stock of tissues.
Don't talk daft.
(2) New Kids on the Block: Danny, Donny, er Delroy (no, I'm getting confused with Five Star now), Dave Dee, Dozy (no, that's Danny), Beaky (no, *that's* Danny), er, Mick n Titch?
I know that you googled...
(3) Hope your car got done outside your place and not mine. I'd feel guilty if it had happened when you came round.
Yes, it was here in pikey 1.61 Kilometre End. Over there in Inner Essex, you are still safe from the TWOCers.
(4) Do you know anyone handy with soldering irons and turntables?
Nope. You made it (taking a hifi to pieces) sound easy!
Sorry about the lack of music tonight. With both turntables *and* CD player on the blink, I'm amazed you put up with the amount of Hindi film soundtrack cassettes I foisted upon you.
Being slightly deaf did help, I admit. :0)

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 5:49 PM GMT

The ex was hanging around your flat? Ewww... such a bad idea to be there. Memories come at you like bullets, each one carrying with it the weight and pain of every single thing you did together. I hate meeting up with an ex for any reason.

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 7:21 PM GMT

I can name all of New Kids On The Block - I am not in my 30's.

My room was covered floor to ceiling and beyond with them (yes I admit it). It was also covered at one point with Bros.

The names of NKOTB are:
Joseph McIntyre (My personal fav)
Donnie Whalberg (Brother of Mark Whalberg failed rapper and now movie star)
Jordan and Jon Knight (minger and jesus christ whats that??)
and finally Danny Summink - he always looked like he had been smacked with a wet fish round the face. His mother was a midget who wore glasses.

I have numerous videos of the group including the cartoon series. I'm thinking that was too much info. Also I have albums from when the youngest in the group Joe was 9.

Bros:

Matt Goss (yummm and still yumm)
Luke Goss (twin of Matt, but not as attractive)
Craig Logan (now producer/writer extrordinaire - had relationship with Kim Appleby of Mel and Kim fame, not the dead one). craig left the group after suffering from a mystery illness suspected to be ME. Craig spent a period of time playing the guitar on chairs/stools during performances.
I have a 3 hour video that I sometimes watch of the group, for old times sake.

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 8:54 PM GMT

You're so right. Took me a while to realise that, though. Things are also a little different with lesbians, though - smaller gene pool, etc - it's much more the done thing to stay good friends with your ex. Although I think given teh time frame, we were being a little optimistic.

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 8:57 PM GMT

Good lord, Briar, you are now a cult hero of mine. Are you going to do a NKOTB blogpost? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

PS I'm really sorry, the other week I deleted a blog comment of yours, because it gave some details about my job that I didn't want out there. It's the first comment I've ever deleted on here, and unless Merv starts peddling his lies about me here, hopefully the last. I hope you don't mind too much!

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 9:25 PM GMT

shows how much notice I took.

I am not offended, I apologise for mentioning generic job. Consider it never mentioned in such terms again.

Not sure if I am going to blog about NKOTB, certainly not at the minute. I shall leave the inflamatory posts on the blog already on there. I shall compose in private a NKOTB entry and when the time is right I shall add it to the site.

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 9:28 PM GMT

In a happier, halcyon age, hopefully. :D

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 9:31 PM GMT

summink like that yes.

I may use your blog to enthuse about my now violet hair though :)

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 9:49 PM GMT

I have just found this fantastic system.

If out and a song comes on and you want to know what it is dial 2580 on your mobile - point mobile towards music.

You will get a text message shortly telling you what the song is and who its by.

I love it!!!

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 9:49 PM GMT

Wow! jpegs to the newsgroup, then?

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 10:11 PM GMT

But I'm crap at ever naming a tune in soandsomany bars. I never joined in any of those competitions when they were around. Album covers, too.

I'd be listening to something obvious, like 'Jerusalem' or Jackson's 'Thriller' and pointing my mobile at it. And given that I dropped it twice, so most conversations tend to go along the lines of 'CAN YOU HEAR ME ... I CAN'T HEAR YOU' - could make the whole process difficult. It'd end up with me being a total retard, shouting at a machine alone - not dissimilar to the blogging, that.

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 10:18 PM GMT

maybe best to leave Shazam alone then :D

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 10:20 PM GMT

lol - yeah right!!!

You know my love of picture taking.

Its still quite extreme, maybe when it is less umm... vibrant, I could photoshop my face from underneath me hair though

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 10:30 PM GMT

Here's a horrible heterosexual male-ism that all the women I know have scolded me for: one of the reasons I have a hard time hanging out with exes is that emotionally, I do not accept that any woman who has ever slept with me has the right to discontinue sleeping with me, ever, for any reason.

Yes, I know it's all those things that everyone reading this will immediately jump up to shriek at the screen: unreasonable, mad, demented, utterly self orbital, obsessive, stupid, degrading... it reduces another human being, in my eyes, to little more than my sex toy forever, etc, etc... but fuggit. I didn't say I intellectually believed it, I said that this was how I feel emotionally.

Here's an odd anecdote: when I was dating K., she once told me she'd had a horrible dream where me and my friend G. had become a homosexual couple and no matter what she did, she just couldn't get me to be nice to her any more.

What's ironic about that dream is K. eventually broke up with me when G., whom she had had a long time crush on, after knowing her for six years or so and frequently telling me how he did not understand how or why I could or would date someone as difficult as she was, evinced romantic interest in her. And now she's married to him, and has kids with him. And yes, nowadays, at a safe distance, she's nice to me, but she'll never ever sleep with me again (which emotionally just strikes me as horribly wrong), and she's only nice to me now (probably) because she's in New York and I'm in Florida so she can afford to be. For the first two years she and G. were dating/married, I could not do anything to get her to be nice to me again. It was awful.

So, for me, one of the worst parts of having a relationship go smash is that suddenly, this person you used to be able to absolutely rely on for affection at the very least, and occasionally, if your moods corresponded, sex, is simply no longer there for you. This foundation that you built at the very least a new chamber of your heart and your life around, and furnished extensively based entirely on your faith in their enduring affection, has now been removed, leaving that lovely new room you were hoping to live in for the rest of your life collapsed and a shambles of charred and sooty rubble, and what's worse, a beam has fallen in front of the door and you can't even get back INTO that room, not even once in a while.

But, I suppose, being able to briefly revisit that room, only to be firmly shown the door again whenever your one time S.O. has to get back to the person who is now more important to them than you are, would be worse.

I think you were wise to vacate the premises when you came out and found your ex face down on that bed that doubtless has so many really emotional reference points for both of you. I suspect had I ever come home and found K. lying in our bed, it would have just been horrible for me, especially if she wouldn't sleep with me... and maybe it would have been worse afterward, if she would have. So it was good you got out. You should, most likely, make a determined effort to put everything of your ex's in a box (or several) and take them to neutral territory (one of your common friends' flats) and leave them there. That way, she won't have an excuse to haunt you, and honestly, you're sparing her some emotional wear and tear, as well.

But, maybe she keeps coming 'round because she wants to get back together with you. If there's a possibility, you might want to work out how you feel about that. Or not.

Sunday, 2 November 2003 - 11:08 PM GMT

That's a really good idea, about the boxes. I know it sounds cold, possibly, but it's horrible living in the middle of all the stuff of a different life.

She did venture a suggestion about trying again (obviously, when you split up, you think about the good stuff more than the bad), but for reasons detailed here and here, I said no. That was this week's horror (for me, anyway, it's probably a narrow escape for her), that I love her and I said no.

Monday, 3 November 2003 - 12:32 AM GMT

Well. I went back and read the entries you linked to, and, well, I'm not any clearer on the reasons for the break up, and of course I don't need to be, you aren't required to explain anything to me.

I do know you habitually phrase things in a manner that indicates you don't like yourself very much, and when I do this, what I want more than anything else is for someone to tell me that I really am a wonderful person. I'd like to tell you that, but if someone from a few thousand miles away who had read a few of my blog entries said something like that to me, I'd think they were mad or lying. So, all I will say is, um, so far you've hung in there with me and worked stuff out when other people would be threatening to turn my emails over to the CIA or informing me that all the women on their blog hate me and I should leave (and then a year later, they'd still be sulkily trying to justify being such asses to me, while at the same time attempting to keep their array of sycophants hostile to me as well).

I think it reflects well on you (and on me) that we've made an effort, and you seem, from this distance over this short a period of time, to be a worthwhile individual to me. You certainly don't seem to be loathable. So I think you should give yourself a break. That's the best I can do on that.

Now: here's my point of view on love, and mind you, you seem to be much more romantically and socially successful than I am, so your mileage may vary:

It's hard for me to find people (women, I mean) that I can wholeheartedly accept as being even potentially right for me. It's because I'm much more multidimensional than many people seem to be, and I'm into so many narrow little things that so many other people are judgemental about, and because my True Love has to be a lot of things to be truly attractive to me... I have to be physically attracted (although that by no means she has to be a WB network hottie), I have to be intellectually stimulated, I have to find her funny and entertaining, she has to be sweet and supportive, we have to be sexually compatible, and, presumably, she has to feel all those things for me.

And that's hard. All cheap shots at myself aside, most women are NOT physically attracted to me, and that is as important for women as it is for men. Most women, regardless of what they say, do not prize good behavior in their prospective suitors, or good character, anywhere near as highly as they want to believe they do. Most women aren't smart enough to really interest me, even if they're cute. Most women don't have my peculiar kind of sense of humor, or... well. Etc.

And when I do meet someone who measures up in every particular, well, 9 times out of 10, that person (who is probably one in 10,000 to start with) is not at all attracted to me.

This is why my situation with Jess frustrated me so much, because she was everything I want, and she genuinely seemed to have some mutual feelings for me, but, well, she absolutely refused to allow those feelings to be catalyzed for reasons having to do with her personal situation, which drove me mad.

Anyway. I don't know you really, and I don't know your DH at all, but if she has whatever complex formula it is you look for (you're a complex person, I'm sure you want a complex person back), and you have whatever it is she looks for, and the two of you get each other hot... that is, in my experience, a one in a billion combination, and if it were me I would fight tooth and nail to hold on to it.

But I don't know why you broke up with her, what behavior of hers drives you crazy, why you just can't stand it any more. All I know is you miss her so much it is driving you mad and she wants to come back and you are saying no, and expressing that in a manner that sounds as if you feel you deserve to be punished for some transgression.

Honestly, you absolutely know best. If she's wrong for you, well, we all fall in love with people who are wrong for us and there is great wisdom in turning away from that which we want but that is horribly, horribly bad for us.

But if I had a shot... if Jess ever came up to me and said "I want to try"... well. She has plunged my heart into battery acid over and over again and intellectually I have to assume it would end badly but if she were to say that to me, I would have to say "okay, let's give it a go".

Now, you have given it a go, and you've decided it didn't work, and again, in your specific case I have no idea what I'm talking about. But you seem deeply unhappy and apparently you don't have to be.

Were you this deeply unhappy when you and DH were together?

Is that a fair question?

Monday, 3 November 2003 - 1:08 AM GMT

I do know you habitually phrase things in a manner that indicates you don't like yourself very much,

I really really hope that this is more a side effect of British tendencies towards self-deprecation, with only a little insecurity thrown in. Because I think I'm great. I mean, really, you lot don't know what you're missing. But it's just so not the done thing in the UK to be saying that.

and when I do this, what I want more than anything else is for someone to tell me that I really am a wonderful person.

That's a kind thought, and others have interpreted me that way before, but it's not my intention. At least consciously, anyway. Compliments online are, well, really, they're cheaper than compliments from people who know you. I hope you don't think that was a barbed comment - I really value the words of people I know IRL more highly than anyone I communicate with online. Insults, compliments, lessons in life: it's all just attention.

I don't know you really, and I don't know your DH at all, but if she has whatever complex formula it is you look for (you're a complex person, I'm sure you want a complex person back), and you have whatever it is she looks for, and the two of you get each other hot... that is, in my experience, a one in a billion combination

She does. But we're not right for each other right now. Things have to change - things inside us that are harder to change than the walls or the furniture.


Were you this deeply unhappy when you and DH were together?

There were too many prescriptions on my life. I need more freedom than I had. I'm not being facile, I was biding by more rules and regs than a teenager usually has. There wasn't enough communication. When you don't communicate, it's not the case that you don't communicate, you simply impute more wildly wrong motives to the other person's behaviour. Over time, this can lead to some wild, weird-wrong apprehensions about the other person. And there were too many old arguments to be raked up that I and she were never going to be able to get over. Until those grudges are firmly in the past, we'd never move forward. Both of us need to grow up a little before it would actually work, rather than pootle along making the same mistakes.

You're right, I love her, she loves me. But we're both just wasting time if we're making each other miserable. She deserves better. I certainly deserve better. I intend to get 'better'. Seriously I do.
Whether that involves difficulties, being alone, or financial problems - I only get one shot at this. I'm not spending my time being underestimated, @#%$! about as if I'm a bit-actor in a third rate soap opera, or being ignored. It's not good enough for me.

There, that's a damn sight more honest than my blog usually is.

Monday, 3 November 2003 - 3:33 AM GMT

Okay. As I tried to say many times, you know better than me.

I also agree with you that online compliments are cheaper than compliments from people who actually know you. I'm pretty sure I said that in that last comment to you, as well, and I know I've said it many many times on my blog. There are few things I find more annoying that someone who has never met me passing judgement on me, for good or for ill.

Anyway. You seem sure it can't work with the two of you as you are now. That's certainly fair enough. I shall butt out.

Monday, 3 November 2003 - 7:37 AM GMT

Thanks for the comment. Replying to it, as usual, taught me some things about myself. I know you have a strong point to make in what you originally said about it - but, yeah, some things, as ever, are unbloggable.

Monday, 3 November 2003 - 1:28 PM GMT

To abehm. Hang in there, sometimes love works even on the second try. Your blog looks interesting but please don't be offended might be a little long for busy blog addicts, or maybe I'm just a Cliff Notes type of person:-)

Monday, 3 November 2003 - 2:53 PM GMT

NC,

I appreciate your response, and your checking my work out.

I'm never offended when people note that I write too much for them to comfortably digest in whatever limited time it is they have to give to the Internet that day. It simply means my blog isn't suitable to their lifestyle at this moment, or perhaps to their reading styles. I have a very very small audience, all of whom seem to be capable of either reading quickly or investing some time in my work, and for whatever reason, they seem to find it rewarding. However, the laudable Elayne Riggs has noted that I am 'very much an acquired taste', and who am I to blow against wind?

Thanks again.