It’s alright, everything mellows in sunlight
I have a lot to thank the Dalai Lama for. Or at least that’s what I think anyway.
On Monday night, and for the third time in 2011, I was dumped. It has become a peculiar trend, as up until this year it had never happened before. Though I’ve never really had a particularly serious relationship, even on the occasions where it’s been anything slightly resembling so I have always been the one to press the eject button.
It is therefore a strange and new sensation to be kicked to the kerb for the third time in such a short space of time. This won’t be a whiny, self-pitying post about how I worry that things will never work out for me. In fact, quite the opposite, I have been able to get over these knockbacks in a matter of hours. Or even minutes.
In fact, right after I left this girl’s flat off Duke Street in Dennistoun I put a Shins album on my Ipod and by the time I passed the Royal Infirmary I was over it.
As much as I would like to claim that this is all down to the incredible strength of mind that regular meditation and study of Buddhist philosophy has given me it has a lot more to do with my heart not really being in it. Earlier in the year when something similar happened I remember actually feeling relieved about it when it was all over.
Suddenly it’s like you’re free to do anything you want (even though you always were) and it’s a nice feeling. It’s pretty strange behaviour that I’m willing to feel constrained by the limits of a pretty poor month-long relationship, but perhaps recently I have been either too patient or too polite to be the one to pipe up and say “hang on, we have very little in common and don’t find each other particularly amusing or charming”. Even if that’s what I’ve been thinking for weeks.
I have listened to friends struggle to come to terms with failing relationships, even held some in my arms as they wept about things breaking down, while not being able to fully understand the situation. I suppose it is pretty lucky on my part that I have never had my heart broken, though perhaps unlucky for never being in the situation in the first place.
Instead my recent relationship cycle seems to be a much shorter one. I get in, realise it’s not that great but I might as well put up with it and see what happens and then a short time later I’m given the heave-ho presumably for not being interesting, funny or attractive enough.
"Hi, I'm George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents."
I can’t compare these six weeks of indifference and awkward silences to the pain that some of my friends have been through after the breakdowns of serious relationships, but right now I have nothing else in the locker.
Indeed, it is not my intention for my life to resemble a sitcom but my unsuccessful dalliances with the fairer sex this year are making me feel more and more like George Costanza. They’re fraught with niggly little issues, several hours of awkward conversation and then it’s over before the tea gets cold.
Seinfeld is and probably always will be one of my favourite programmes but I think the comedic element will diminish if I start identifying too many similarities in my own real world relationships.
In fact, do you remember the episode where Jerry is dating an aspiring actress who insists on practicing scenes with him? She is dreadful and he knows it. He talks with George about how his brain and his penis are having a game of chess, a game that his penis always wins. I’ve been thinking about that recently, though I am slightly bemused that I’ve been binned off before that even became an issue.
The time will probably come where things work out a lot better than this. And then when the KB follows it’ll probably sting pretty badly. But for now I’m really okay with this. A few days ago I was talking about how things were going with Jon, one of my best friends, and after I gave him my assessment he said that it sounded like it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Yesterday after playing tennis with my buddy Joss I remarked to him over the net that I was still into her but that I was “getting the overwhelming feeling that she doesn’t seem to care about anything I do or say”.
“That sounds like something that is not going to work out”, he said. He was right, of course, and obviously I knew he was. I knew it ages ago.
You can’t lose what you don’t have. So what have I lost here then? Nothing, I guess. 2011 looks like it’s shaping up to be the year of the short shrift painless breakup. That has a certain ring to it; I just wish that I could get the time back.
