Counting

“Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious”
(Oscar Wilde)

A conversation at work today got me thinking about the one thing that all of my boyfriends have in common; they were all my friends for some time before we got together. Often they were flirty friendships but most went on over a period of some months before converting into a relationship (or a complete fuck up, depending on the situation).

Number 1
When I was sixteen. Was the friend of a group of lads my group of girls used to hang around with. He was quite frequently on the scene though I don't remember exactly how we got together I do remember that I wasn't particularly bothered about him. The majority of our relationship consisted of him phoning me and me ignoring him. It ended abruptly with him crying down the phone and me wondering why he was bothering. We no longer speak, but are pleasant if we bump into each other, which is seldom.

Number 2
When I was seventeen. Had been close friends at college for eighteen months and a slow burn flirtation during that time had eventually became a testament to each of our stubbornness in refusing to admit the attraction. He was sweet, shy, sensitive and I was, in short, a bitch. The thing that finally got us into gear was the prospect of him getting another girlfriend so I decided to make the move (over msn messenger - truly I am a child of my generation). We were as inexperienced as each other and as unwilling and unable to express ourselves which did not make for a fulfilling time. After six months the lure of Number 3 became too strong and I dumped him, unceremoniously, while we were on holiday with a group of friends. He cried a bit, then went off to get smashed on tequila, I got cross and threw his underpants and hair gel off the balcony and drank half of his bottle of Southern Comfort and locked him out of the bedroom. There was a screaming match. After this eruption we returned to being the best of friends and wondered why we ever bothered with the going out bit in the first place. We still speak infrequently, and have revisited old pastures a few times which invariably fizzles out before long.

Number 3
When I was seventeen I met him. This is the big one, the ex-love-of-my-life, complete fuck-up one. We were in a touring show for about nine months before kissing for the first time at the after-show party, though he spent quite a lot of that tour chasing me and sitting on my chest (boy, do I pick 'em). He was twenty-five, eight years my senior and as such we were never close friends as there was a serious chemistry there from quite early on (despite my insightful wisdom) but there was a slow getting to know you as colleagues before anything happened. When I was eighteen the affair started in earnest and went on for four turbulent, amazing, dreadful, brilliant years. He brought me out of myself and gave me self confidence and loved me. He wrote me notes and poems and songs and serenaded me on a regular basis. I adored him, resonded with poems and notes of my own, catered to his every whim and made him laugh. He wouldn't or couldn't give me what I needed. I slowly started to realise he would never change. I left him numerous times only to go back again. I finally escaped to a hundred miles away, to University.
We still speak. He's married with a baby and I still think of him as the closest thing to a soulmate I've found yet. We are polite when we see each other but the attraction is still there, beneath the surface.

Number 4
I was just twenty-one. He lived in the student flat below mine and we had hung out for about a year. He was definitely a rebound from number three and why on earth he still speaks to me after how I behaved I have no idea. It lasted four weeks which culminated in me throwing things down the stairs at him, screaming that he was "just as bad as [number3]!". He wasn't. He was a sweet, young, inexperienced boy and I blamed him for the faults of (by that point) a twenty-nine year old man. We didn't speak for a few months afterwards and now catch up every now and then. I am still apologising.

Number 5
I was twenty-two. Had worked together for about a year and a half before even having an inkling of getting involved (though I had always thought he had nice eyes). He had had a girlfriend at first and I had been happily single and occasionally dating. Not sure what turned my head initially but it ended up being probably the biggest crush of my life (Johnny Depp notwithstanding). We went on holiday with two other people and ended up hooking up, which I was completely ecstatic about. Then I went completely mental and assumed that he had been wanting us to get together as much as I had and thought for a while that I was living in some romantic movie fantasy. I was brought back down to earth with a bump and proceeded to make a complete idiot of myself for the next few months, allowing him to pick me up and drop me whenever he felt like it and obsessing all the while. Luckily a man came along to save my sanity, though he doesn’t get a number as we remained friends and never went beyond that but he put my head on straight for me. After a while I calmed down, realised that Number 5 was just an ordinary lad and we resumed friends status. We still speak regularly and affectionately though I often wonder how he became such a perfect person in my head.

So my question is why do I do this? Am I incapable of creating a relationship from scratch or do I have some serious trust issues? The reasons that dates don’t turn into any kind of relationship for me I always thought were down to a lack of chemistry or them being too clingy or not that bothered. Maybe there’s more to it; asking around the office has made me realise that this is actually quite unusual. Or maybe I should stop worrying and just chill out and enjoy the prospect of number 6…