Women Are From Venus

Something has been bothering me of late.

Actually it has been bothering me for years but I never had a vehicle with which to explore it or the impetus to do so....and now I have both. I am beginning to wonder why as I get older I care less and less what people think about what I think and say.....is that just me? It probably explains why old people can be so hilariously rude.

Certainly since I turned 30 I am more pragmatic about life in general but this is coupled by a desire to say what I actually think about things rather than just sitting on them.

Anyway....this is all about men and women and how they can/can't be just friends. Well they can, until one of three things happen, either 1) they have sex and then it changes completely 2) the male gets into a relationship and his girlfriend turns psycho, effectively putting an end to any 'friendships' with other women or 3) somehow (and this is the least likely of the 3 to happen) they both end up in relationships with other people but manage to remain platonic friends.

I have had considerable experience of all three of these. My husband was a friend first so that one, I guess, could be considered to have worked out. I am lucky to still be friends with most of my exes - but it has not been easy to keep those friendships going over the years, my reason for sharing this blog is that number 2 of my three reasons (and the most frequent outcome in my experience) has led to some bewildering experiences over the years and for reasons that some readers will be aware of, these have been on my mind of late.

I am sure I am not the only woman to have mourned the loss of completely normal and platonic friendships due to the craziness of other women, also as a woman with a standard amount of craziness ingrained myself, I completely understand that sometimes it causes hormonal imbalances which result in violence if you suspect that your other half is close to a member of the opposite sex. I propose no solution to this, it just intrigues me. 

I used to live with this guy who was, for a period of my life, probably my closest friend and certainly the person I spent most of my downtime with, this of course only increased when we moved in together while I was a student and to be honest, despite all the nonsensical stuff to have happened since, we had a hell of a lot of fun during that time. Let's call him Y.

Anyway, it turned out that this relationship was not as balanced as I thought it was and he wanted a lot more from it than I did, we had a slight, drunken dalliance but that was it and then I started seeing a mutual friend. Bad move. This seemed to tip a normal, fairly rational bloke into behaving like a bit of a goon to be honest and what followed was some slightly mental, stalker-esque activity. At one point he emailed my mother to tell her what a mistake I was making by not being with him. Yes, really. I will remind you of this behaviour in context later.

It was all later resolved and he found happiness with someone else, I was by now engaged to my husband and all was well. Or so I thought.

Years down the line (about 10) I went to stay with this couple while in London for a gig, I went with a mutual 'friend', another guy who I had known forever from the same social scene and always been pretty close (in a platonic way) to, we will call him R. He happened to be the partner of the best friend of Y's girlfriend so they were a pretty cosy foursome but she was not there this weekend.  

Anyway, much beer was drunk and for some god knows reason R and I had a drunken snog. This was during me and my husband's Ross and Rachel-esque 'break' so for me the only guilt attached was knowing his gf. It was stupid and meaningless and idiotic and all of the above x 10. I am still, some years later, quite baffled that it even happened. I certainly never saw it coming although we were close, I absolutely DO NOT go for attached men and never have. I completely understand why she would want to rip my eyes out for it.

It was literally a moment of madness fuelled by too much alcohol. And the next day we both registered it as such and (I thought) moved on. It was so utterly throwaway an incident that he told me he did not see the point even mentioning it to anyone and asked that I keep it under my hat, as far as I was concerned nobody except us was aware of it as it had happened away even from Y and his gf on the night in question and not a word had been said by either of them the next morning. All was well, or so I believed, until about a month later.

At this point somebody completely unrelated to the incident contacted me to say that they had heard a rather worrying rumour about me and they thought I should know. Fuming does not even come close to how angry I was when they relayed what they had heard....

Apparently, I had pounced on R while he was wrecked and I was entirely sober and had effectively forced myself on him. I had then had the audacity to neglect to apologise to our horrified hosts for the evening who knew all about it. It turned out that he had decided to come clean (with a rather twisted version of events) to his gf the minute he got home and for whatever reason (now, let me think, scapegoat?) had also contacted Y and his partner to apologise profusely to them, he had not, however, told me this. I had stuck to my word and not said a thing to anyone about it in the belief that neither had he but inadvertantly I now looked like an absolute scumbag. In retrospect I think it was a genius move for him as it totally framed me while I did nada. Nice work.

The minute I learned this I contacted Y and apologised profusely, I genuinely did not know they were even aware of what had happened but I know it looked bloody awful of me to wait until a month after the event to apologise. It had taken this long for me to learn that they knew....now considering my history with Y which was long and complicated and had quite frequently involved my accepting his apologies for, quite frankly, tittish behaviour on a number of occassions, what I was not expecting was quite possibly the world's most patronising response by email ever. I would attach it here but that would be a step too far in identifying the person....

The crux of his argument for deciding that he never wanted to speak to me again (yes, really) in light of this overwhelmingly appalling behaviour (an ill judged drunken snog) was that his partner had never really liked me anyway and this had just reaffirmed what she thought. Oh, ok then, that's that.

Ironically of course, R was forgiven as he had mea culpa'd like a canary straight away and anyway he was the partner of Y's gf's best friend (do keep up)....and that was indeed the end of that. How to end two entirely normal, platonic friendships in one fell swoop, as Shakespeare would say.

Initially I was pretty angry about being so framed but then I realised that holding a grudge is like letting someone live, rent free, in your head and I do not like the idea of that. The upshot is that I realise men are ultimately likely to be spineless, insipid and devious when they get themselves in trouble and are also entirely capable of forgetting their own previous tittish behaviour when it comes to forgiving someone elses.

Not all men are like this - but I think they all have the capability to be. Of course the other interesting point is that the girl who had been all sweetness and light to my face had apparently disliked me for years - on what basis I wonder? Probably (I can only deduce) because of my history with her partner, irrational? I think so, but ultimately understandable.

More tales from this fold to follow....maybe. And by the way, I did not draw the bear in the image but it was on one of many apology letters received from Y over the years.