Counting My Blessings

A single-ish friend of mine visited last night. We’re sort of occasional friends – we saw a lot of each other at one point but only seem to manage meeting up every 4-6 months at the moment. So I packed DM off to the pub, and we had a girly re-bonding session.

Now this girl has had incredibly bad luck with men in her life. She’s been a victim of domestic violence and rape, she’s been cheated on, lied to, and generally had quite a bad time of it. Due to this, she finds it very hard to trust men and IMO relies far too much on Rules. Rules like never phone first, never suggest the next date, never say I love you first etc. Anyway, she has been seeing a new guy for about 6 weeks, and was fretting over the usual things:

‘Do I like him more than he likes me’;
‘Why hasn’t he called me for 3 days’;
‘Should I call him’;
‘Where is this going’….and so on

As it turned out, he called in the middle of our visit and she went from worried woman to blissful babe.

‘I don’t know why I worry so much’, she said.

The whole conversation made me want to sacrifice a goat to Venus in gratitude for what I have. Some partnered people (I’m big on the alliteration today!) miss the single life, long to be back in the dating game and regret that no more notches are going on that belt. I can’t think of anything worse. After being with someone who knows me so intimately and loves me anyway…!!! That closeness, that tenderness, that being with someone who really KNOWS you is probably the most precious thing I have yet experienced.

This is probably rather odd, but I keep a list of the men I have slept with. I got to about 7 and realised I had to think hard to remember a couple of the names, so I wrote them down. It seemed an important thing to do. Anyway, DM’s name is at the end of the list. I wrote him down after about two weeks, followed by the words “The End?”

I really hope it is.