Alice in Wonderland, without the Crazy
There’s an advertisement that’s recently started playing on TV, promoting Melbourne. It is one of the most gorgeous advertisements I’ve ever seen! I love everything about it, the feel of it, the colours and hues, the music. It all works so well together. It has such a romantic vibe, but it’s also a little bit Alice in Wonderland, without the crazy. I love, love, LOVE her outfit, too. I’ve only had a mild interest in visiting Melbourne in the past, but now I am really eager to go and ‘Lose Myself’ there!
Suspicious of Romance
My relationship is pretty low-frills. Always has been, and with my husband, I suspect it always will be. Recent events have made me realise I’ve become suspicious of romantics.
In my last post I spoke about my friend who suspects her husband is cheating on her. He has not declared a full admission, but I think both of them know that something not quite above-board occurred, and both of them are attempting to move on. No tears, few arguments, let’s just gloss over this and carry on. Everything’s peachy!
Valentine’s Day recently passed us by. As is the usual theme in our seven-year relationship, we did not give gifts. In previous years, I sometimes gave a card or a letter to the hubster, which he promptly read and stuffed in a drawer somewhere. Didn’t bother this year. Looking around my workplace, it appears flashy displays of affection on V’Day is out of fashion. The new Receptionist had a couple of secret admirers (I’ve got to admit, she is cute), but nobody in a relationship got anything from their partners. Except one. Yep, the friend with the cheating husband. Irony, anyone? Big bunch of flowers sat right there on her desk. Just goes to show, it isn’t really the thought that counts, is it? If he was my husband, if he was lucky enough that I was still letting him hang around, I would still be making him pay. The flowers would’ve been straight in the fucking bin. Flowers are not the way to win back my trust. Keeping your dick in your pants (or mine… noone else’s!) is the way to go about it.
Similarly, I have the same distrust for men who come prepared with elaborate proposals of marriage. I seem to believe that men who have to try that hard to get the woman to say ‘yes’ must be trying to distract her from the reality of their personality or their relationship. Bombard her with helicopters, limousines & romance and she’ll feel too guilty to say no!
It’s actually something I’ve always loved about our relationship, the simplicity of it. It really doesn’t bother me that I don’t get showered with romance. As long as he tells me I’m cute, sexy, beautiful or hot on a regular basis and continues to be there for me whenever I need him, I can do without the romantic gestures!
Disillusioned
A friend of mine (yes, a real friend, not just a hypothetical “friend”) has recently begun experiencing trouble in her very fresh marriage. Married for less than a year, she had already begun suspecting her husband was having an affair with a friend of theirs. It’s more than a suspicion really.. the evidence she has gathered, whilst not completely conclusive, is pretty bloody strong. She has confronted both the husband and the friend, and whilst she hasn’t had a full-blown confession, neither is denying it as vehemently as she may have liked. This disturbs me!
I feel so, so sorry for her. She brushes it off, talks big… “I told him he is not allowed to associate with her at all unless it is in my company, or I will tell the right people and they will fuck him up!”. She’s angry, but I don’t think she’s hurting the way most would expect her to be hurting. I don’t think the hurt is about the possible ‘falling out of love’ part. It seems to be more about the injustice. The fact that he’s decided he’d prefer to spend time with this other woman over her. That he feels more attracted to, more drawn to this other woman than to my friend – because if he didn’t feel that way why would he risk his marriage for her? It seems to have bruised her ego more than it’s bruised her heart. She seems more angry at him for ruining the appearance of a good relationship rather than ruining their relationship.
I ask her how things are going, and she tells me that things are well. I don’t get the impression that they’ve sat down and had an honest conversation about the situation, even after the confrontations. As long as he promises not to see her anymore unless my friend’s in the room too, then she’s content with that. No long talks, no counselling, just threaten him with violence & pretend it never happened, go back to keeping up that appearance of a relationship.
I could possibly get over a cheating spouse, but not without alot of crying, discussion, forgiveness and probably moving to another time zone! How could someone go on with their relationship as if nothing suspicious had even entered their radar? I would be consumed by it.
D’ffrent stokes for d’ffrent folks, I guess. Baffling!
Inane Grinning
Officially, I have a new favourite movie. And a confirmed weird crush.
New movie: Juno. Weird crush: Michael Cera.
The crush is wrong, on so many levels. First, Michael Cera is a teenager. A really goofy teenager. When I see still pictures of him, there is no crush. But I really like the characters he plays, those shy, nervous, clueless, dweeby characters who are cooler than you realise. Plus, they always have hearts of gold. Because he always plays these characters, you get the vibe that he playing a large part of himself, most of the time. I think the crush started in the Arrested Development episodes where he became a nervous mess when he was having dirty thoughts about his cousin (the daughter of Portia De Rossi’s character), grew a little more when I watched Superbad, and became bona fide when I watched the awesomeness of Juno.
Juno is one of those movies you watch with an inane grin on your face, enjoying every moment. The only time you stop inanely grinning is to laugh out loud. The story itself doesn’t sound too unusual – a teenage girl (Juno) falls pregnant to her best friend (Paulie, Michael Cera’s character) after a spontaneous ‘make-out’ session and decides to adopt the baby out to the ‘perfect’ couple. What makes it so interesting is the relationships and dynamics of the movie. Especially the subtle ones, like how Paulie’s Mum seems to instinctively know that Juno is going to have a massive influence on her son, and isn’t comfortable with their friendship. This is portrayed in such a realistic way – his Mum isn’t a bitch to her face, it’s all through body language and the way she says things… my favourite scene of the movie is a very pregnant Juno and Paulie’s Mum jostling up the stairs to try and get to his bedroom before the other.
I loved the movie for it’s subtlty and it’s ability to steer clear of the obvious yet still bring such a realism and humour.
Oh, and for it’s Michael Cera.
I just joined…
20Something Bloggers. I have found so many awesome new blogs! I think I’m going to revisit my Blogroll and add a heap of new ones. Plus, their blogs are so gorgeous to look at, I don’t want to add them to my GoogleReader subscription – that means I miss out on the pretty layouts!
Defining a Grown-Up
I often say that I don’t feel terribly grown-up.
I do grown-up things. I’m married. I’ve bought new cars. I’ve bought houses. I work full-time, get promoted, am given responsibility at work. I’ve gone on holidays to foreign countries, without supervision. I contemplate having children in the next couple of years, and so it goes on… all very grown-up activities, but still I sometimes feel like a child playing pretend.
Don’t get playing pretend confused with being unhappy. All of the things I do and participate in make me happy or content in some way. It just doesn’t seem real sometimes. I find it hard to put my finger on the feeling, find it hard to articulate exactly what causes me to feel that way. Because it’s so difficult, I don’t know whether the feeling will ever go away.
Am I crazy? Does anyone else feel this way? Maybe only being a parent will make that feeling go away. Or perhaps even then I’ll occasionally feel like I’m watching the scene from the sidelines as I change my own child’s nappy, almost like an out-of-body experience… whilst thinking to myself “Which crazy bastard gave her a child?! She’s still a kid inside herself!”
Catch-Up Frenzy
Something, can’t really say what, has inspired me lately to go into a bit of a catch-up frenzy. I’m really enjoying myself! Recently I have gone on a girl’s weekend away down south (wineries, gourmet food – it’s a gutso’s heaven down there) with my oldest friends. So fun! So much so, that we were all frantically emailing each other Monday morning saying what a good time we had and we really need to do it more often… and we meant it! It was the most refreshing and honest two nights I have ever spent with these girls and I LOVED it. I had forgotten what great friends I have. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in your life, your job, your partner, and eventually your children that it’s easy to lose touch with people, even if you see them on a sort-of regular basis. It seems like half the time you meet up but come away knowning nothing new or different about them. It was awesome to come away feeling like you have reconnected and really know these people you have called your friends for so, so many years (15 years, some of them!). It was also massively hilarious to reminisce about high school and early clubbing days and what not… we really did have some adventures, and now we’re all so grown-up and boring there is simply no way we will ever experience that many things, and know anyone in our lives again the way we know each other.
Because there was so much fun and frivolity to be had with that group of friends, I think it pushed me to get in contact with other friends of mine. I have a habit of finding an older woman at each of my jobs to be my ‘mother-figure’, my mentor if you will. Because of my recent catch-up frenzy, I’ve felt the compulsion to catch-up with my two confidantes from my previous jobs – I hadn’t seen them in so long… plus I knew they’d always be up for some news from me anyway. I’ve enjoyed it so much, loved getting things off my chest, loved listening to how they and their families are going, it’s just been brilliant. Why did I leave it so long to get in touch and reconnect?
Bit like this blog really…
Best Blog Post Ever. In the history of Blogging.
This is the exact kind of joy I want to get out of my children someday. Not just the first smile, the first steps… but the endless amusement they can provide too.
http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000749.php
RAISINS?!?
I swear, I have listened almost 400 times and it’s STILL funny!
Leave This Life
My husband and I have had a number of conversations lately about simply packing up our lives and ‘running away’ from everything and everyone we know.
It makes me wonder about the logisitics of actually doing something like that. We are established here. We live in a town we’ve both lived in since Primary School, the husband has lived here his whole lifetime. Our immediate families all live within 45minutes drive of our house. We have permanent, well-paying jobs and a mortgage that depends upon these jobs. As much as people tell us otherwise, we are getting older, maybe even ‘too old’ for that sort of thing – we’re at the point in our lives where we’re really thinking about having children in the next few years. Besides, where would we go? What would we do when we got there? How long would we go for? What would happen to our ‘stuff’? How would we support ourselves while we were away? I’m too useless for hard labour (no seriously. I can admit my flaws).
I feel really torn between a massive, enormous, life-changing adventure and the life we have worked so hard to build. At the end of the day, my logical mind knows it’s all just ‘stuff’ – the cars, the house and everything within it. But my logical mind also knows that one day I will want children, and children need just that. A home to live in. A car to transport them to doctors appointments. Money to put food in their mouths. I want all that for myself too! Could we just give all that away and be confident that the world will provide us with another opportunity to build all that again?
But I don’t have any skills…
I realised recently that I have completely forgotten how to flirt! I’m not sure when this happened, because I have definite, real memories of flirting with other guys since being together with my now-husband (around seven years now). I don’t think it happened when we got married either, it seems like much longer than a year since I’ve had a good flirting session.
I just don’t know how this could’ve happened. I used to be such a super-flirt. I was good at it. There are literally two guys who can I think of who I’ve wanted and never managed to ‘snag’. But I got pretty damn close. Both have since admitted they did want me at the time, but didn’t want to ruin a friendship. Even after I got together with my husband, it didn’t stop me. I don’t see flirting as a big deal, it’s not a relationship breaker. I think people operate better in their relationships when they feel wanted and feel sexy… even if they’re getting that boost, that ‘oompf’ from outside the relationship.
I think that I may have put the brakes on my flirting habit when I felt it was getting out of hand. I remember going to a party when one of the guys mentioned above arrived. He’d been overseas for a couple of years, so it was a big shock to everyone to see him there. He was definitely improving with age. The little ‘zing’ for me was still there, but I was taken. Really taken! But I still didn’t want to see him with anyone else, that would just ruin the night and make me jealous! I could see a few others around the room eyeing him off, so I felt I needed to do something about it.
So I did what I knew best… I flirted outrageously. We were buried deep in conversations about travel, family, life in general. It was as though the other 30-40 people at the house party we were at didn’t exist – he was interesting and interested in me, too. Things were going swimmingly until I went to the bathroom and came across a couple of other girls. “Things seem to be going well between you and OverseasBoy”. Eyebrows were raised. They knew I was taken, and the eyebrows are making more of a statement than their words ever could. I laughed, and spoke the truth, “If I can’t have him, nobody can”. Something flashed across the girls faces, and I knew I would be gossiped about later. I had totally just pissed off the sisterhood!
Thinking about it later, I was so ashamed of myself. Not for talking to him, not for flirting with him… but about not letting others talk or flirt with him! The fact that I made it all about me, made me think I had crossed the line and gone too far. It wasn’t harmless fun, there must’ve been a definite attraction there for me to act like that. It made me uncomfortable, and it made me feel guilty, like I really had been doing the wrong thing by my now-husband. I think this may have been the beginning of the end of my talent as a flirter-extraordinare.
How many of you ‘taken’ ones out there still give your flirting skills a regular workout?
*10 points for whoever identifies that movie quote.
Brunette Stripped Bare 