fugly isn’t even a word. fact.

Check out my friend.  And I do mean her, not her breasts:

Look thats her - on the left!

For the record: the chap giving us the ‘v’ in the background is J.  I’ve cut him to spare his blushes.

Back to the point at hand.

She thinks she’s fugly.

What the hell is fugly?  It’s not even a word.  I know it’s not a word because I googled it and anyone whose anyone knows that google is the place to go when you want to know something.  Well, actually you go to wikipedia first and then do a google search – but hey, whose arguing.

Fugly still isn’t a word.

She has this boyfriend.

He is, in her words, the best thing that has ever happened to her.  And I’m inclined to agree.  Her last boyfriend was a first rate asshole.  No wait, thats too tame:  he was a complete and utter tosser who deserves no happiness after the way he treated her.  Knobhead.

Anyway, back to The Boyfriend.  He is a really nice guy.  Perfect for her.  They live together and everything.  I mean, they bought a cat together for Gods sake.  Nothing speaks committment like a dirty stinking cat pet.

But he’s a lot little on the lazy side and I don’t think he quite gets how it makes her feel, constantly having to nag his lazy backside into doing something.  And they’re not big things either.  Stuff like washing the plates, clearing up after himself, putting the laundry on or even putting the loo seat down (Keira does the toilet seat patrol in our house and God help Justin anyone if it’s left up).

Small things: Big nagging.

She hates it.  Doesn’t make her feel at all good about herself.  At all.

When we’re all together on one of our rare get together’s, I do (in my own kind of special way) try to hint that maybe he could be a little more considerate but it falls on deaf ears.

The constant ‘chats’ they have make her really down about herself.  Makes her feel that if he can’t be bothered to do the little things then he clearly doesn’t want to do the bigger things with her and she gets this mindset that she’s too ugly, too fat, not good enough.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

So I have this to say to her:

You are beautiful.  I don’t care what you tell me.  God gave you an hour glass figure that you don’t appreciate.  He gave you breasts that some women pay thousands of pounds to replicate and you have a heart the size of the universe and you are too quick to forget that.

You are the best friend anyone could have and those who have you as a friend, me included, count themselves lucky every day because of it.  You are funny, honest and more loyal than anyone of us deserve.  But you’re here.

Life and love isn’t about being tagged the hottest girl in school or work.  It’s not about fitting into the same size jeans at Posh Spice.  It isn’t about loving someone because they fit this crazy view of everyone must be perfect.

You’re not perfect – you have grey hairs for christ sake and I love you just the way you are

Fair weather friends….

… really piss me off.

Sorry.  But they do.

So much so that I’m thinking about cut one out of my life.  Which is turning out to be a not so easy decision to follow through on because this friend, D, she’s been one of my closest friends for 15 years.

But surely friendship goes both ways.  Doesn’t it?  Or am I wrong?

D and I have been through so much together.  We’ve supported each other with comforting DVD’s and tub of icecream when either of were dumped by a less than deserving boyfriend.  When our families felt like they were falling apart and we needed a rock.

I remember three years ago she started ignoring my calls.  On the occassions she did answer the phone I’d get one word answers to my questions and protestations that she’s fine.  Which she clearly wasn’t.  So I turned to her husband to find out what was going on.  I knew if I couldn’t break D, I’d certainly break A.  He is without doubt the worst liar I’ve ever met.  Honestly – he’s crap at it.  Good thing too. 

He said that everything was fine and that they were ‘stuck in a rut’.  Uh huh.  The last time they were in a rut he slept with someone else.  Admittedly they were 17 and 19 at the time of that occurance but still, a leopard doesn’t change it’ spots does it?

I did the only thing I could think of.  I booked a flight and ordered her husband to pick me up at the airport.  D needed me and whether she chose to admit or not, she was pleased to see me.

That 90 minute journey from the airport to their home was absolute hell.  You know that really awkward silence you have sometimes when you realise that the person you’re with doesn’t really like you and vice versa: the blind date that is the ultimate chalk and cheese?  Yeah?  Well that was us!  We’d been friends for over 10 years yet for the first 60 minutes, we sat in silence like strangers.  Until my gob ran away with itself and I made the first dig:

Me: Are you having an affair?

A: <with a horrified look on his face> NO! Of course not!

Me: You’re lying

A: I’m not.  I love D.  We’re just stuck in a rut. 

Me: You’re still lying A.  Don’t forget, I was here cleaning up the fall out of the last time you were stuck in a rut and it was all I could do to get D to speak to you again.  So don’t bullshit me.

D: I’m not.  Honest, we’re just in this place.  You know, things are different but the same.  You know what D’s like.  She’s hard work.  Nothing is ever right.  Nothing I do is right.  We don’t spend anytime together because of work.  That’s it.  I promise.

Me: Don’t make me a promise you can’t keep.  If you’re having an affair then I suggest you tell D because if you’re lying, and I will find out if you’re lying I will tell her.  Then you and I are done.

The rest of the journey was silent.

I don’t know why – call it sixth sense, but I knew he was lying.  I knew it.  And what really fucked me off was that I had to fork out over £130 for return flights to get him to tell his wife he was up to no good.

I arrived at their home on the Friday morning.  By the early hours of Sunday morning D knew everything. 

D and I got separated on a night out so I went to hers to wait for her.  I saw a car parked on the other side of the road.  In that car was a woman.  A blond, slim woman.  Before I had chance to engage my brain I opened the car door (although the while hoping she didn’t go ape shit and punch me) and said ‘You’re the one he’s sleeping with’

At that point D arrived, found out what was going on and it all kicked off! 

Thankfully D & A are in a far happier place now.  That’s all behind them.

Mind you, I’ve had my own fair amount of crap to deal with and D has always provided a shoulder to cry on.  When my brother died, D was there so fast.  It was like someone shoved a rocket up her ass.

But that is the last time I really remember her being there.

Whenever she’s had a problem and she’s called me or text me, I’ve been there.  I’ve called her back.  I return her messages.  I help her feel better about what’s going on and try to put a different spin on things.  Get her to see the positive and not the negative.

But when I’ve called her, or I’ve had a rough time of things recently - she’s never there.

I mean, I know I have J and I love him more than ever for that, but sometimes I need the shoulder of my oldest girlfriend and that hasn’t been there.  At all.

And it hurts.  It hurts to know that she really only contacts me when she’s in need.

You’ll probably tell me I should talk to her.  Well, I tried.  Several times.  She either ignores me (gasp with shock) or she tells me that everyone has their problems.

Nice.

So the question remains:  do I give up and walk away and save myself the grief.  Or do I persevere?

Answers on a postcard please

Lie to me….

I will never understand the male psyche?

I mean, what personality characteristic is it that some men possess that allows them to believe it’s OK to cheat on their wife and children?

I have been in relationships where the man I’ve been with cheat.  I’ve heard countless times the old ‘it’s-not-you-it’s-me story.

I know it’s not.  I know I’m not the problem, because if I was – we’d have talked about it.

Which begs the question – what is it about you that makes you want to sneak about town behind your partners back, lie to their face and deliberately deceive them?  Does the adrenalin pump so hard that it feels like a drug induced high?  Something you can’t get enough of and that, since you weren’t caught, you feel is your right to have over and over again?

I do not like men who cheat and I despise any form of liar.  Anyone who tells me that either I was lied to or someone else was lied to for ‘their own good’ should be slapped.  Lying to save someones feelings is not acceptable and quite frankly I’d rather you didn’t spare them.

Besides my own experience, here’s what happened to only reaffirm my belief:

My friend (who shall remain anonymous) met a man in September 2008.  She was absolutely bowled over by him.  So much so that when she went on a once in a lifetime trip around Australia in the December of that year she didn’t take up a single offer of a date that she got during her trip.

Before she left for Oz, things with her and Mr X got quite serious.

Problems started at 5 weeks into them dating when he slipped himself up.  Up until that point he’d made references to his son (who he’d been quite open about) and his ex girlfriend.  He let it slip during one conversation that his ex girlfriend was actually his wife. And not an ex-wife.  One he was still (unhappily) married to.  Oh dear.

Why she didn’t walk away at that point is beyond me.  I couldn’t tell you how many times I tried to convince her to leave his lying ass.  Afterall, if he lied about something monumental like his marital status – what else was he lying about?

Well, he was also lying about the fact that his (ex) wife was pregnant!  Pregnant for christ sake??  How do you ‘forget’ to tell someone that your wife is expecting your SECOND child?  Things at home can’t be that bad surely because 15 weeks ago they were good enough for you to have sex with and impregnate your wife!!!!

She went to Oz in December with a view to thinking it over.  He gave her some waffle about how she’d blown him away, he’d never felt like this …. <insert more lies here>

She didn’t take up a single offer of a date that she had whilst she was away.  In fact, she couldn’t wait to get home and see him.

So she got back to the UK, carried on seeing him and carried on believing every lie that came out of his mouth.  Stuff like ‘I love you so much….’, ‘I’ve never felt like this before’, ‘I feel alive when I’m with you’, and my personal favourite: ‘there is nothing between my wife and I.  It’s over’

He told her over and over again that he was going to leave his wife but that he couldn’t because he needed to know where he stood with access to his kids.  He promised her that once he’d seen a solicitor he would move out.  Hell, he even told me the same thing, in February this year to be exact.

His second child was born at the end of March.  A date which, by his own admission, he didn’t know.  How can you not know when your baby is due for crying out loud?

It took him months to see the solicitor.  July to be precise.  Then he found more excuses why he couldn’t leave his wife.  His wife was poorly because she was breastfeeding, his wife’s grandpa was poorly.  Excuse after excuse after excuse.

But the saddest thing is that all the while he was letting his son establish a relationship with my friend.

His wife found out eventually.  The spineless sod left a photo of him and my friend lying around for his wife to find.  He protested that it was an accident and that he never meant for her to find out like that (more lies).  For one brief moment, I thought maybe, just maybe, he was going to turn a corner and do the right thing.

No.  He had hoped his wife would make things easy for him, packs his bag and throw him out.  But she decided that she was going to fight for her man and insisted they go for counselling.

Mr X told my friend that he had to be silent for a while and that she couldn’t text him or contact him.  He would contact her.

In the end, my friend got so sick of listening to his excuses and not seeing any positive actions on his part she told him to leave her alone.  Don’t call her, don’t text or email her.  No more contact – she was quite insistent.  I could hear the angel’s singing ‘Hallelujah’.  I even took some time out to thank God for letting her see sense!

Too good to be true though.  Mr X couldn’t leave it.  He was back in touch and telling her that he didn’t want to lose her.  Armed with more promises that he would explain whats going on.

He got in touch today after 2 weeks of silence but only to tell her that it’s clear they’ve both moved on and that’s it.

No matter how much I think about what has happened, I can not fathom what drives someone to lie, deceive and mislead people.  Especially people they claim to love.

I don’t condone my friends actions.  She openly chose to carry on a relationship with someone she knew was married with children.  But are her crimes worse than his?  Despite her pleas he kept her his dirty little secret.

He lied.  He cheated.  Nothing will make that better.

Better than others?

I’ve lived in quite a few cities in my life and made friends in each one.  Every group is different, they represent various stages of me: my early teens, the horrible school years, uni, even my first job!

I have friends from each stage that I still keep in touch with and I like to think that my friends are my friends without prejudice.

But the reality is very different.

I have a very close bunch of friends from this stage in my life that I see very regularly.  We’ve all been through quite a lot together: relationship get togethers, break ups, house moves.  Life.

I love them.  They’re my friends.  They keep me sane when I think the world is falling down around my ears and they make me laugh until my tummy hurts.  But I’ve come to realise that I don’t feel 100% fulfilled by them.

I know it sounds horrible to say but it’s the truth.

For 4 and a half years, I lived in Bristol.  I moved in 2000 with my then other half.  That relationship broke down horribly (I found him in bed with another woman – another post!) and I moved out.  Every bone in my body told me to pack my stuff and run home to my Mum and Dad.  But that stubborn streak in me told me to stick it out.  I had a new job, some new friends but more than that, I would be damned if I was going to let him think that I couldn’t cope in a new place on my own.

So, I carried on working and I met a group of people that I wouldn’t be without today.  Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t do anything together particularly special, but I look back on that period of my life and I wonder how I ever got through some of it without them.

We’ve all seen each other settle down, get married, buy houses, have babies.  Hell two of them even emigrated.  I think that’s maybe why I feel most comfortable with them.

The couple who moved to Australia have come home for a visit.  They’re here for 4 weeks and we had a small reunion last night and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I was home.  I haven’t lived in Bristol for 4 years but whenever I go back I feels like I never left.  The sad part is that when I do have to leave it feels like I’m doing so under this massive grey cloud.

I miss my friends.  I miss seeing them every day and I miss watching their children grow up.  Two of the daughters are the same age as mine and when I watch them play together a massive part of me wishes that mine could be part of it.  To grow up with the children of people I care deeply about.  But that wont happen because I don’t live there.

It dawned on me today that the reason I feel so sad when I come home and why I miss them so much is because my lazy arse doesn’t make enough effort to go down there and see them.  It is entirely unacceptable to me that my friends don’t know my daughter and have only seen her a handful of times since she was born.  Equally unacceptable is that they met my other half for the first time.  We’ve been together two years.  What a shocking let down on my side.

But that is going to change.

I promise to make more effort in seeing them.  I promise to make them part of my daughters life.