Manbits #10

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Anonymous writes: Ok, so here's the situation.

I met a girl - let's call her Charlotte. About 10 years ago, at Uni, she was going out with someone else, I fell in love. Didn't do anything at the time because I was a "nice boy". Became friends. Yeah, you know this one. Eventually some years later decided to tell her how I felt (the "some years" thing being a clue that it hadn't gone away).

Did so, as expected did not have the immediate result of her falling into my arms.
Ten years later. I haven't exactly been a monk, either in the developing killer martial arts moves and a deep sense of spiritual peace sense, or in the "not having sex" sense. However, I've never met anyone who seemed so right - we just seem to be incredibly well-matched. We're still good friends - very close friends, in fact.

Charlotte's been dating a guy for the last few years with whom she is, as far as I can tell, very, very happy. (He's a great guy. He's also really similar to me in a lot of ways - although to be fair is also different in some, notably being a bit less driven.)
I haven't had a relationship of longer than six months in the last six years. All of my relationships have been with very smart, very sexy, very interesting girls, but they've all ended for one reason or another (mutual lack of interest, not-mutual lack of interest (from both sides at different times), mild insanity).

A decade plus seems a reasonable length of time to have met someone else I was interested in, if it was going to happen. I'm starting to wonder if my conviction that there's no such thing as "the one" is in fact wrong. Periodically I convince myself I'm over her, but let's face it, that's clearly crap. I've never met anyone like her - anyone who has ideas like hers, who can point out when I'm talking bullshit like her, who's funny and sarcastic and sexy as her, who's on so much the same wavelength as me, who talks and writes and moves like her. I've had people tell me that I need to stop measuring against the Charlotte standard, but, well, hard to do.

Ah, shite. What to do? Just keep going and hope that I meet someone else whom I fall for? That strategy appears to be sucking so far. I've tried meeting people randomly, dating sites, going to lots of parties, etc, etc...

Sam says: Mmm, this is a tricky one. My first urge is to grab hold of you, give a hard slap and say ‘What are you thinking man! Move on!’ But then this is the real world and you are talking about your real feelings, and feelings are complicated irrational things.

The first issue is that you have clearly fallen into the Frienditis trap - a deadly place to be and almost impossible to get out of. All I can really suggest is that you keep being friends and set yourself up as her Plan B, and get ready to move swiftly if things go tits up with her current boyfriend.

As for her being the perfect girl; the trouble is, that if you actually started dating her, you'd find very quickly that she isn’t. As a friend you don’t have to smell her farts, put up with her being cranky with PMT and a myriad of other annoying things that lurk under the ‘perfect girlfriend’ exterior. As a friend, you almost always see the good bits when she has tarted herself up to go out and is having fun.

There is no real use me telling you to change the way you feel – the only thing I can really suggest is that you go out shopping in some more places where you might find women who are as great as her. Try www.mysinglefriend.com, the Selfridges of the online dating world, where even I get intimidated looking at the quality of their totty. You could also try www.scarletdating.co.uk, the dating site of the brilliant Scarlet magazine – I can pretty much guarantee that every sexy, smart, funny thinking girl in London reads it, so a bunch of the single ones should have signed up to their dating service.

Perhaps you could focus more on the monk angle and take up Zen meditation. You might realise that what is really important is the moment right now, and that longing for the perfect object of our desire just brings suffering. Sounds a bit wanky, but might actually help to change the way you feel.

‘Mr Sex’ says: Never mind Sam - I’ll give you a slap, mate. You bleddy well need one. You’ve basically crippled every relationship you’ve had right from the beginning, because you known all along that if this bird offered to drop both her current bloke and her knickers, you’d be up there like a rat up a drainpipe.

Obviously, you’ve been knocked bandy by that bag-of-wank idea that has polluted our minds for far too long, and your's in particular; the theory that, somewhere out there, is that one person who is our – holding back a little bit of sick in my mouth here – ‘soulmate’. And isn’t it funny that, out of the six billion plus people rattling about on this planet, this one person always happens to share the same workplace/school/college/bus queue as you?

Naturally, this person is not interested or is knocking about with someone else, which only makes you want them more. When you actually do become friends with them (mainly because you fancy the arse off them), it gets even worse. In the meantime, you treat every other potential partner as a make-do compromise, with an eye on the main chance. Congratulations: not only are you fucking yourself over, you’re shitting on someone else who's trying to make a go of it with you (as well as every other partner they run into when they’ve had enough of your half-arsed commitment).

Look, mate – surely now, after ten years, you must realise it’s not going to happen. Your choice is either to carry on mournging over this woman (whilst repelling every other potential partner you come into contact with), or take several steps away from her, take several deep breaths, and go and get what you need from someone else. And if I’m being overtly harsh, it’s only because I was you about ten years ago, and I'm hoping someone invents a time machine soon so I can go back there and give myself a severe kicking for being such a gorm. Don't make the mistake I did, young fella m'lad - end this bollocks now.

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