Manchester: Level Complete

Many moons ago I attended university in Manchester, a portion of my life which I have mentioned the significance of before. As a result the city itself has been close to my heart ever since and I returned many times while I was dating my ex and living in Nottingham to go to parties and spend time with old comrades. We were always quite popular in our friendship group; she could light up a room with a smile and I tend to get on with anyone so we did well at social gatherings.

sometimes however I get too relaxed. Usually after a few beers

This weekend however I returned to my peers as a single man for the first time. My ex was thankfully absent from the gathering I had returned to attend but I was worried I would feel her everywhere, hear her laughter echoing down streets long abandoned, smell her perfume in crowds of strangers and catch her reflection in the rear-views of a thousand parked cars but this was not the case. While Manchester was the city in which we fell in love and lived a life suspended in a happy world safely tucked away from the desert of the real it was also my city. I built myself there and walked my own path through those streets. As I  followed familiar routes through the cityscape of Manchester it wasn't her I sensed, it was me. Remnants of all the nights of frivolity, days of study, friendships forged and moments of stillness in cool echoing halls filtered through from every place I saw and I felt the weight of history press down on me.

This was not the history of Manchester itself but it was my history, written into everything I had touched and every place I had been. I bought a coffee from the Starbucks I always used to call my parents from and walked the same route down the tram tracks towards the station I had always followed. As I entered Picadilly station the crowds of weekend commuters enveloped me like the arms of an old friend and I realised I was never coming back again.

While I may return to Manchester to visit old friends and confidants l'll never be able to return to my Manchester. That place is gone now. The chapter is finished. To everyone who I lived, loved and laughed with thank you for helping me write it. I wish I could remember two of you more fondly but no story is interesting without a little drama and I don't have the energy to hate you and still have lots of fun so I'm picking fun.

The strange thing is that I dont feel regret at what I've left behind. It's more a feeling of completion. I've finished the level with a reasonable score (although the last boss was pretty tough) and now it's time to move on. The next epoch is starting and I've heard it's going to be the best one yet.

Stay Crunchy Internet

The League of Evil Exes

Good evening internet, may I first apologise for the break in communication last week, I've been moving into a new place and it was all a bit stressful and busy. Things are however looking much better this week. I've set up a nerd den in a new house, managed to dust off and display a bunch of nerdy nick-nacks (nick-nerds?) and posters which have been in storage for too long and have finally escaped from the quickly festering and gangrenous atmosphere that was building up in my old house with my ex. I am free. The sky is the limit and it is a big place.

I aim to misbehave

I guess this is the part where I talk about how my ex was a bitch and that she was only holding me back. Possibly list her faults in an attempt to aid my moving on. Describe her as a footnote in the saga of my life. Insult her sexual prowess. Maybe call her fat. I'm sure you would even forgive this uncharacteristic amount of spite and vitriol because after all, all's fair in love and war. The problem is I'm not that kind of guy.

I'm much more rock and roll than that

Don't get me wrong my ex turned out to be more stupid, untrustworthy and devious than I thought but that's not a new revelation for people in long term relationships to have. Towards the end things got shit but 90% of our 4 year relationship was really special. She made a man out of me and I am not ashamed of what I have become. She was instrumental in my evolution as a person, pushed me to succeed academically and gave me a reason to push myself when it came to jobs. It would be foolish of me to write her off as a bad mistake. It seems a lot of us tend to treat old partners as dehumanised caricatures made up of all their negative traits - especially if the break up was messy - and I can understand why but doing this sells us short for a number of reasons.

All of these guys were actually probably OK. Apart from Gideon. He's a dick.

Bitterness is Poison

If we put our ex's in the league we never have to forgive them: "Batman never had to forgive the Joker and Luke never had to forgive Emperor Palpatine so why should I forgive him/her?" we think. The problem with this line of reasoning is that it makes us bitter and bitterness rots from the inside. It doesn't take hold straight away but after a couple of years it gets you. It can prevent the blossoming of new love and shut us down emotionally. Forgiving those that wrong us is a fundamental part of moving on properly; a wound cannot heal with the quarrel left inside so we must remove it with introspection and clear, controlled thought. Sometimes people do truly evil things that are unworthy of forgiveness but as I have never had to deal with them in relationships I will not attempt to speak about them. I personally have forgiven my ex for what she did, don't get me wrong it was stupid and I will never trust her again but I know that she didn't just do it for no reason. The reason was just stupid.

Putting all the Blame on Others Prevents us from Learning

So my ex cheated on me. For 2 months. She wrecked our relationship. But the sad truth is that I helped her. I didn't do anything as stupid as have a secret primarily online affair with one of our best friends but I definitely contributed to our downfall. I was drawing too much of my identity and need for social gratification from our relationship and that resulted in an imbalance of effort. I was putting more into it not because I loved her more but because I was leaning on her too much to sustain me. This made her feel like she didn't love me enough and she was too cowardly and/or inarticulate to talk to me about it. I needed to back off and give her some space. I needed to go out and have fun with my friends more but I didn't. 

This doesn't count

She confided in him and he gave her sympathy. She mistook this for something deeper. She secretly started spending more time with him and having illicit, occasionally explicit Skype conversations with him. It was so exciting, just like the soaps she loved so much. She treated it like a game with the same level of personal detachment she treated so much of her life. When I found out she felt cornered. She said lots of hurtful things; some stupid, some true, some false. These confrontations shattered her already brittle feelings for me and the gloves were off. It ended.

She even said "I love you but I'm not in love with you"

Do I understand why she chose to deal with my flaws in the foolish way she did? No. That does not however mean that they were not my flaws. If I put her in the League of Evil Exes I will never have to deal with my contribution to our downfall and therefore will not grow as a person. I now know how to avoid suffocating girls (figuratively) in long term relationships so I will not repeat my mistakes.

So What am I Trying to Say?

We need to remember that some of our exes were not an evil waste of time and were infact the making of us. For every fight there was an evening snowed in under a blanket crying together at Band of Brothers, for every moment of intimacy denied there were gentle squeezes on the palm in dreary hospital waiting rooms and for every last awkward goodbye there was a first passionate kiss. If we ignore the good they brought into our lives in an attempt to move on we are worse fools than them.

Stay Crunchy Internet

Damage, Deceit and Dating: The Great Game

Due to the interests and subcultures I have talked about on this blog it may come as a surprise to no one that I am currently a single man with a messy room and a wardrobe full of t-shirts printed with obscure pop culture references that no one normal would understand.

If you don't get it, I'm officially better than you

Surprisingly enough it wasn't always this way, in fact up until a few months ago I was in a relationship with a girl (a real one) and had been for four years. We had moved in together last year. Everything was going well and I was planning to marry her. Then I found out that she had been cheating on me with one of my best friends from university. I found out while she was at his (he was a mutual friend who I though I could trust) by stumbling across pictures and videos she had made for him as a valentines day present on her laptop.

This is a dramatisation, I am not actually a cat. Also I was crying more.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of the shitstorm that followed but suffice to say we are no longer together, the dream is over, I don't trust her any more and I love her less and less each day. The advice -  some good and some crazy ("you should shit in her bed" being a personal favourite) - and condolences I've received have helped me and soon I will be out of our house and she will be out of my life. Good times. The crowd goes wild. Everybody laughs.

Curtains.

Now this isn't another livejournalesque first world problems rant about how women are bitches and how she never deserved me or that she was holding me back. Actually I wanted to share some personal revelations I've had recently as a single person about straight relationships and dating as a twenty-something. Obviously anything I have to say is indicative of the position I'm in at the moment and I'm still re-building the lego house that is my psyche (as opposed to stepping all over the pieces and hurting my feet) but our wounds define us so I hope I still have some interesting things to say in spite - or maybe because of - this.

The Mirrored Wilderness Forces us to Build Castles

Love is pain I hear you say, love is a cruel and bitter way to pay you back for all the faith that you've ever had in your brain. This is a perspective many of us have adopted as single young adults and it's as dangerous as it is sadly often correct. Most of us have been burned before so we erect emotional fortresses in our minds and protect out feelings behind self defence mechanisms and portcullis' of passive aggression. It's a common tragedy to meet someone who you feel you could have a real connection with if they would just let down the drawbridge once in a while.

No I don't mean like that, dirty Internet!

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should knock down the castle and set out without protection, it's just important to make sure you know the way out or in should the right person come calling. If you don't know the layout of your particular stronghold I suggest you have someone help you write a map.

There is no Such Thing as a "Soul Mate" and you Would Hate them if There Was

The concept of a Soul Mate is one that has bugged me ever since I've been having lasting meaningful relationships for one simple reason. It's a form of dehumanisation on par with sexual abuse. Now I understand that's a bold statement and it would be remiss of me not to explain myself. We can dehumanise our mates in two ways; by can dismissing their feelings or idolising them (an interesting thing to note is that pornography does these two things simultaneously). 

No one is that perfect for anyone else and everyone has their fair share of issues. Take me for example; I'm sensitive, empathetic, articulate and creative but I am also prone to bouts of extreme self doubt, misanthropy, social anxiety and blunt stubbornness. I will never be perfect for anyone all the time and I don't want to be. 

Seriously, fuck this guy. He probably has a sex dungeon. And Syphilis

Constantly seeking a Soul Mate leads to the same form of emotional wanderlust that destroyed my last relationship and hypothetically if you met yours your wouldn't like them. We need the little imperfections in our relationships because otherwise there would be nothing to overcome or use to define the good times against. Acceptance is one of the most important things we can give another human being and it's selfish to constantly seek unrealistic perfection. Speaking of which...

Guys: we Need to Learn that the best Solution is Often not Trying to Fix Things

As men we like to fix things. As a boy I would take things apart just so I could fix them again. Sometimes we can fix things for our girlfriends for example: 

• There is a spider in the bath.
• I can't put up these shelves.
• No one has checked out my ass as I've left a room recently.

But what's more important than this is learning a sense of stillness. Sometimes women just need you to relax, make them a cup of tea and watch Buffy re-runs with them. Surprisingly enough actually attempting to solve the mysterious 'problem' that is causing her apparent bad feelings by interrogating her will actually make her feel worse. Maybe this will lead to her being passive aggressive and possibly even an argument about something neither of you really care about. Maybe you might think you are winning that argument but that will make her cry. Then you will loose because lady tears are magic. 

It's ok, just don't listen to her sobbing. Be strong. Be str- oh man I've seriously F-ed this up

My dad has always told me to make sure that a battle is worth winning before you try and we as men need to be an anchor for our partners. Anchor's don't do anything apart from sit there and weather the storm but without them ships would get smashed to bits on rocks.

Women: You Need to Learn That not Talking to us About Things will not fix Them

The last point I made may have seemed slightly sexist to all the ladies that read this blog (of which there are many I'm sure) and that's because I'm stupid. In-fact many men are. Sometimes we do things and say things that piss you girls off. We would probably apologise if we knew but often we don't notice. 

It seems the general modus operandi for many girls I know is to not tell their significant other about these instances and instead tell me about it (I guess I have one of those friendzonable faces) and that's unfortunate; we would love to talk about the crazy shit we do because it helps us grow as men. If we think you're being petty we will tell you but generally your criticisms will help improve us and our lives with you. This has to be tempered with respect and the ability to pick your moments but keeping things from us only leads to damage in the long term.

So these are the things I have been thinking recently. Are they revelatory? Probably not. Are they original? Definitely not. I know I'm probably treading old ground for some of those older and wiser out there but I hope someone somewhere finds this useful. 

Hey at least I'm not still banging on about God and that.

Stay Crunchy Internet