I’m too much of a coward to say this to your face, so I hope you come across this online. You’re a lovely girl, one of my favourites, but it’s time you faced up to the truth: you are terrible with men. You say that breaking up with your boyfriend knocked your confidence, but that was four years ago now. It’s about time we wiped away those crusty tears.
I didn’t notice it at first. I thought you were just going through a wild single phase, wearing your heart on your sleeve and being a bit impulsive. We have all been there. There are a few men for every girl who, when brought up in conversation, inspire a head dip, a hair scratch and a sheepish grin. The combination of a break-up and a few drinks can make you take out your loneliness on the nearest thing around. Far from being special, they’re just someone rather than no one. But I think society set a year limit on that. Two years after you broke up with your ex, you started sleeping with one of my friends and the sad truth came out. You’d gone a bit mad.
If he hadn’t have brought it up I would never have guessed. You were very good at hiding your madness. Plus, you’d been single for years now, albeit not really seeing anyone, just sleeping with the odd boy here and there. You seemed very in control of your life. It took a conversation with that friend of mine to bring your cracked state to my attention. ‘Your friend... she’s a bit mad isn’t she?’ he said one night. ‘No she’s not. What makes you say that?’ I defended you. ‘I’ve been sort of sleeping with her, just two or three times real casual, but she’s started getting a bit strange. She added all my friends on Facebook and keeps wanting to come round and cook me dinner. She won’t even let me do the washing up. I think she just wants an excuse to stay the night,’ he replied with a shrug. Sure, it was a bit shitty of him to tell me this, but I instantly sighed in my head when he said it.
You’re a great cook, that’s not why I sighed, your lasagne is unparalleled. But I know that when you cook for a man it’s your way to make him like you – it’s one of the best known clichés in the book and I’ve seen you do it before. More than that, it’s a way to make them feel like they owe you something. And it’s a way of attacking them when they don’t give anything back. It’s as though you thought through persistence, familiarity and guilt alone you could make yourself an indispensable part of his life. I’m not sure how long a man would stick with a woman for food - maybe for years - but it sounds like a dreary sort of existence and I want things to be better for you.
I know that when you cook for a man it’s your way to make him like you
Still, some people are more coupley than others, and this fellow was notoriously independent. So I wrote off his freak-out. But when that ended you started seeing his best friend. It must have shown signs of being a bit more promising as you told me about this one. So did a few people. It started with a threesome at a party, so I heard. I wouldn’t be concerned but people said you seemed pretty wasted. We chatted about it and you brushed it off as fun, saying you’d seen him loads since and it was going well. When you cried and hit him in a bar, shouting at him about why he never wanted to see you and why was he talking to some girl, I thought it must not be going so well. After him, there were two or three more. They took the same amount of emotion from you without investing so much as a trip to the seaside or even a one-on-one pint.
I thought I should speak to you and see if you were okay but you’re so proud. Besides, you were always going to make your own mistakes. But then you started seeing a very good friend of mine and it all got a bit awkward. First, you’d text him and if he didn’t text back, you’d text me with urgency to see if I was with him. If I was, you’d switch to an easy-going jolly mood and say you’d come and meet us for a bit, uninvited. He told me after two weeks that you’d danced around the subject of love. He liked you, he even seemed endeared by your neediness, but the love thing really shook him up. Then you bought him a £250 jacket for his birthday. That’s terrifying. You’d only known each other well for three weeks. Also, I’m sure the most expensive present I’ve had from you was a bottle of Tesco Prosecco, not that it matters. He told you he couldn't accept it and you threw a strop. I think it’s understandable that he didn't want to see you anymore after that.
When you cried and hit him in a bar, shouting at him about why he never wanted to see you and why was he talking to some girl, I thought it must not be going so well
But then you befriended one of his girl friends and kept turning up everywhere they went. You contacted his sister to work on a project together and when he called you crazy, you said she was just the right person for the job and that was that. Grabbing any boy you could and taking them to places you knew this boy would be was a real low. It was awkward for everyone but least of all for the boy I can only presume you were trying to make jealous. The boy who you’d only been seeing for a month, who had barely cared about you then and who certainly didn’t now, three months on. These are the actions of someone who is deeply unhappy and it broke my heart to watch. I understand the feelings of loneliness and rejection you must be experiencing but it’s time to stand on your own two feet. Yes, you might feel lonely at times but at least you won’t feel like a fucking idiot. Plus, you’ll have more time to do fun things rather than worrying about boys or hunting them down. Remember fun? I wonder the last time you had any.
The worst thing about the situation is that you are really very good company. Everyone likes you. Even the men who have ended up ignoring your calls like you. What they didn’t like was your erratic, maniacal behaviour. I’m sure if you’d have behaved normally things would have fizzled out perfectly civilly. Yes, they would have fizzled out because these boys aren’t right for you, you don’t give a toss about them and they aren’t compatible with you. You’ll meet someone lovely one day but not now, I don’t think. You’re a wreck, no one can give you what you want. What you need is a hot bath, a good sleep and then to – ok, occasionally – bore me with all your emotional outpourings because, until you either get a boyfriend or decide you are happy on your own for now, that’s what I’m for. I want to be that friend. But you're making it very hard for me to be right now.
Picture: Lukasz Wierzbowski
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.