New Friends

It is difficult, as you get older, to establish new friendships.

In my 30’s I find that I only seem to be making friends with women who are at least a decade younger than me. And even though it makes me feel youthful, it is actually quite hard to maintain these friendships. Why? I guess because a lot of them feel as they need to be doing something, or saying something or moving or complaining, or flirting with your boyfriend, anything that disrupts the potential for a good time. Don’t get me wrong, I have a wonderful friend who is 22 years old and we can just go for lunch and talk about work and life. I think that she is an exception because she is socially aware or, maybe, being a single mother, she hasn’t got time to put up with bullshit.

Or, I seem to make friends who have a hefty repitoire of personal problems who require much of my time and cause worry and mental anguish. I don't like using this term but most call these people toxic friends. Through these bouts of friendships I was on edge waiting for their upset phone calls, always attentive to their needs, helping them, trying so hard to make them happy, and getting absolutely nowhere. It turned me into a depressed zombie with an aching heart. I was desperately unhappy and anxious. I started to cringe when I saw their name come up on my phone, I didn't sleep because I was thinking of things to say or do to help them, I had fights with my boyfriend because, couldn't he see, I was spending all of his time trying to help people?! In the end I had to say goodbye because it consumed me to the point where I had no life but theirs.

During the last couple of years I have tried to make some female friends, not quite succeeding due to matters that I addressed earlier. But last week I met a tourist from Switzerland through a friend of a friend of my Facebook friend. It was funny really. She is also in her 30s, yippee! And had been travelling around Australia for the last month with her father. We hit it off straight away. She was switched on, quite at ease and completely open. It didn't take long, as she had to go home after a week, but we formed a close bond and are now friends for life.

I guess it takes a lot of searching, or a lot of luck, but I am really glad I got to meet her!

Intuition or Paranoia?

I think that, as a woman, we often question ourselves as to how blurred the edges are due to contributing factors such as hormones, sleep deprivation, family problems and other things that could affect our well-being and mental health. But, I would like to know what people mean when they talk about a woman’s intuition? Do women have better intuition than men? Because the way I see it, women think way too much which results in confusing and often irrational ideas.

My friend had a relationship with this man who came across as an honest and good person, a little quiet, though very polite and open. One night after they had had sex and were falling asleep, she had a sudden sense that something was amiss. She said it was a feeling that was out of the blue and rocked her core. I never heard her once say anything negative about him. She always said that he was open and honest with her. She did the outrageous and the inexcusable, she checked  his phone while he was sleeping. Now, I know what most of you will be thinking, that there ended up being no substance to her feeling, and that her behaviour was a teeny bit obsessive. But I assure you it ended up being vital that she did or else she wouldn’t have found out about the handful of women he was dating behind her back.

I have had these bouts of ‘intuition’ where I have felt that my partner is hiding something from me. It is an awful thing to go through and I always wonder what is wrong with me as it makes me feel insecure and paranoid. When I get like this I have to ask myself whether my thoughts are plausible. I work through every reason, every effect and every God damn excuse as to why I shouldn’t be feeling this way. It is consuming and, quite frankly, quite depressing. I do think that people should learn not to jump to conclusions and to certainly not accuse or throw out the question of, ‘Are you seeing someone else?’ Because there are two inevitable consequences from asking this which are:

1. They will blatantly lie to you and say they aren't seeing anyone else. 

Or

2. They will get angry and make you feel like the smallest person on the planet.

I wonder if this stems from being cheated on in the past? There was one incident where I had this type of ‘intuition’ long before the missed phone calls, the vague mentions of his whereabouts, the lack of eye contact, the one-sided conversations during dinners out and the overall lack of effort for which I blamed on the length of the relationship, that only being 6 months. What was I thinking? The last straw was when he stood me up after stating he was with his family and too drunk to drive. Imagine me, beautiful make up, hair done and dressed to kill. Killed that relationship. Lucky I had that intuition, that sneaking suspicion, or else I would have been a mess. Expect the unexpected, I say. 

I don’t want to sound like a pessimistic feminist but I will maintain one thing. Trust your gut and, even if you don’t do anything about it, store the memory because the truth will come out in the end.

Fruit Trees

Does fruit fall far from the tree?

I have been thinking about this since watching ‘The Beloved’ with my beloved.

A movie loosely based on unrequited love. The relationship between a mother and daughter and their relationships, each with two men. One of them who they are passionate about, desire fuelled, giving them everything but themselves and then the men who love them with all that they have, who understand them and want to give them the world along with themselves. Two triangles touching bottom corners.

Do I see a semblance of my mother in myself? Will I end up making the same mistakes as she has? Will I push everyone away, to no longer risk my heart and to become lonely?

I would like to know how a parent influences the values and beliefs of their children. Do they begin lecturing them at a young age? To instil them with their own view of the world. What if their view is warped? Does the child grow up having unrealistic thoughts?

I think that a person does eventually grow into themselves but there will always be those underlying beliefs that will either influence their choices or render them guilty from not adhering. It’s a shame if, in the end, there is a vast contrast of opinion between a child and a parent. This makes me wonder whether it is all possible for a child to influence the beliefs of the parent? Wouldn’t it create more harmony and less disappointment, the key to a rewarding relationship?

More often this isn’t the case. It is a scary thought that you may end up following in the footsteps of a parent you don’t quite agree with.

Breaking Up and Making Up

It all seems so juvenile.

It makes you wonder why people choose to get back together when they obviously couldn't handle it in the first place. What changes during the days apart? Why do they risk wasting their time again?
I once went out with a man who said that once a couple have broken up then that should be it, when a person even just thinks of breaking up then that should be it.

This leads me to one question: 'What is it that you see in the other person for you to even consider risking your heart, your pride and self-worth? Why risk putting yourself through the pain and the anguish of breaking up again, just when you mended your heart and pulled yourself together again?'

Is it blind love/stupidity? I am sure we have all seen this situation over and over again. The poor hopeless being that can't think of anyone else. They can't see their lives without that person in it. No matter the hell they have been through, it must have been something that they have done wrong themselves. This person would do anything to make it work, change themselves, forever feel guilty for something, be forever making excuses at the behaviour of the other.

Could it be a time issue where age has suddenly come upon them? We see this is both men and women with one thing in common; they are childless. They worry about running out of time, women especially. I mean, I am only 30 but I do have thoughts where I don't think I will ever have the opportunity to become a mother. I have a male friend who broke up with his girlfriend to be with someone who had a child and then went back to his girlfriend because he wanted a child of his own. He swallowed his pride and she took him back. Ugh.

Or maybe it is more where I am? I look at the situation as a whole. I am confident enough to say that I have always known that this is the man I am going to spend the rest of my life with. And this knowledge is reciprocated. A woman is supposed to know, right? Well, this woman knows.

Relationships

Of the romantic variety. The all-consuming, blissful, heart-wrenching, ecstatic, soul-breaking, tearful, breathtaking, joyful, sanity-defying and every God damn feeling we do and don’t want to have all at once, from one end of the spectrum all the way to the other. We’ve all had one.

We ask ourselves, tell ourselves, why am I doing this? I don’t need this, I need this! We question whether the positives outweigh the negatives, whether it is all really worth it, whether this is what we actually want? Of course we do, don’t we?

Relationships. They are never black and white. They are nearly always a fuzzy black/white/grey. Like the old TV snow. All loud and crackly, making you panic and to quickly find the remote and change the channel or switch the damn thing off. That is exactly what they are like. Relationships force you to see who you are inside, what you do to other people, how you change them and how they change you. You are forced to feel uncomfortable, to feel confused, guilty and angry and then be rendered exhausted and bewildered wondering what the hell just happened.

The reason why we continue to put ourselves through this lies with a deeply ingrained belief that we too will someday find that fairy-tale ending. Cinderella and Prince Charming, Romeo and Juliet, one of the million couples out of those many Hollywood blockbusters or fictional narratives who somehow survive something so epic and come out amazed and in love.

My belief, my base of relationships, date back to when I was fourteen and I was reading ‘The Notebook’. ‘The Notebook?’, you say? Yes I, Tanya Chalmers, am a hopeless romantic. Allie Hamilton has characteristics that I have somehow shaped to myself, and every boyfriend I have had has been a potential Noah Calhoun, which isn’t too shabby a comparison, to say the least. Noah was wild and reckless, focused and passionate, and all of his love was for her only. Allie and Noah, they loved each other like school kids but with a raging passion that was X-rated. Their fights were raw and awful, nasty and hurtful but in the end, their love for one another erased all of the bad and turned it into something wonderful, equally deep and devouring.

With this in mind, we have to know when to say goodbye to a relationship that isn’t worth continuing. My conviction is to respect yourself enough to know how much respect you deserve from another person. You need to be able to tell the difference, to know when someone has treated you with contempt. And to walk away.

Love is never easy, it is intricate and complex. But pure and honest love will always be worth it. And even if it doesn't work out in the end, you should never have to look back with regret.

Now, in this life, I can bravely say I have found my Edward from 'Twilight', my Mr Rochester from 'Jane Eyre' and, finally, my Noah from 'The Notebook'.

The Return

I can't believe it has been over three months since my last post! I feel rusty.

A long absence can usually mean one of three things:
1. I am Dead - I am not. Or maybe I am and I am just someone pretending to be me.
2. Forgotten Blog Password - This did happen. My mind is not as sharp as it once was.
3. A conglomeration of occurances and occasions causing my less-than-lucrative amusements to fall by the wayside - Yes. I now have plenty of material.

Here is a summary of events:
I turned 30. In Paris. Spent 7 weeks travelling through Europe. Graduated uni. Went back to work. Restored harmony from the havoc that my temp created. Colleague resigned. Workload doubled. Created budget, with a lot of help, which I swear to adhere to. Started an 8 week Cuban Salsa course with my boyfriend. Read an insane amount of amazing books!

The reasons for my return are to do with three things. Firstly, http://www.listen-lady.com/ who unknowingly encouraged me by saying, 'Tanya, you should update yours! I will link to you if you will link to mine'. Secondly, I can feel my brain start to numb due to inactivity. For as challenging as Sudoku is for me, numbers are not words and to my dismay I find myself randomly being heckled by a certain grammatically gifted person. And thirdly, reflection is therapeutic and there is not one person I know who shouldn't do without.

Forward

This morning I received a forward from one of my colleagues, 'Stress - Put it Down for a Moment'. Reading through, it had the usual quotes and sayings that we always see in these sorts of emails, feel good, motivational, happy-happy-joy-joy! Ugh. But there was one in particular that touched me:
'It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to be kind to others'.
I sometimes have moments where I wonder what the hell it is I am supposed to do, what is it I am destined to be? I often hear of others striving towards a career, following their passions and living the life they have always dreamed of, and at my age I see that most people have succeeded in doing all of this.
Don't get me wrong, I am not disappointed with myself nor am I envious or unsatisfied. I have never wanted much and whatever I have wanted I always managed to get. I like this saying. It suits me perfectly. I love the people I share my life with and I hope they know how much they mean to me.