Where am I going with this, you may well ask!
Stay with me, there’s a reason for my question. We get there, eventually!
If you’ve been in a relationship for the past 10 years the chances are you haven’t. If you’ve been single any time in the last 10 years, the chances are that you have.
I, for a variety of reasons, fall in the latter group.
Tick.
Been there, done that.
And to be completely honest with you, I actually found it quite fun. Or rather my friends, who lived vicariously through my disastrous stories, found it quite fun!
Don’t get me wrong I didn’t ‘play the field’. Most of the ‘dating’ consisted of one-off coffee dates with me walking away with every excuse under the sun as to why they didn’t suit, ie they have too many children, they don’t have any children, they spoke about their mother just a tad too much, too tall, too short, too fat, too thin . . . . I had standards!
I changed their names to protect the innocent when recounting my stories to my friends. Names were changed to Mr Sharpei, Mr Philanthropic and my friends’ favourite, Mr Moany-Gropeyhands to name but a few.
One day, via text, one of these guys asked what I was looking for in a partner.
What a good question. What was I looking for!
Instead of sitting down and really considering my answer I just texted back a monologue of everything that came into my head and pushed send. And like all bad texters, I then re-read what I had send, but instead of finding it full of grammatical errors, typos and poorly worded sentences, it was bloody brilliant, near perfect. #nailedit
What I am looking for in a partner is someone who can make me feel ‘worth it’, it’s as simple, yet complex, as that. Plus all the usual stuff like honesty, trust, love, adventure etc, they go without saying really, but the clincher for me, is to feel someone thinks I’m worth spending time with, worth going out of their way for, worth respecting, worth protecting, worth looking out for. But I guess I can take some blame for not having this before because I’m very independent (or rather, have had to be), and I give people the impression of ‘she’s ok’ or ‘she’ll be alright’ or ‘she can do it herself’ but sometimes I’d like to be cared for by someone else, other than myself. I’ve got a tough/self protective exterior and I’d like someone to bother to find the real me; perhaps I’m not as tough as I make out.
I’ve probably overshared now, so I may as well keep going.
The last nine words of my monologue read ‘perhaps I’m not as tough as I make out.’
This week has been the week I crumbled and shed a few tears. No, not over some disastrous date, but rather over the state of the travel industry right now.
Anyone who knows me well knows that is very out-of-character.
Ironically, those tears fell in front of the ‘keeper’ I found from online dating!
I’ve been a die-hard optimist throughout 2020 but as we approach the 12-month anniversary of Operation Lock-Down, I’ve lost my nerve.
I’ve got trips organised but have had my head in the sand telling myself everybody has lost their nerve too and ‘bums on seats’ are not going to happen this year.
But I’m going to put it out there, anyway.
Check out these micro-adventures coming up soon.