love out loud: they call you lady luck

When I started writing this column, I thought that I would never run out of material. I’m obsessed with my relationships, fickle and do a lot of stupid things. These are all elements that lend themselves to a phenomenal well of subject matter.

This remains true, but this week I had very little desire to recount the failings of my own love life and, having felt her first brush with ‘fame’ through ‘literature’ last week, Momo suggested (read: demanded) that I write about her bitterness toward relationships. Which is all well and good (sort of), except that a list of reasons that someone you don’t know is feeling jaded probably isn’t going to be all that interesting without some kind of central thesis.

So I started thinking about all the awful things that I know of people having done to one another. Here are a few:

• Girl messaged Boy asking if he was going out that night. Boy said he was staying home. Girl goes out and runs into Boy on a date with someone else.
• Boy invites Girl to a party. She attends this party and realises upon arrival that it is actually a going away party for Boy. Boy had neglected to mention that he was going anywhere.
• Girl realises while seeing Boy that she is not over her Ex-Boy. She tries to pretend things are okay with Boy, but realises one night that she cannot spend the night with him and ends the relationship…on Boy’s birthday.
• Girl and Boy have been sleeping together on and off for a couple of years. Boy sleeps with Girl’s Friend at a party. Girl is at this party. Boy plays dumb when confronted.
• Boy takes Ex-Girl home one night. Ex-Girl finds out a week later that Boy had sex with his ex-housemate’s ex-girlfriend earlier that day.
• Girl spends six months dating Boy. They break up because Girl doesn’t want a relationship. Girl is in a relationship with Another Boy within a fortnight.

Of course, there are details that would probably make you sympathise with different parties because we’re all so multi-dimensional etc, but what is common to all these situations is that someone, to some degree, got hurt.

We all do pretty shit things to each other, and especially when you see your own love life as the sum total of a whole lot of bad experiences, it’s easy to become bitter about love and all its subsidiaries. But more often than not, it’s simply bad luck/bad timing/bad whatever, rather than because there’s something wrong with you or the other person.

Momo has indeed had a bad run of relationships/pseudo-relationships/whatevers. So have a lot of other people I know. And there is nothing that fundamentally differentiates them from the ones who have been lucky in love and lovin’.

I’m not going to tell you that having bad experiences builds character (even though that’s often true), nor am I going to tell you that you’re still young (even though you probably are), or that you’ll eventually find someone who’s good for you (even though you probably will), because it really annoys me when people say those things. Whatever happened to you probably really sucked and you probably didn’t deserve it but nonetheless, you’ll probably be okay.

Just keep your head up, your bullshit radar finely-tuned, and don’t date anyone who idolises Max Tucker.