Split Personality

When a long term relationship breaks down, being single again can be a pretty terrifying experience. To begin with you can't imagine being with anyone else, but after a while you start to find other men attractive and can entertain the idea of getting naked with another man without it turning your stomach. Then comes the excitement of meeting someone new, flirting with them, sleeping with them. The thrill becomes addictive, and it boosts your confidence to know that men find you attractive, that the old adage of there being plenty more fish in the sea is actually true. Unfortunately, however, there are always a few bad apples along the way - you know the ones, gorgeous but arrogant and only out for themselves. Sleeping with them is always exciting, primarily because you never know when they'll deign to bestow themselves upon you and they always keep you guessing. But ultimately they leave you feeling like crap, and chip away at your self confidence almost as much as the Break Up did. So you have to be strong, set the attraction to one side and move on.

Every so often you'll meet a PBT (Potential Boyfriend Type), and get excited by the prospect of a new relationship that's based on more than just sex and the thrill of the chase. You go on dates, hold hands, laugh, enjoy one another's company, and then....well, in my experience the next thing that happens is you start having doubts about what you want, freak out, and ultimately end up walking away because for some reason you just can't cope with the idea of committing yourself to one person (which is particularly ironic if, like me, that's exactly what you did for the best part of a decade).

There are several reasons I can think of as to why this cycle occurs in my life:

1) I just haven't met the right PBT yet
2) I'm still not ready to be in a relationship
3) The Break Up has, in some way, altered my brain functionality to the extent that I'm no longer capable of forming proper relationships with the opposite sex (obviously I'm hoping it's not this one)

It's almost like there are two different people residing inside me - one that's desperate for stability, love and commitment, and can think of nothing better than being in a monogamous relationship again, and the other that's wild and carefree, who just wants to have fun, be passionate and experience all that life has to offer - without being tied down. In fact, whereas before I could think of nothing better than being with just one person for the rest of my life, now the very idea of it makes me want to run for the hills. If you can be with someone for 9 years and it not be right, how can you ever be sure that anything's right? How can you ensure you don't make the same mistake again and lose even more time? I know the answer to those questions is you can't be sure, because nothing in life is certain and there are no guarantees. You just have to make judgement calls and hope for the best possible outcome.

The problem is, I don't know if I can trust my judgement any more, so to compensate for that I've set the bar too high, and am overly critical of the PBTs I've met because after spending all those years with the wrong man I refuse to waste a moment of my life by settling for anything less than perfection. But is that really so bad? What's wrong with holding out for perfection? Apart from maybe the depressing fact it doesn't actually exist?