Is anyone actually happy in relationships?

After six months, nearly every romance fades into mundanity or misery. I'll be staying single

Conspiracy theory: I reckon this is a trick stock image where both hands belong to the same person. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

Recently, two attached men expressed an interest in me. Sadly, they were not attached to each other - dating conjoined twins could have been interesting - but to their respective female partners.

The men’s interest in me has remained very much unreciprocated, largely because I do not wish to be bludgeoned to death by an angry girlfriend with a baseball bat. The baseball bat is not the important bit here: I do not wish to be bludgeoned to death with a hammer either, or a golf club, or a giant statue of Donald Duck. Especially not the latter, as that would be wholly undignified. Give me a glamorous death anyday: I’d really prefer to fall off a super-yacht or have the pilot of my private jet crash into the Hollywood Hills.

Please do not bludgeon me to death with this. Photo by Wikimedia Commons.

I am digressing a bit here

But back to the men’s overtures: it was very wrong of them to want to cheat. But I was also flattered, because I am a fat unemployed middle-aged single mum, which is not every man’s dream.

Even when I was a skinny employed young single mum eleven years ago, a bloke I dated told me, “In an ideal world, you wouldn’t have a kid.” Oh really, dear? Well in that case, I’ll leave her on the nearest doorstep in a Moses basket.

More of which later (spoiler: she still lives with me), but next, a quote which is often misattributed to Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Even if I had been willing to risk being Donald-Ducked and gambled on one of these two clandestine romances, I now have 30 failed relationships behind me, so am officially crap at love. Why try it again knowing the only kind of happy ending I’ll ever be part of is a wankjob?

Then again, I wonder if anyone actually excels at relationships, except perhaps the Obamas. I did a Twitter poll a couple of years back to try and find out, and it came out as 50/50.

Maybe the Obamas themselves answered it? We’ll never know. The thing is, the ‘happy or very happy’ respondents might have been in denial, or they might have entered their relationship relatively recently.

Because I admit that the first six months are often bliss: the bit before you actually know the person, when they’re on their best behaviour.

Perhaps the only truly happy couple in the world. Photo by Matthias Kötter.

The sad demise of my love for Jeremy Hunt

At first, in relationships, everything is beautiful. I thought the sun shone out of Jeremy Hunt’s arse, which is inexplicable as I got quite a good look at it during our hundreds of sex sessions.

(I wasn’t dating the real Jeremy Hunt, in case you’re confused! It was just the nickname I gave my ex because he resembled the Chancellor of the Exchequer.)

To start with, I was wandering around in a lovestruck daze. On our first date, Jeremy brought me a huge bouquet of flowers, bought me coffee, held my hand and kissed me. He was such a perfect gentleman that I couldn’t believe my luck. How could such a wonderful man be single? (Narrator: he wasn’t really a wonderful man.)

After the first few weeks, the typical relationship is still going well. Of course, there might be the odd doubt. Jeremy said that he wouldn’t stay with me if I ever became terminally ill, which upset me, and I protested.

He responded, ‘What, like you’d clean up my shit for the rest of your life if it happened to me?!’ (Which was ironic, given how often we did anal.)

“And when it’s fully hard, my willy is THIS BIG!” (This is not the Jeremy Hunt I dated.) Photo by Wikimedia Commons.