This weekend, I am defying all the advices of my friends, family and everybody else with any common sense and I’m going to visit my on/off boy, The Playboy. I’ve been seeing him irregularly over the past year or so and, a few months ago he moved down south to live on a beach because, like me, he’s lazy and doesn’t like routine and stress.
Everyone I know dislikes him because
a) he’s not particularly attentive
b) he now lives 15 hours drive away and
c) he drinks too much
d) he lives in a hammock on the beach (don’t ask).
So, I suppose he doesn’t make the most ideal boyfriend material. I have my reasons for liking him but it’s very hard to explain to someone who’s not in love with him. I can see how he might just appear to be a very bad man to outsiders (But he’s so funny and cute).
One of the things people always repeat to me about him is that they don’t like to see me “wasting my time”. I always think that’s a peculiar idea. I’m not disagreeing, I just never think of life in that way.
While I can’t imagine ending up with him, I never equate that to wasting time. I like being with him and there’s no great potential boyfriend I know who I’m passing up because of my relationship with him.
When I date men I know I won’t marry or whatever, I don’t think I’m wasting time. I think I’m just living in the present and having fun. That may well backfire in my face when I’m an aging spinster but I don’t see what the alternative is?
If I think about not wasting time, I imagine life as a mad speed-dating session; running around meeting as many men as possible with a mad crazed look in my eyes. It must be tiring trying to picture every man you date as a potential husband, father of your children, The One etc. I just don’t think on those lines.
If I did, I don’t think I’d be able to get anything else done. I’d feel life was a ticking time bomb and I had no time to waste sitting reading a book or sleeping or typing this column. (Get out of my way, I must go and find him).
Just thinking about my life in those terms makes me feel stressed already. I think I’d prefer to waste my time, have fun, probably get hurt, maybe meet someone else and try again than search high and low for someone who might be a good prospective lifelong partner.
I don’t even know what that kind of man would be. I guess he’d have a bed and not a hammock on the beach, but other than that, I’m unclear what I’d look for in a long-term partner.
How am I supposed to be organised about my husband-searching time if I don’t know what I’m looking for? And, if I’m honest, the inappropriate men are so much more appealing! That explains my crush-history of men who barely speak English, men who don’t own phones, men who live in hammocks.
If I do end up an aging spinster (and I don’t really see why that’s such a bad thing), I will have some funny stories to tell, at least.
In the meantime, I’m back off to the islands to go and see my handsome* hammock dweller. Wasting time can be a fun.
*Handsome if you like short, skinny men with a moustache.
