Counselling theories about dates

 

How are you this week? I was wondering whether you have been taking yourself out for walks and visioning the Devon landscape in mist and rain. I also wondered if you had been researching medicines and treatments on the internet and whether, though I thought this very unlikely, you had joined any groups.

I’ve had a much cheerier week thank goodness – I think because I have got absorbed in the people aspects of my job, visiting parish councils and running this workshop on Wednesday evening. It went really well and I was pleased and uplifted by that. Another lovely thing happened today – A* passed her driving test second time – and the excitement and joy at her new found independence was a delight. Not such good news was that FH rang me up to say his solicitors had advised him not to go with my suggested settlement and take it to the courts to decide. I didn’t say anything except that I just wanted it all to be over which he agreed so I hope he might sign anyway just to avoid it dragging on, but he might not. My concern is that a court will not see it as his responsibility to support the children through university whereas my calculations make allowance for him doing that. Honest!   In spite of giving up smoking and thus eating more I shall be bl**dy anorexic if it goes on much longer.

I did chase my own solicitor this week and the garage. The car is going to need a new sub frame so it will probably be weeks. Meanwhile endless paperwork and form filling seems to be the order of the day.

(I’ve just stopped writing to go to the kitchen and get some Thai bites and chive dip that you got me in to!) I was going to tell you that I had two new dates over the Christmas period. My counsellor (I went back to counselling after a few Relate sessions when FH first left, early this summer probably around the time I stopped seeing you). Initially I had 6 sessions with this independent therapist organised through work and now I see her about every 2-3 months. I know quite a bit about the basics from my work, but she is very well read and very challenging and has really made me think. I’m not saying everything she has said is necessarily right, but she makes me think about things in a different way.  Anyway, one of her theories is that I spent my married life compromising and I am heading in to the same script with the accountant i.e. not perfect, but who gets everything they want. Her argument is that my list is quite short and not unreasonable – it has things like ‘kind’ on it, and in the ‘delightful, but not essential’ section, ‘likes cooking’ – I thought that would make you laugh! Anyway I duly flagged up my doubts with Mr Accountant and tried two other dates. One was bald (which I am OK about) actor/director/builder who had some serious unresolved stuff about being bullied at public school and didn’t want to see me beyond the first date and the second was a Scot/garage owner/IT teacher who spent his 40s sailing across the Atlantic and round the Caribbean in a yacht. He endeared himself to me by saying I looked 35 (yes, I can do blatant flattery) and describing a delightfully eccentric horsey family who bury the family treasures in local fields to avoid taxation and fall out splendidly and volubly with each other, but raised less comfortable feelings by displaying a lot of physical affection with his cat and insisting on showing me his model aeroplanes. However, he has rung again and I am a sucker for talkers and organisers so I could see him again. In the meantime Mr Accountant has impressed me by not getting possessive or angry and just been very laid back and mature and handled me so well he is still no 1. I shall have to report back to guru Lin that I did not finish with him and am probably in a repeated script of compromise like most of the universe.

While I attempt bravely to launch myself regularly on the dating scene I am also adjusting to single life. I am going with A* to New York and my plan, so long as I am not destitute by the summer, is to take J2 on another Travelbags adventure – this time – and he chose it – to Bali. I have never been that far east before.