Dating, Anxiety and Me

Dating, Anxiety and Me

This something that I think is really important to talk about. Especially this afternoon, the day after what I thought was a really amazing date. Most people would probably feel a sense of embarrassment blogging about this, but I want my blog to be a place of total honesty, and sometimes that means revealing information that makes me feel a little bit vulnerable. 

So last night I had a first date with a guy, now I met this guy on tinder (yes I use tinder, I’ll probably talk more about that soon). He’s a lot older than a guy I would usually date, as I’m usually into guys younger than me. But I was looking for something different this time. I realised immediately the benefit of someone older, they take charge, they organise. They will take you somewhere expensive for dinner, and there won’t be that incredibly awkward ending when a bill comes out and you’re pretending you wouldn’t mind going halves. He’ll just pay without question. 

So all in all it was a lovely evening, we had great food, and we talked and laughed. We shared a dessert, how adorable is that? There was even kissing, it seemed like it went really well. He dropped me home and he messaged me when got back saying he’d had a lovely time. All good right? Today I know he’s busy so I shouldn’t be worried that I’m not being bombarded by messages but unfortunately this is where the third part of any of my relationships comes out. 

Anxiety, my most loyal and longest relationship of all, this one never leaves me alone. So most people I presume could even accept quite easily after a first date that it just wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what the guy said. Or they’d accept without question he was busy. There was a time I would have been able to do this. Just brush it off, not anymore. This will take up my brains space for the rest of the day. I will desperately want a message, I will check his whatsapp online status all day and I’ll be miserable. Because I’ve lost the ability to have faith in myself or the fact that someone will like me. 

I won’t pretend that my past relationships haven’t had a huge impact on this, because of course they have made it hard to trust and I spent more time than I probably would admit being miserable in my last relationship. But I was ultimately proven right. 

Now I just wonder whether I should even try anymore... should I keep striving for a relationship when I make myself feel this awful about them. The answer is probably no, but I don’t want to be alone forever because of my anxiety. 

I see a lot of people talk about their relationships, and a vast majority of them seem to be in happy, healthy relationships. Their partners wanting to take care of them and support them through everything they go through. Sometimes I want that, because in a world full of people it’s so tiring to feel constantly alone. I’ve posted before about being happily single, and it’s not a lie, when there’s no one to message, there is no expectation and maybe that’s better. 

Who knows what will happen with this story, but for now I just wish I could deal with things better. I don’t think you should ever feel ashamed of failed dates, and there have been some hilarious stories from my dating life. But sometimes you don’t want a funny story, you want the one. 

Lots of Love,

Ciara xxxxxxxxx

The Other Woman

The Other Woman

This is a blog post that feels a little difficult to write, but I think that’s why it’s important for me to write it. This is the story of how I become the other woman.

I find myself irritated on a daily bases when I see memes about how girls are stealing other girls boyfriends, and while that may well be the truth in some cases, when it comes to my experience it certainly wasn’t anything like that.

I was minding my own business parking in car park I always use in the town over from mine, and I saw a boy I had known a long time ago walking across the car park, I waved, he gave me a confused look, and I carried on about my business. Later that day, I found myself thinking about him, truth be told he was a crush of mine at school. I had been a lot bigger then and he had been really nice to me, and I always had a soft spot for him. We were friends on facebook already so I had a little look at his profile, no mention of a girlfriend, no pictures either (don’t act like we don’t all do these checks).

So I took the plunge I sent him a message, just saying hi and that I thought I’d seen him earlier on. He was quick to respond and it went from there, conversation flowed easily, both of us saying how nice it’d be to catch up. A week or so later we met up for a drink in town; we still lived near one another. It was so relaxed and easy, we talked about all the bits from school to now, my job, him graduating university. Not once was there the slightest indication that he had a girlfriend, and that would have been the time to say something. We went for lunch together and he dropped me home, with a hug and a kiss goodbye.

We quickly arranged another date for the week later; speaking all the time in between, it seemed so easy, so perfect. I felt like I’d found someone I had lots in common with. The second date was lovely, and we were still at a stage where could tell me he had a girlfriend – nothing had happened yet that made us more than friends. But during the walk home, we had our first proper kiss and he’d made the decision to cheat there and then, there was no way for me to know what he’d begun.

We started seeing each other, and it was his birthday a couple of weeks later and he’d already made a lot of plans that weekend, which I wasn’t overly concerned about. I baked him his favourite cake, we got a lot closer... and he did his weekend of birthday stuff. He barely messaged me but I pretended I was laid back, trusting he was with his friends having a good time. When in honesty I spent that whole weekend worrying he didn’t like me anymore. Little did I know what was actually happening...

The Monday after that weekend he come round and met my parents for the first time. Some things happened, but we still hadn’t had sex, I had wanted to wait so it could be special. How stupid that seems now. That night I had a look on facebook to see who he’d spent the weekend with, and a girl’s name popped up with a picture of them together, he had a lot of female friends so I didn’t think much of it. Until I went on her instagram and she had tagged the picture with this tag #boyfriend. I spent a sleepless night thinking about this. I messaged him the next day asking for an explanation and he called me talk about it. I asked him outright if he had a girlfriend and he told me no. We met up for coffee the next day. He told me a whole story about what had happened between him and this girl and that he was letting her say she was still with him for the benefit of her horrible uni housemates, who would give her shit otherwise.

Now I understand a lot of people would have immediately decided this was a lot of bull shit, but he was known as a ‘nice’ guy everyone we knew in common thought so. Everyone thinks he’s a nice guy and he could have just ignored me so I made the decision to believe him. Because it was believe him or break up and I didn’t want that. I remember telling him that if he was lying I would look like an idiot. And I really, really did.

The next few weeks passed without incident, we had sex for the first time, it was all going well. Because of my job there were a lot of weekends I’d by flying for at least a day so I wouldn’t know if he was replying to my messages quickly or where he was. But I didn’t think I needed to know. I trusted him. This was until I looked at her instagram again, there was picture of them together at her graduation and I lost it a little bit. I messaged him and called him and again he explained the situation away, but I think deep down, I knew he was lying. He was on a trip for his job and he got back at the weekend. During that last week, the girlfriend tried to follow me on instagram and I questioned him about this more than once.

I saw him that Saturday, and cooked him dinner, he stayed at mine, and it was in fact a lovely evening. He had told me his ex (or as we now know girlfriend) wanted to have a talk so I asked what he intended to say to her. He told me he wasn’t going to get back together with her. The next couple of days we didn’t speak as much but we still messaged.

Then it happened, I had known he was going on holiday at the end of that week, he told me he was going with my friend. But as I looked at her twitter and she tweeted about how excited she was for her holiday, that Italian flag emoji taunting me, I knew that my doubts were well founded. I called him, I messaged her. He met me for a coffee and continued to lie to me, told me how sad he was about breaking up but he had to get back together with her and give it another go.

I was honestly devastated, he seemed to be so upset about the whole thing, and I truly believed he was as upset as me. His girlfriend didn’t believe me, and he then told her I was a liar, that I did this kind of thing all the time and that I couldn’t be trusted.

It was so horrible, to break up was hard enough, but to be lied about, for someone to act as though I hadn’t existed was worse than I could have imagined.  It was a tough few days and weeks. His girlfriend refused to believe me and I sent her lots of proof that it was the truth. Deep down I think she knows I wasn’t lying and that he was, but she just wanted me to go away. Because if I was gone, she could pretend it had never happened at all. And honestly I do understand that.

They’re still together, they went on their holiday and I got left to deal with it all on my own.

So that’s the story of how I become the other woman. But as you can tell, it wasn’t a case of my stealing someone else’s boyfriend. I was just a girl who liked a boy, who appeared to be single and starting dating him.

The other women are not the problem, whether we know about you the girlfriend or we don’t, it isn’t about us. It’s about the fact the man you are dedicating time to and loving would cheat on you. Emotionally and physically he chooses to betray you, and so often you leave the blame at our door. But they chose to hurt you, and you have chosen to let them.

The last thing I ever wanted to be was the girl who could destroy another’s confidence, and a man made me that girl. It has made me jaded and untrusting for now, but as time goes by, I move on more and more and realise that I’m the lucky one. I know that I’ll find someone better, because I’m not sure I could find anyone worse.

Writing this has been cathartic, and I hope if anyone who has been cheated on this has given some insight into the other side of the story.

Yours,

Ciara xxxxxxxxx

#lifegoals

#lifegoals

It can be pretty difficult to find motivation when you suffer with anxiety, to pull yourself out of a certain type of sadness. People will tell you to just cheer up – which is quite possibly the worst thing you could say to someone dealing with any kind of mental health issue. 

One way I find really helps me feel a little more positive is to create lists of things I want to achieve for myself. It can give you a focus, and it can be big things and little things. They don’t need to be immediate either; they can be long term goals. Revisiting them now and again can make you realise how far you are always going even when you don’t see it. 

My biggest goal for the next couple of years or so is to move out. I actually don’t mind living with my parents at all, we get along really well and it’s always nice to have some company around, but I would love to have a place to call my own. To decorate exactly how I want to, to have a completely pastel pink kitchen, to create a little haven to spend my evenings. How many of us spend nights pinning house ideas when we already have a bedroom full to the brim of Ikea furniture? I don’t really know when this will become possible, as money is always a difficult one, buying property is so expensive for young people on their own, but each month watching my savings go up a little makes me feel more and more positive about achieving it. 

Visiting America – I’m sure lots of you reading this probably already have done this many times, but I haven’t visited a single one of the US states and I am absolutely dying to! I’m always quite keen to go travelling on my own – my mother hates this idea – but I love my own company and having the freedom to explore at my own pace and do my own thing. Top of my list is New York, I read almost constantly and this is the back drop to many of my favourite stories and I would love to see the things I’ve read about. Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, is possibly my biggest reason, it doesn’t really talk about the huge tourist attractions, but the quite intimate locations you’d know if you actually lived there. 

“I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.”
― Rachel Cohn, Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

One of my biggest achievements up to now has been my weight loss journey (I’ll do a separate post on how I did it if you guys are interested.) I’ve lost three stone in about three years and changed my entire body image. I still have a lot of issues with my body, and I still see someone a lot bigger in the mirror than I truly am, but I’ve come so far. I love exercising and the way that it makes me feel, I also love the changes I see in my body shape every day! I still have treats all the time but I now know my limits and I won’t ever go back to who I was before.

 People often think as a single person life must be pretty boring, and sometimes it can feel as if not having one person to always do things with can be a little bit – depressing! But I have a lot of great friends to go on adventures with. I love trips to London, to try new things, the city always overwhelms and it’s just an hour from me on the train. I also love visiting my friend in Scotland, exploring Glasgow and Edinburgh and other places in between. I see nights out and going out for meals as little achievements because there has been days where even getting out of bed seemed impossible. So I try and socialise at least twice a week! Such a small thing but can make a huge difference. 

 

Soooo those are just a few of the goals I have! What are you guys hoping to achieve? I think we often forget what we’ve already achieved when things don’t feel so happy... but in the past couple of years I’ve reached my goal weight, learnt to drive and got my dream job! And if that isn’t something to be proud of then I don’t know what is! 

Posting early as I'm in the air tomorrow!

Lots of love Ciara xxxxxxxxxxx