I had a strange dream the other day. It was about a guy that kissed me a very long time ago. I have no idea why he was wandering through my subconscious, but he was.
The dream wasn’t very nice - he was getting married/was with his wife (sorry to be a bit vague but you know what it’s like trying to describe a dream - it’s like playing with that gross slime stuff that kids love. Every time you try to tighten your grasp on it, it slides away even quicker. Like the way I remember stuff from my childhood actually. Anyway.) so there he was, I’ll call him Nick. He was a really nice guy actually and a very good friend at the time. We always had some weird chemistry but he was married and I had a boyfriend. At that time I hadn’t seen quite so much of City life, and he genuinely seemed like one of those guys who was actually into his wife and wasn‘t going to cheat on her.
But one night, he kissed me. I remember that part. He walked me home and kissed me outside my front door.
To be honest I can’t tell you now if it changed our relationship - I can’t even remember if we ever kissed again. (Please don’t assume that means nothing further happened. I once introduced myself to a man at a party - he was quite put out by this because we had previously met once before and we had gone back to his for some sexy time. I’ve forgotten way more than I can ever remember.)
But what I can tell you is that in the dream, I was being made a pariah by all of my friends in the City because I had made the kiss public knowledge. His wife was furious and I was the villain.
And I can’t get that dream out of my head.
(I now know that all of my adult life has been spent in a totally alien bubble, so when I’m talking about men here please can we all agree I’m talking about the men I know through work. If I don’t know you from the City, please don’t assume I mean you in this post. Unless you act like the men in this post. In which case, I do mean you too.)
I can count on two hands (if I’m being generous) the number of men I know that are faithful to their wives or girlfriends. Yet I know that almost every single one of them remained with their wives or girlfriends. I have never been able to get my head around this. Although I might just have had a lightbulb moment about that. Bear with me because this has literally just popped into my head, so it might not be the most evolved thought ever.
I used to ‘cheat’ on David. If you can cheat on someone who isn’t actually committed to you…. I thought I was committed to him though. But I shagged around at weekends because he wasn’t there for me and because we had problems with our relationship that we just couldn’t resolve. (Although let’s be honest here, I didn’t know his main concern was that he would lose £7 million in a divorce and used to spend his weekends pacing the woods near his home with his dogs, trying to do the maths in his head to make the numbers come out better for him. But I digress.) so maybe, extrapolating here, those men cheating on their wives were in their heads trying desperately to resolve things with the one they did love but just falling into bed with other people to fill their voids of despair. Hmmmm. I shall talk to my therapist about this. I’ll get back to you when I’ve figured it out a bit more.
Anyway. Lies. So all these men I knew (and me) were (are) still lying to those they love. I was lying to David by not telling him about what I was really up to at weekends. I wasn’t lying to the other blokes though. They knew about David. Most men did lie to the mistress just as David lied to me. They told us we were special and they really would be with us one day.
Why did we all believe those lies? Why have I believed some of the most ridiculous things ever that married men have told me? And why do the wives believe the lies they were told? It’s been on my mind - what lies James (the fuckknuckle from last week) has told his wife. She’s blocked me on Facebook so I bet he came up with some bullshit about me being a crazy stalker or something like that.
I spoke to M about all of this today, and we came to the conclusion that I believed the things I was told because I wanted to believe them. I wanted to believe I was special.
Because I built fantasies in my head. Castles in the sky where I lived with David and life was perfect.
Actually when it came down to it, living together didn’t work out in quite that way.
But it did work in my fantasies. And I guess that’s where I need to steer my boat next, to figure out why I built these fantasy worlds.
It makes you wonder though, doesn’t it - what fantasies did all those men build, in their heads?