Now I don’t want to give away any spoilers here, but I think it’s obvious who won…
I met Ginger-ninja through work. I’d seen him about for a year or so I guess. He was working in one of the offices upstairs and I knew nothing about him. To be honest, I thought he was about 35, married with kids (he looks a lot older than he is). I found out a little bit of information about him, he wasn’t 35, married or with kids so planted some seeds with some of the guys working with him. He came down one afternoon with some ice creams and offered them to our office. I decided to pounce- not literally, I was at work! So I wrote my number down, gave it to my BFF to pass on after I left work for the day.
He took two days to get in touch…but he did. We arranged a date, we went for a couple of drinks one Sunday afternoon, it ended up in us both getting both quite drunk but we had the best time. We then took the day off work together and he had it all planned out. First we went to the zoo, then off to the coast for a picnic. It was amazing. I do remember at the time saying it was the best date I had ever had. Things slowly progressed from there. We were both living at our parents houses at the time so we would often be out and about. His parents went away on holiday so off I went, down to his house, to stay for a few days. I will never forget driving up his parents driveway. The house was bloody massive! Things continued to progress, I refused to call him my boyfriend though! We never really had that chat either, I think we both just understood that we were together and it was exclusive. He was the most fun. I would literally never stop laughing around him and he was the biggest kid at heart.
We got together in the June and we had booked our first mini break away by the Feburary. Off we went for a couple of days to Barcelona. We were always out and about doing something, spending every weekend with each other. For my birthday (we had been together a year at this point) he booked us a holiday away together. No one had ever done this for me before, what a wonderful surprise! Whilst we were away we heard about a house back home that he used to live in. It was coming back on the rental market. We decided that was it, we would enquire and if all was good we would move in together. Within a month of returning from our holiday we were living together. I relocated down to his home town which was a rather long commute to work for me everyday but it wasn’t unbearable. Things were plodding along smoothly. I got a long with his family, well most of them. His father pissed me off big time but I could handle him in small doses.
A few months later the BF went away on a stag party. What does a lonely girl do all day long? Sit and look at cats on the Internet… I understand most normal people don’t do this, but I do… I texted him and told him I was getting one but as he was far too busy getting wasted with the lads he didn’t reply. So off I go and get myself a kitten. Now we had discussed this before so it wasn’t completely out of the blue. Long story short, he came back from the stag do and couldn’t resist the little ball of fluff now living with us. A few weeks later he started feeling a little under the weather. I was blaming the change in season and the vast amounts of alcohol he was drinking. A few days later he still wasn’t feeling better. I came home from work and thought he was actually dying. Now him being a man, he refused to go to the doctors. I somehow convinced him if he was going to do that or go to the hospital then we should at least ask a pharmacist. As soon as the words, ‘I can’t breath properly’ were mentioned we were straight in A&E. There he spent four days having a series of tests. The first doctor we saw told us it was the cat. Now he had lived with two cats before with no problem so I can certain it must have been something else. Time went on, he got better (although on lots of medication) test results came back. Yes, it was my cat, he had a bloody cat allergy all of a sudden. Me being the selfish bitch I am made arrangements to try and keep his allergy to a minimum whilst still keeping the cat. I fell in love with the little lump and couldn’t get rid of her. We struggled along fine for the next few months.
Things were fine, but just fine. We got a long, there was nothing fundamentally wrong in our relationship but to me it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t see my self ever getting married to him or having children with him. Now we never had one argument in the two years we were together. Literally not one argument. Which probably isn’t healthy but we really didn’t piss each other off that much. We had been living together for almost a year and I started thinking about things. I didn’t want to marry him (not that he had asked) but I didn’t want to waste his time, or mine. It wasn’t fair on either of us. He was away on holiday for a week whilst I was at home and I started to realise how much I enjoyed my space. He never called that whole week he was away, not even a text message. I knew in my head it was best to go our own way.
He came back from holiday, we had the chat. I thought it wasn’t going to come as a surprise to him but apparently it did. He was heart broken. I barely saw him for the next two weeks, we were still living under the same roof until I sorted somewhere else out. We never sat in the same room or talked. He just avoided me.
I moved out. I went back a couple of times to pick things up, do some house repairs before we gave up the tenancy (he literally could do nothing around the house). We saw each other then and everything was cool. Chatted, joked and laughed. It was nice.
So I guess it’s obvious, the cat won. She’s now sitting next to me curled up on a blanket as I write this. It sounds pathetic, but if I didn’t have the cat, living by myself now would probably be a lot more lonely. I still hear from the ex occasionally. I’d love to still hang out with him as friends because we got on so well but I don’t think that will be happening and I’m not about to suggest it.
Confessions of a serial 'relationshipper' 