Don’t you know that you’re toxic?
I have a new pet. A small and very cute creature has made himself a new home in the exterior wall of my Clapham flat. As flatmates go, he’s not such a bad one: nocturnal, quiet. Occasionally we meet eye to eye: I’m obviously on his territory but after a couple of weeks I think we have learned to live together with a grudging respect. Unfortunately, as he’s a rat, I had to call in the pest control and they planned to put down some yummy (yet poisoned) rat food. Being full-on softie, I refused to let them put it down until I had tried relocating him. In true Phil and Kirsty style, I blocked up his ‘front door’ with a paint tin and a couple of bricks while he was out and about to stop him returning, hoping that he’d find somewhere more suitable for his needs (i.e. compact and bijous and not right next to my back door). Did he move? Did he hell. That rat sat, watching his blocked up front door for hours until he thought ‘sod it’, scampered back and, through sheer force of will (and some very sharp teeth), occasionally falling over through the sheer effort involved, chewed his way through the adjacent area of wall, backed into his hole and sat there, nose poking out. My house. Silent. Industrious. Triumphant. I had to admit, I was full of admiration. Eventually the pest control people came back and insisted on putting down the poisoned food. He didn’t bite. As they put down the small black toxic container, they asked whether I owned any small fluffy creatures that might try and get into the box and eat the food. Only my boyfriend, I said.
A was neither silent nor industrious. In fact, he was very vocal. We met and got on like a house on fire, drinking wine by the river followed by Bolly at a jazz restaurant. Funny, smart and pretentious, he wasn’t immediately what you’d label a good catch. Slender as a willow with dandruff and a healthy dose of athlete’s foot, he was constantly sucking on a cigarette and on a good night out would have been able to keep the entire Columbian economy afloat single-handedly for a year. He was a cross between a naughty choir boy, David Kleinfeld from Carlito’s Way, and Boober Fraggle.
Apparently our first date went so well that he was compelled to beg me to go out with him, offer me his house keys and suggest a meeting with his friends, cousins, and most significantly (I didn’t realise quite how significant), his mother, who was visiting in a couple of weeks. The second date involved more proffering of house keys and a baby in a couple of years. On the third he was talking about holidays and told me that unless I was careful he was going to fall madly in love with me. We met his friends and I was introduced as his ‘missus’ and his ‘better half’. Telling my best friend about his speedy declarations, she was concerned, pointing out that it was hardly normal behaviour and it sounded like he was one sandwich short of a picnic. I think she thought that I’d collected another stalker but it didn’t feel like that. I just smiled and let him get on with it
It’s flattering to be adored, but my rat had something to teach him. My friend was right, there was something not quite right about this one and only a week in, the cracks started to show. The boy was overwhelming in his affection and charming when we were together, but all mouth and no trousers. When I wasn’t with him, he was unable to perform: arranging to meet up, responding to texts asking for details of things he had invited me to, planning more than 12 hours ahead. Following a night out of his characteristic enthusiasm, the following day he could be off-hand to the point of coldness. He was at pains to point out that he was an excellent liar. He wasn’t – from having suddenly developed ‘hayfever’ after an 11pm trip to the pub toilet (I sympathised about the pollen count and insisted he take a tissue to blow his nose J) to telling me he was shopping in Sloane Street with his mother when only five days ago he had taken her to the airport to fly to France for a week, his lies were constant, amusing and transparent. Apparently he found it extremely hard staying faithful to women, although he insisted he was different with me. A privileged only child, he was obsessed with what his mother thought. Two weeks in, when we had arranged to catch up one afternoon, he actually failed to meet up at all, just staying in bed and getting up to work his night shift. I finished with him. He told me he was unable to have relationships and should stick to one night stands and try therapy, ‘It’s my background,’ he bleated. He recognised that his utter self-absorbtion and selfishness precluded being able to take account of another person. He knew our slow destruction was entirely down to him and all I could do was sit back, luridly fascinated, as he pulled the wings off something he had professed to want so badly. But damnit, it hurt.
I dated and got on with stuff. A few weeks later, the phone rang. ‘I miss you. Give me another chance?’ I asked him whether he had had either a religious conversion or a lobotomy. Nope, he said. Well, in that case, I replied, no. ‘Please? I really miss you, and when I’m out and about doing things all I think about is how much I’d love you to be there too’. He wheedled, promised to reply to texts immediately, that he’d thought about having a family with me, that he’d spoken to his blessed mother and she was fine with it and all he wanted me to agree to was to meet up for a drink and discuss it. So I relented. One drink. I’ll call you tomorrow, he said.
And then I heard nothing for two days and told him to sod off.
A was the archetypal toxic bachelor. I’ve only met one before and should have recognised the signs, but my friends have encountered them and the signs were the same. They always:
a) Want to move very very quickly in the relationship. Things that would normally take months or years they push for in days or weeks
b) Are extremely charming.
c) Throw everything, emotionally they have at you and then when you start to respond, withdraw. Verbally they give everything they have in order to reel you in and then when it comes to actually putting the ‘work’ into a relationship, that huge well of professed emotion actually proves to be drier than a popcorn fart.
d) Start by making you feel amazing and then end up by making you feel rubbish by sucking out your energy; they’re emotional vampires.
e) Are inconsistent and often uncontactable.
f) Have an obsession with their mother, either being obsessed with her opinion or being dismissive of her – the previous TB’s father put his wife into a mental home and he always spoke disdainfully of her.
g) Have the impression that at one point in the past they were screwed over by one particular woman and have never quite got over it.
h) Have a series of short relationships or encounters with women.
i) Are extremely selfish.
The only way to deal with them is to, if possible, avoid them. If it’s too late, take things at your pace, not theirs and, the golden rule: go by what they do, not what they say!
Me, I’m tightening up my interview process. Like all women, I’m subject to a bit of charm but, resolutely proud of not being cynical, my admiration of proactivity in a man meant that I didn’t put A through his paces as much as I should have before offering him the job. My assumption of ‘normal’ emotional reactions in someone else was being constantly challenged but I had refused to see it as I was unable to comprehend that someone who professed to feel so much could give so little. I have to say, my friends laughed. And then so did I. I replaced him swiftly with a newer model with excellent manners who turned up and didn’t want me to meet his mother.
But for now, it’s just me and my fuzzy little friend. We’ve both had a lucky escape from a rather nasty toxin. And you thought this was going to be a bad parable about men being rats :-).
By AnnaR
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