And he emails back and says ….that we probably have different long term goals (translation: I like you and fancy the pants off you but you are not marriage material) but it would be wonderful to see you again for whatever reason (translation: I really want to have sex with you).
So bearing in mind what he was really saying, I emailed back:
‘As long as dinner is in Paris, you’re on.’
(Dang I’m good!)
If this was just going to be a love affair, I thought, one, make him work for it and two, let’s make it one we won’t forget (and I am running low on mascara).
And as we started to think about Paris, the financial markets melted down. Like the rest of the developed world, we had to focus on real life for a week or two. Paris hell, more like my portfolio, the boys’ school fees!!!
But….given that he had suggested a midweek break to Paris, I was also starting to suspect there might be someone else in the picture. You don’t go to Paris on a Tuesday when you could go on a Saturday unless your weekends are spoken for.
Nice. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeally nice.
I left it for a week or so and then just before going to see my girlfriend in Cambridge I sent him an email. I said ‘if we’re going to do this, let’s do it right or not at all.’
I hit send, packed up the Golf late Friday afternoon, picked up the fellas from school and headed to the A1. We had a super sunny relaxing weekend out of town, a huge proper British Sunday lunch and then rolled ourselves and our full tummies back to West London late on Sunday.
There was an email waiting for me after I put the boys to bed.
And yep, spot on. He is seeing someone that, sitting down? Get this, ‘represents solid wifely potential’ (translation: unlike you).
He goes on to say how he senses I need to sow some more wild oats before settling down (erm, don’t think I’ll tell him how many I have in the last year, he might be horrified!) and that while I am capable of having hundreds more children, do I really want to (good point, I’ll admit, but I am pretty darn sure I do).
He also says lovely things like I mesmerise him and that I’ve muddled him deliciously (God how British is that!?!).
Well, I had had enough! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
I emailed straight back.
Told him that most importantly, I was upset for Miss ‘solid wifely potential.’ Danger Will Robinson, Danger. That is so not what marriage is all about.
But hells bells, people get married for all sorts of reasons. They do.
And it’s a gamble. You just don’t know how its going to turn out. When I left my family and friends behind in the US and married Mr. Magnolia, I could never have predicted that the love we had wouldn’t survive real life.
Kids. School fees. Breast feeding. Routine. Too much routine and not enough taking care of each other.
Things got so bad at one point that I even bought a book called ‘101 Nights of Great Sex’ with these sealed pages. Half were for ‘Her Eyes Only’ and the other half for ‘His Eyes Only.’
I put it in the loo reading basket, a place where we would always put things we wanted each other to read (like the travel section of the Telegraph open at an article about a new hip hotel in Morocco). But Autotrader and InGear clearly were more important (don’t get me wrong, I love a good old loo moment with Autotrader, I am a petrol head afterall). Or Yachting Monthly.
Well, one Sunday afternoon, I tried pulled out one of the pages. It said to dress in some hot lingerie and then ‘interrupt’ your partner when they least expect it. Well the boys were napping and we were watching a Formula 1 race. Cars make me, how do I put it….well, I really, really like cars and the smell of engine oil and the sound of a good engine….ahem, you get the idea.
So I get up at a commercial break, go upstairs and put on some red lace lingerie (going with the Ferrari theme, yeah!) and bold as you like, walked back downstairs into the living room, didn’t say a word and got down on my knees …. and ….while he watched the race. Now what husband wouldn’t love that?!? Forget husband, man!?!?
But see, he never, ever did anything like it back, so, I guess I just stopped trying. It always had to be a 5 star holiday somewhere far away; I would have been happy with him going to Ann Summers and buying some soft porn to watch on Friday night instead of Jonathan Ross. It wouldn’t have been expensive. It didn’t require a first class ticket anywhere. It just took thoughtfulness.
God sorry ya’ll. Back to marriage, like I said, it’s a gamble.
Take, my old college roommate and her husband; they fell in love at 17 and never looked back. She called me from Florida today to tell me they have gotten a load of test results and its final, they can’t have children.
No, it wasn’t a massive surprise after all these years, but it’s still a helluva blow. They have done enough IVF treatments to feed a small country in Africa for the next 100 years and there I was, a mother of two beautiful blonde boys trying to comfort her. I couldn’t. I will never understand what she is feeling. I got pregnant both times like a shot.
I am pretty sure they’ll make it though because, these two, after knowing each other 20 years and being married for 15 of them, they still go ‘missing’ at dinners at posh restaurants between courses.
They’ve still got it. You know the ‘it’ I’m talking about.
Like a Bobby Ray kiss, you just know it when you feel it.
That’s what I want next time round.
See, I know I will marry again one day (yeah, I’m a marrier, dammit, hard-coded I guess), and no, its not going to be to someone that represents ‘solid husband potential’ whatever that means.
Nah, I’m gonna hold out for the partner in crime. Just madness not to in my book.
Someone seriously naughty.
Someone that I’m going to fancy rotten as well as respect when we are 70 and living in Ibiza sunbathing naked on our yacht or if we are poor as church mice living in a wet shack in Wales (or Poedunk!).
Oh Christ, anyway, back to this email….
I went on to tell him that as much as I wasn’t part of his big plan (translation: meeting a woman that drives him crazy sexually as well as intellectually and that he could fall head over in heels in love with if, just if oh, if bloody something) hello sunshine, he wasn’t part of my big plan either. I mean I am newly divorced. I don’t want to fall for anyone thank you very much.
Then I went and did something that I still cannot believe I did.
I sent him a link to the last column, you know the one where I called him a ‘T-Rex,’ a ‘toxic bachelor extraordinaire,’ and a ‘playboy that refuses to grow up.’ Oh and the one where I said I had fallen in love with him at first sight (FYI, falling in love at first sight is an involuntary reaction, kinda like the gag reflex).
My heart was pounding as I hit send. I knew I’d never hear from him again and that it was for the best.
Truly for the best.
Why?
Because, the next man I love is going to love the fact that the life I lived before him is the life that has made me the woman I am today.
And he is going to fall in love with my sons too. I mean they are even more irresistible than me (I know we ask ourselves, is it possible?!).
As much as I like this man (and really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to shag him about 4 times a day everyday for the foreseeable future and then some more) I don’t think he’s capable of loving like that.
And the hard truth of that is, it means I shouldn’t even be thinking about spending another moment with him (but he will go down in history as the best shag I never had that’s for f*%@#ing sure).
And the other hard truth is I suspect, his family would never really accept a divorcee, let alone an American one with two children no matter how posh and British their little accents are or how absolutely fabulous I am at in-law wooing (very by the way, oh it is a thing of beauty).
And just maybe, once upon a time, someone hurt him so badly, that he just won’t let himself fall in love like that again.
Why anyone would hurt someone quite so delicious (he gives the most amazing bear hugs, ya’ll, amazing) I have no idea.
But I tell you, right this instant I could quite cheerfully kick her ass…cause that is probably why he is dating someone that ‘represents solid wifely potential’ and not me.
And the only person that can change that is him.
He’s got to figure it out.
Dig deep.
Listen to his gut.
So when you think about it like that, it was easy to send that last column.
We certainly weren’t going to go to Paris, so when could I tell him that even though I had his number, it didn’t matter?
When could I tell him that even after the divorce I never thought I would have, he inspired me, the moment we met, to want to try it all again?
When could I tell him that although he has no idea what it means to be a partner or a husband, with the right woman, he would be the most unbelievably exciting husband, a fun, warm and good, bloody good father? To watch him teach a child to ski … jeez.
When could I tell him that he needs a woman strong enough to stand up to him, the kind of woman that actually wouldn’t let the rest of his life, be all about him?
When could I tell him that I want a man just as strong to not to let the rest of my life, be all about me?
When could I tell him how ridiculous this is?
And you just know what you have to do sometimes and then do it.
And dammit.
That gorgeous, blue eyed hunk of skiing, skydiving, ovary flipping kisser emailed me bloody back.
He wasn’t supposed to. He really wasn’t.
He’s at the front door.
We’re going to dinner.
Ms. Magnolia.
