A Case of Mistaken Notifications
Do you have any idea how soul-destroying it is to be accused of cheating when it’s the furthest thing from your mind? I mean, c’mon, I’m in my thirties now. Fucking around and being a dick might have been okay when I was in my twenties, without responsibilities, learning about who I was and what I was going to do with my life. But, when you’re a grown-ass woman like I am, cheating is just desperate and pathetic. There is NO need for it. It’s trashy. There, I said it. It’s T-R-A-S-H-Y. If you cheat, I’ll judge you a little bit. A lot, actually. That makes me a hypocrite, yes, but I’ve already learned from my mistakes.
I spent my entire twenties trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life. It was towards the end of the decade that I realised I wanted to settle down with someone, perhaps live in a nice, big house, maybe even have a kid. Throw in a couple of dogs, a cat, some chickens, a goat, and a vegetable patch too, and I’d be happy as a pig in shit. I’m no longer at that stage of my life where I feel the need to say yes to everyone who asks if they can hop into my bed. I don’t care how many notches I have on my bedpost. I don’t care about the men in my past, or whatever men I might meet in the future because I have the one I want. Bear. He’s mine and I’m his. That’s how it works. Until he does something so shocking, I don’t think I can ever recover from it, that’s exactly how it will stay.
So, imagine my surprise when, mid-mini-fight, Bear comes out with this fucking beaut:
“Go on, go and work in the bedroom then. You can go and message all those other men, can’t you? Like ‘Mr. X’. Yeah, go and message him.”
You’re kidding me, right? I mean, we’ve been together for over a year now. We’ve been through the cheating/accusatory thing more times than I can remember. I thought we were over all that bollocks. I mean, I’m not talking to other men. I’m barely talking to anyone at all, so talking to other men, especially in *that* way, would be pretty remarkable.
It was only after I’d stormed into the bedroom, not quite believing he would throw that fucking tripe at me again, that I decided to see what the fuck he was going on about.
I‘m a bit of a technology hub right now. I upgraded from one iPhone to another, and I got a new iPad too. Still in the process of moving everything from old to new, whenever I get a notification, I get it in FOUR different places. Bing goes my new phone. Bong goes my old phone. Ding-a-ling goes the new iPad. Ding-dong goes the Mac.
IT’S DRIVING ME FUCKING CRAZY.
I should probably turn those notifications off.
I’d left my old phone on my desk last night, taking my new phone to bed with me. Bear had clearly been wandering around my desk when he woke up this morning, although why, I’m not entirely sure. It’s is right in the corner of the room. He has no reason to be in ‘my patch’. He breaks stuff when he gets into my patch, that’s why he’s not allowed there.
Clearly, he was in the desk-area though, as he’d seen a whole bunch of Twitter notifications that I hadn’t paid attention to on EITHER phone, old or new.
The fuck d’ya think you’re doing, mate?
Nobody has a right to go through my notifications, but me. Sneaky little bastard. This infuriates me. I already have no secrets from this chap. He knows about the blog, the Twitter for the blog, all my sites … It’s not like I hide shit from him. He never lets me. I’m not allowed any secrets. Not that I want secrets, of course, I can’t keep them. Don’t ever tell me anything. Seriously, I’ll tell the entire world by accident.
But, really though? A year and a bit in, and you’re about to start reading through my phone? Na-uh, mate. Not happening. You don’t get to walk around, being all secret squirrel, deleting shit from your phone every five minutes and then have a hissy fit about notifications on my screen. No fucking way.
But what about Mr X?
Oh yeah, I should probably explain.
I commented on a Twitter-thread (not for this blog) and you know how that works — lots of comments = lots of notifications. Mr X DID respond in a flirty way, yes, but he didn’t respond to ME. He responded to his FUCKING WIFE. Yes, that’s right, Bear got pissed off with ME because he saw a notification about a comment that some guy left for HIS OWN WIFE.
Mr X’s wife started the thread. I commented. Lots of people commented after me, including Mr X. It wasn’t even aimed at me. There were, like, 8 or 9 of all tagged in the same Tweet. Clearly, we’ve figured out that Bear has absolutely no concept of how Twitter works. Please don’t make me remind you of that one time that Bear actually outed me and himself on Twitter …
Fucks sake. Let me tell you something, it won’t be the schizophrenia (or whatever is) that breaks us up, it’ll be that tone he takes on as he accuses me of doing something I shouldn’t, yet again. A tone that’s tinged with suspicion and dripping with imaginary betrayal. And it is entirely imaginary too. There were something like 30+ notifications for that particular Twitter thread. I left one comment. Mr X’s wife commented & responded back to me. The rest of the conversation, I wasn’t even a part of. I didn’t even read half of it. I just got a telling off for someone else’s conversation. How is that fair??
I haven’t been with a really jealous man in a long time, if ever. I can’t remember ever having to deal with someone this jealous and paranoid. Like, I know he has mental health concerns, but this is too much. If there was ever a girl he didn’t need to worry about, it’s probably me. I have no interest in anyone else. I never have.
Groan.
Send help. Preferably in the form of Valium.
*Bantz, I don’t think I’ve ever even taken Valium.
So weird you would be talking about this today. I’ve spent all day discussing jealousy, in all sorts of different places, with lots of different people. At the end of the work day I found myself saying that jealousy is a form of control or attempted control. The person who has the problem is asking someone else (that they are in a relationship with) to do or not do something in order for the person who has the problem to feel ok. If someone who had agorophobia insisted that their partner be confined to the house while they themselves continued to live their life exactly as before then it would be obvious that this was pointless and wouldn’t work to change anything. The horrible thing about jealousy is that the person who is in the relationship with the jealous person can gradually slide into going along with the controlling, because life is easier that way. Really slippery slope.
You be sure that Bear knows it is him with the problem, and that you expect him to do something himself to deal with it. CBT is good for this sort of thing, and with his history he should be able to access it, by the IAPTS scheme if he doesn’t have a mental health team looking after him currently. It’s not you, and you shouldn’t be having to suffer because of it. xx
I have a blog post about this half-written, kinda. About how I know I’m in a ‘controlling’ relationship, to some degree, and how Bear knows that he is ‘controlling’ too. I’m having a hard time putting words down on paper, but I guess what I’m trying to say (spoiler alert) is that we both know, but it’s at a kinda happy level right now. If there is such a thing. It occasionally gets worse, but it mostly gets better (over time), but it’s the kind of control that we’re both happy with? I don’t know … I’m still working on the blog post. But you’re totally right, and he knows that already. He’s been on some kind of bullshit waiting list for therapy for a while now. Once we got the “he doesn’t have dementia” letter, everything moved even slower than it did before, and we were already moving at a snail’s pace. Just waiting for the appointment … We’ll get there.
Blog to come. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts already. (Even though I haven’t written it properly yet.)
Hope you’re good, thanks for your comments, as always! xo