Soldiering Through — The Double Friend Request
Can we just talk about that chap for a moment?
Why? Because the cheeky fucker keeps popping into my life and honestly, he’s starting to test my damn patience.
For those of you who haven’t been reading long, Number 28 is also known as The Married Guy. Sadly, he’s not the only one on my list. He’s not one I remember much about — I was 18, drunk a lot, and stupid; he was married and never leaving his wife for me despite how much he protested otherwise. Of course, I was too young and dumb to realise that at the time, desperately telling anyone who would listen to me that we would, one day, be together forever. And other such bollocks.
One day — one Sunday afternoon — after I learned that he was actually ‘happily’ married, had lied about a bunch of stuff since being caught out, and was a general twattish fuckboy, I waited in a pub for him to come and meet me for lunch and tell me the truth. The REAL truth, warts and all. I was already in too deep to just DNR the guy. We’d been dating for a few months by that point, and it had been a crazy, whirlwind couple of months too. He was going away soon — perks of the job — and I probably wouldn’t see him for a while. We’d been dating for a few months, but I had no way of contacting him. He never gave me a mobile number, always telling me that he didn’t have one, and I’d always used one of the many in-the-know soldiers around us to get in contact with him. Except, that Sunday afternoon, they couldn’t contact him. Or they didn’t want to. Who knows?
I waited for a good couple of hours …
… slowly drinking myself into a not-so-discreet stupor, but he never walked in. My heart sank every time the big double doors opened and it wasn’t him who walked through them. I guess that WAS the real truth though, wasn’t it? He didn’t show up because he’d chosen his wife. That was always the way it would go down. I don’t really know why I thought it might swing in my favour.
Fast forward ten years and the guy sent me what I assumed was an accidental friend request on Facebook. I wrote all about it right here: The Blast From the Past — Meet Number 28!
He never did message me back, just to give you an update on that post. He friend-requested me back then — four years ago now — and then deleted the request almost immediately. I sent him a message, asking who he was, and he never responded. Just like he never responded to me when I was 18 and in that pub, being laughed at by all the adultier adults around me who knew better. That’s why I pretended I didn’t remember him. It made me feel better to think that he might think he was insignificant to me. Because he IS insignificant. And irrelevant. He has been for a very long time.
Fast forward another four years…
Here we are now. I’ve had two friend requests from him in a week. The first, exactly a week ago, I totally ignored. He ignored me for over a decade, surely it’s my turn to repay the favour? Plus, I barely use any of my social media accounts these days.
The second was today — exactly seven days later — and he’s made a bit of an effort this time around it would seem. He’s changed the profile and cover photos, taken a few pics of the kids down, and there are definitely no more photos of his wife. There were before. I couldn’t help but stalk her and think how we were both “alternatively” a little similar.
The relationship status has now changed, too. It now said, “separated”.
He’s added/made public a couple of photos of him and a cat. Clearly, he knows the way to this gal’s heart. (That’s sarcasm FYI.)
This has got to be a joke, right? I checked out what my profile looks like to the general public today, and there are four photos of me available publicly, with the same man, who is very clearly not just a platonic friend judging from a couple of the kissy-romantic shots. I am also VERY PUBLICLY in a relationship, with someone who looks remarkably like the man in the four public non-solo photos you can see on my profile.
Why the fuck are you getting in touch, mate?
What do you want? In fact, scrap both of those questions. I don’t care what you want. Just keep your fucking distance.
I am so sick and tired of people — men mostly — popping into my life and trying to fuck things up for me, because I do a really good job of fucking things up by myself without the assistance of anyone else. I’ve been doing it quite spectacularly for decades now. I figured that ignoring the friend request totally would say everything I had to say. I have six friend requests in that box that I haven’t done anything with. I don’t confirm or deny. What’s the point? If I deny, they’ll want to know why. If I confirm, they’ll want to talk to me. So I just leave them there, hanging. If you don’t like seeing the pending friend request, remove it. I don’t use Facebook enough to give a shit.
The thing that frustrates me the most, of course, is the fact that this guy knows what he did to me. That’s why he was a cock and didn’t respond to me four years ago when he was probably still with his wife and accidentally pressed the request box whilst not-so-discreetly stalking my photos. Hell, I don’t even mind that.
Yes, this is what you could have won, now don’t you feel a fool for letting me go?
I want them to think that. I want them to miss me, to regret what they let go. I just also want them to keep those thoughts to themselves because, quite frankly, I’ve got the man I want and I’m not interested in anyone else.
But he knows what he did to me was wrong.
Just leaving me in a pub like that, wondering how the fuck I went from hopelessly falling in love with a really cute, older-man squaddie, to being stood up because the guy had chosen his wife just like everyone predicted. I felt like such a tit. There’s a big part of me that STILL feels like such a tit, and I honestly feel the worst for his wife. If they’ve only just separated — in the last four years — she was probably quite happily married to that prick, never knowing he wasn’t the man she thought he was. He was just another drunken fuckboy squaddie who would dunk his dick into anything with a pulse. I don’t doubt there were/are others. He got away with it so easy with me, there’s bound to have been a couple more over the 15 or so years since.
Men like that … Do they really change? I don’t think so. I bet the soldier I stupidly married is still cheating on his partner at every available opportunity.
I just can’t believe the brass balls of that man. Broke my little heart at 18 years old, and then left it for, what? 15 years? What does he think is going to happen if I respond to the friend request? That we’ll fall magically back into each other arms and beds? That I’ll leave the guy I’ve been living with for two years, for the married wanker I once accidentally had an affair with, 15 years ago? That he can apologise and I’ll forgive him? Sure … perhaps it is the forgiveness he’s looking for. Well, he’s not going to get it. I don’t forgive him. I still remember how being sat in that pub felt, alone, for hours. I genuinely thought I was in love with him. Or falling in love with him at the very least. The guy had two daughters … What kind of a man would do that to an 18-year-old girl? He was in his mid-thirties, so he should have known better. I’m coming into my mid-thirties and I know better. There ain’t nothing or no one on earth that could persuade me to cheat on my man now, or ever. I’m not a cunt.
I’ll just ignore this friend request like I ignored the last one.
And if he dares make contact with me again, by way of message/friend request/whatever, he’ll find himself blocked. I will not tolerate this bullshit. I’m thirty-something years old, not a young, dumb teen. I don’t even find him attractive now. He just looks like … well, some guy I would walk past on the street and not look at or think about twice. He’s no one to me. He never really was. He’s just one guy I learned another lesson from.
Don’t date the married guy and seriously expect him to leave his wife and kids for you.
It ain’t gonna happen.
UPDATE: This blog post was published late (aren’t they all?) so I just thought I would let you know what happened in the week since I wrote this. Nothing. Nothing has happened. The friend request is still there. I’m still ignoring it. I’ll let you know if anything changes.
Oh, P.S. It feels SO FUCKING GOOD to be back!
