The Loop Guide to Clubbing, Drinking, plus West Essex and East London living.

They say ‘a relationship takes work’ firstly who the hell are they? I always imagine ‘they’ to be a group of people placed in one room and their only function in life is to answer questions, for example ‘they say you always want what you can’t have’ – erm yes, well if you wanted something you could have you’d just have it wouldn’t you?. No one ever really questions what ‘they’ say yet sometimes I find myself picking at the answer and over analysing it, getting me in all sorts of trouble and worst still, frying my brain. So this month I have picked up on what ‘they’ say and also (it seems) what a lot of what the women of Essex ‘say’ and I must admit you can be quite a negative bunch can’t you? In what way I hear you ask? Well let me explain, whenever I chose what I am going to write about in my Essex and the City column it usually stems from something reoccurring that has happened that month, something that sticks out in my head that I feel the need to discuss. This month I felt I had a whole four weeks of random comments such as, ‘all men are pigs’, ‘they’re all a bunch of wa8nkers’, ‘I don’t trust any man’ etc etc etc – get the drift? So basically if these where the group of people picked for the ‘they’ room half of us out there would actually give up looking for Mr Right and worse still never talk to a man again! Now I know that if you’ve had a bad experience it can make you bitter, that’s human nature isn’t it? But some people honestly believe that men are put on this earth to destroy us and I hate to admit it but out of the two sexes, men seem to be the least bitter when they’ve been dumped. I work with quite a lot of men and when talking about past relationships and exes I seemed to hear quotes such as ‘she just stopped loving me’, ‘she was too young’, ‘I was out drinking all the time’, as opposed to, ‘so what happened, why did you split up?’ ‘No reason, he’s just a bastard; you know what men are like’. Now I am not sure if men play it down for egos sake or that although calm now they could have been monsters during the initial break up but generally it seems unless an ex has cheated (and then they are a ‘lying bitch’) then don’t have half as much hate towards the opposite sex as women do and I am sure this is why men tend to move on quicker. Us girlies (and I am no exception) seem to hold that grudge, its hard to work out how a man could stop being bothered after such a short space of time when we are sitting there still fuming 6 months later – it can’t be healthy. I decided I would try and find out why woman can’t let go and why men can and to be honest I have struggled to come up with anything extremely substantial.

As a woman I think the bitterness towards your ex is more frustration than anything else, you’re frustrated with yourself for picking another miss match and also frustrated because he either doesn’t want you or seems to have moved on a bit to quickly and your ego takes a bit of a bashing ‘they say you want what you can’t have’ – there’s that ‘they’ again, maybe ‘they’ is your ego? Anyway by believing they’re a wa*nker, you sub consciously think it helps you to get over them but I don’t truly believe it does. It requires more work both mentally and physically to hate someone than not care about them at all, although easier said than done trust me. Sometimes I sit there thinking of ways to destroy people I hate, my mum always says ‘revenge won’t make you feel any better’ – urgh yes mother I do believe it will there are certain people I want to humiliate and am still waiting for the day, I mean how sad does that make me? It makes me realise know wonder most old people are miserable its all that anger built up inside that they didn’t release when they were younger, that’s going to be me, and the old people that seem deliriously happy – notice the use of the word ‘delirious’!

I think you should let out your frustrations and anger, I think people tend to worry so much about ‘over reacting’ that you end up not reacting at all, I know because that’s what I’m like now, maybe its an English thing, stiff upper lip and all that – good job I’m half Italian then, perfect excuse to be more fiery!

Anyway back to the subject in question, why do woman find it harder to let go? Before I go on though I must say that I think cheating is a different kettle of fish and the whole process is hard to get over, it’s understandable that it makes it difficult to re store your faith in all men but you have to remember there was a woman on the end of that cheater and if it happened round here then chances are they knew you were with them! As I can’t stress enough, girls stick together and stop hurting each other although lately that has fallen on deaf ears, every five minutes you hear of girls back stabbing each other with blokes. So your ex cheated on you, which is awful but you wouldn’t assume that every teacher was a pervert just because you read about a few sicko’s out there would you? Well actually if you went Roding Valley and the same PE teachers me then possibly! …. I think if the same kind of disaster happens with every relationship it’s hard not to generalise but at that point you really need to evaluate your choice and think of a conscious way to break the chain. I think it’s so important not to lose faith, but as anyone I know how hard that is, so how comes men are better at it than us? Could it be that women are more sensitive thus once let down by a bloke the affects can be more damaging long term? Or is it that we women always think we’re right (I don’t think I am I know I am ha ha) so therefore it’s easier to blame your partner than admit that we are partly to blame for a relationship that went wrong? It’s so hard to work it all out and as I said before there is not one main reason why it seems men find it easier to let go I think it’s a string of them but what I do know is that they say the only way to move on from something, is to make peace with it, so maybe that’s the answer and maybe that room full of ‘they’s ‘ is actually a room full on men because lets face it when it comes to letting go they seem to know something we don’t! Well who’d have thought it ay!

Until Next time

P.S Ellie has been on a ridiculous amount of holidays this year (admittedly a couple where with me) but its stops now or I am going to steal her passport…

P.P.S I have not elaborated on Christmas, I am excited although nowhere near as excited as the man at the end of my road who’s house actually lights up the whole street! For the amount of time he must spend putting up the decorations he may as well just leave them up there…

P.P.P.S Rant of the week: Recruitment agencies – AKA the lookie lookie men of the admin sector? Office angels I don’t think so… More like Office ars*******.

P.P.P.P.S Does anyone know what they are doing New Years Eve? I still don’t… I want to go on holiday – the grey skies are depressing me!