loveandstrife.

Falling in love is very nice because you get to hold hands, plan two person adventures and make out in the produce aisle while old people glare at you across the avocados.

Shyly slouching towards something new. Excitement tinged pink with the blush of uncertainty. Quickening of the heart, intake of breath, slow touches, the excuse and the effort, the reaching and the rush that comes with it. Wide smiles in the dark, wolf grin glowing in the blackness, failing to hide the butterflies twisting and turning in the depths below. New and shiny and open, everything laid bare, so much more to lose. 

Winter means dry skin, chapped lips, pale faces and desolate hair. At least for myself who ends up looking like an anemic vampire throughout the brisker months. This year I have decided to embrace the wintry goddess look I have been blessed with and stay away from self-tanner and golden bronzer. Au natural with no fakeness. Let’s see how long this lasts…. 

Hair: 

It get’s tangled by the wind and drenched by the rain after It’s been blow dried. Sea salt spray has become my new best friend. Especially one I can make myself: http://www.asuyeta.com/blogs/news/3671762-fun-friday-diy-beach-hair.

Embrace the messiness and rock the ‘I just had wild sex all night’ look. 

Face: 

Embrace the pale skin that winter bestows and become best friends with cheek and lip stains, nothing looks tackier then a streak of orange disguised as bronzer across the face.

Indulge the subtle pink blush and match your cheeks to your lips 

Clothing: 

There should be no need for your faux sun-kissed pins to be on display, fall in love with the idea of being cosy and wrapped up for three months. Scarves, tights and layering oh my!

Besides, there is nothing quite as kissable as someone wrapped up from the cold with just their pink lips available. 

After a recent coffee date during which I spent the entire time listening to tales of heartbreak and perceived deception leave my friend’s mouth and assault my ears, I decided enough was enough. I could no longer sit idly by and sip my skinny latte while I listened to such misguided intentions blow up my friend’s relationship like it was on the front line in Iraq. However, doling out advice to her was as well received as an STI check on your birthday, and as a result she firmly put on her ‘I’m right’ face and ignored me for the car ride home. Luckily for me I can’t see the interwebs ‘I’m right face’ so I am going to proceed to give all you significant others out there who are creating relationship landmines some long overdue advice, based on some real life scenarios I have recently encountered in the upside down world of relationships.

Case 1: The Making him jealous game

I have this friend, who likes to test her relationships by playing the ‘Is he jealous game’ in which she will make up a scenario involving herself and another boy asking her out, then tell her boyfriend and wait for a response. If he get’s jealous, she yells at him for not trusting her. If he doesn’t get jealous, she yells at him for not caring about her. If you are also playing this game, STOP IT. This is essentially creating problems where there are none, and somehow trying to trick him, to see how much he cares about you. Here’s a tip: just ask! If he doesn’t seem that into you, then games of intrigue and jealousy aren’t going to change that.

 Case 2: The Facebook game

So you may have just broken up with someone, or trying to get the attention of someone you like and as a result have a misguided intention of using facebook to show how amazingly well your life is going, a mash-up of hilarious drunk photos of you making new friends and self-indulgent status updates about moving on or having just met ‘Omfg the cutest guy ever! Hope he calls!’ This is embarrassing. Not only is the person you are interested in NOT sitting around looking at your facebook, everyone else you are friends with knows exactly what you are doing and is cringing in shame every time you post something in the hope that he is scrolling through your page. He’s not. Get outside and start a non-cyber life.

Case 3: The boy’s night out game

So he is having a boy’s night. You can’t stand it, so you spend the whole night obsessing over why he hasn’t written back to your text message and what he could be doing right now. LEAVE HIM ALONE. He is not writing back to you, because he is out with his friends, you talking about it with everyone you know is not only annoying but sad as well. Let him have his own friends, and if you can’t trust him enough to spend one night out without you, then you should not be allowed to have started this relationship in the first place

Case 4: Not meaning what you say game

‘I’m fine’. You’re clearly not fine you’re pissed off. He knows it and you know it. So here is a crazy idea, TELL HIM WHAT IS ON YOUR MIND. I don’t understand why you think telling him one thing when your feeling another is a good idea. He is not a mind reader and can’t help you fix things until you explain to him what is wrong. Also making him guess what has you so upset is not a true indicator of how well he knows you, it’s annoying and will soon lead to him yelling at you ‘I’M FINE!’

 Case 5: Forcing him to do things he hates game

Making him watch ‘The Notebook’ for the fifth time is not romantic. It’s torture. There is no need to force the person you are romantically involved with into completing every activity you love. For example: watching chick flicks, shopping, going to the ballet. This is why we have female friends, to complete these activities with us and actually enjoy them. Find things to do together that you both enjoy and then if he decides to spend a day doing things with you that you love, it is a nice surprise and a treat, not something he dreads all week long.

These are just a few of the examples I have encountered over recent years, however I know there are many more of these atrocities being completed. Crazy, clingy girls are not keepers. Smart, sexy, funny girls who are okay with being on their own, they are keepers. Be the one he wants to be with, not the one he is tricked into being with through mind games and baby talk. 

This must be the place. Where the corpses of songs are mutilated on a public soapbox. Strung out underneath the disco lights for all the revelers to see. The woman in boots desecrates Joan Jett and the man in stonewash denim lays waste to Aerosmith. No longer a habitual place of song worship, a place where the echo of music legends would leap out of the speakers and resonate in the soul, this has become a mausoleum where the bloodied remnants of lyrics are splashed around the room for everyone to cringe at. This must be the place. Where glasses of wine coat the tongue in courage, indulging the singers need for confidence, not caring which line of ‘Wild Horses’ gets broken in two. Fleetwood Mac is stripped back by a falsetto, the bones of the song gleaming through the high-pitched voice that strangles it.  Sinead O’Connor is flung out in wild abandon, no longer a song of heartbreak, each note merely encouraging the musically inclined to weep in despair as the tremulous singer breaks pitch not hearts.

Karaoke. This must be the place. 

And so it came to be that the boy I found myself inconceivably falling in love with moved to a farm in the remotest part of the country. A region frequented by minimal phone reception and one computer with sporadic time slots allocated to it. Far from the normal conventions that had shaped my early romances, this would prove to be an abstract construct consisting of long absences, high phone bills and emotional heartache strung from the top of Australia and back again. However, far from being characterized purely by despair and longing, this romance was fast turning into one of the most intriguing adventures I had ever had. Struggling to fit within the normal conventions of a relationship, due to my inability to emotionally commit myself, I was starting to think that this was the perfect solution. A boy whom I could communicate with, but would never cramp my emotional style of perpetual isolation. Then I discovered he wouldn’t get any time off for three months. Reality came crashing down and I realized I was going to need more then a love of not having to shave my legs everyday to get me through this new dating ideology. I decided to compile a witty but deadly serious list of things to do and not to do when in a long distance relationship, hoping to shed some light not just for myself but maybe for other significant others who are trying to learn how to play this game as well.

1.     DON’T: Listen to ‘Set fire to the third bar’ by Snow Patrol on repeat. It will NOT make the distance between you any closer, it will only make your eyes puffy and your brain hurt as it makes connotations with ‘Dear John’ The worst film in existence. Delete it now.

2.     DO: Invest in a proper phone. Being able to send picture messages of the cute (and naughty) variety will become invaluable to your sanity and is a nice way to stay in touch besides phone calls.

3.     DON’T: Become a limpet. Have your own life. Sitting at home every night knitting sweaters and staring daggers at your phone until they call will only make you more crazy then you already are.

4.     DO: Start planning for the next time you will see them. Making plans is a guaranteed happiness booster and thinking about the future will make the present go faster

5.     DON’T: Feel like you have to contact them everyday. Sending them a text of the funny looking cat you just saw is not cute. It’s just sad.

6.     DO: Restrain yourself on drunken calls and texts, it will not make them miss you more, only glad that they don’t have to deal with your drunk mess in person.

7.     DON’T: Over-analyze everything. This is not a normal relationship. Take everything a day at a time and enjoy the moments that you do have together without thinking about the moments that you don’t

8.     DO: Miss them. You’re allowed. Just don’t talk about it to everyone you meet. They don’t miss them and they don’t care.

9.     DON’T: Have trust issues. If you do, exit the relationship. Being away from each other with no trust is a time bomb.

10. DO: Have a lot of sex when you finally see each other. Because phone sex is just not the same. 

The first time was exciting. Unexpected. A moment snatched from the realities of a night out. No one else knew, an indiscretion between friends. The friendship line became unstable but survived. The second time was confusing. Still unexpected, now you had a girlfriend. One other person saw, and suddenly they were inexplicably bound up in what was originally just ours. The third time was heartbreaking. Still with the girlfriend and myself with a boyfriend. More then just a moment, a night of infatuation fuelled by an overconsumption of liquor and the naïve notion that this time was different. And it was. Too big a secret to be kept, too many hearts involved, the news breaks; and reality comes crashing down. Shunned by those who knew, judged by those who didn’t. Insults collected and the word ‘mistake’ is redefined. What started as an innocent game between two has involved more players than intended and implicated more judges then needed. I don’t want to play anymore.