Now, if it hadn’t been for Ben, I no doubt would have gotten back with Guy, or at least I would have tried. I loved Guy. I had wanted to marry him. He had been my plan. It would have taken me a long time to get over what he had done, but I really believed we were meant to be together and start a family, and I truly believed, like most broken-hearted women, that he would come running back, full of apologies, new promises and flowers.
However, I knew as soon as I had sex with someone else it was over. Although the sex in the swimming pool wasn’t great (is first time sex ever great?), it got a whole better. Like most men, Ben liked to have sex. A lot. Over and over and over again, and as a plus he was very good at it.
That suited me. I loved feeling sexy, special and wanted, and very much welcomed the distraction from reality. The newly found single girl within me found it so very easy to play at the relaxed ‘cool girl’ that every man believed was rare but did exist. It had been a long time since I had felt so wanted. Going from a relationship where Guy rarely even spoke to me, let alone told me I was attractive, to a man who could not keep his hands off me and told me I was pretty literally every time he looked at me was probably one of the best feelings I’d ever had. I loved it when Ben told me I was pretty, and I didn’t think I’d ever get bored of it.
I don’t think Guy and Ben could have been any different. Sometimes I felt like I had gone from living in an episode of The Big Bang Theory to living in an episode of The Sopranos. Ben was very controlling. I guess this was what appealed to me first off, as that way I didn’t have to think too much for myself. I could just enjoy the ride. Ben liked to control most things I did, from what I wore, to how I acted, to when I went to the gym. Some things I let him control, others I didn’t. For example, he hated me wearing makeup; not really a big issue for me and so I tended not to wear makeup anymore, even when I wasn’t with him. I never really was very good at applying makeup anyway, and it took me no time at all to get ready in the mornings! He also hated me walking home from work (8km). I liked walking very much. It gave my plenty of time to think, so I ignored his constant criticism that he didn’t want me walking or catching the bus in case something happened to me. That was in complete contrast to Guy, who didn’t even raise an eyebrow when I would walk two and a quarter hours home from work in the middle of a thunderstorm. So, of course, it made me swoon every time Ben would wait outside my work to drive me home.
Ben liked me to wear short, tight dresses and skirts, which I did very willingly after my breakup weight loss and with my new found single freedom. Although I often felt uncomfortable wearing these clothes, there was a huge part of me that really enjoyed it and to be honest thrived on it a little bit. Ben hated me eating chocolate, as he had an obsession with my weight. I loved chocolate and had a very sweet tooth, so I constantly ignored him. He liked me to have long straight hair. I really don’t care what my hair looks like, and he tended to pay for all my hairdressing needs, so who was I to argue? He wanted me to get my lips surgically pumped. That I had a real problem with and drew the line.
Guy, on the other hand, was far too lazy in our relationship to bother to try and control me. He put most, if not all, of his effort into his work, so he had no energy left to try and control me. In the short term, I probably preferred Ben’s ways. I rarely had to think for myself. But in the long term, I knew it would never work. The constant need for control and endless criticism would wear anyone down.
Truth be told, neither of the two men were my usual type. But if I was honest, I wasn’t really sure what my usual type was. I’d had only two other serious boyfriends before and they were both from my (very small) hometown in the UK. One I loved very much but ‘accidently’ had sex with his brother, and the other was a c##t (or as we politely say in the UK a C U Next Tuesday).‘I don’t have ex’s, I have Ys. As in Y in the hell did I do that?’ — Unknown