My Knight in Shining Leathers…………….

Walked into my life on a Saturday night in May 2010.

I’d called time on my big love on Valentines Day and was totally broken, despite living in the village since 2006 it was my first night out locally since I’d arrived here three years before and I was out for a neighbours birthday, who had not far off dragged me out kicking and screaming, I’d already been over to my home town for a night out and been out with friends but was suffering quite badly with depression and anxiety so something new was just a whole lot of stress. 

We had a few to drink at hers first before venturing out, I had no idea where we were, it was all back lanes and little paths through the wood, we arrived at the local football club, where a band were playing, it turned out to be a good night of drinking, dancing and laughter.

Then this guy came up to me and said ‘I’m sure I know you from somewhere’ to which I replied ‘I doubt that, I’m not from around here’ I can clearly remember looking around the room and trying to work out why he was talking to me, he was GORGEOUS, a year older than me, 6’2, brown eyed, brown hair, classically handsome, nice shoulders, good body, lovely to talk to.

I had come out of a relationship after five years with an emotional bully, he told me I was fat (but when I later found out he has slept with someone else she was much bigger than me and he married her, go figure) and all sorts of other damning things that had completely destroyed my confidence over the years so I genuinely couldn’t understand why this gorgeous man was talking to me when we were in a room full of people.

Before the end of the night the friend I was out with did a disappearing act, which I learned later was pretty normal for her, he knew where she lived as everyone knows each other here so he said he would walk home with me as he was only in the next street and a few houses away.

He walked me home and came in for tea, the flirting continued which led to lots of rather unexpected and great sex, he spent the night telling me I was beautiful, amazing and all of the nice things that a girl could expect to hear, when we weren’t having sex he spent his time cuddling me and it was a good 12 hours before he said he’d better head home, he kissed me goodbye and left.

And that was it until a couple of weeks later I walked into the local pub and there he was, without the alcohol I’d had to drink last time, he was; if anything more gorgeous than I remembered, as soon as he saw me he came and gave me a kiss and hug like we’d known each other forever which was rather unexpected, my neighbour was quite surprised that she had witnessed that as he is ‘not like that with anyone' and she’d known him since he was a kid.

He walked me home that night too but we did actually sit and talk this time, I knew that a girl from the village had recently died of an overdose, what I didn’t know until then was that it was his ex girlfriend and someone that despite her being an ex he cared for her, he talked and I listened, eventually we ended up in bed again, more great sex, compliments, cuddles, again it was the middle of the day before he left with a kiss goodbye.

This happened a few times over the passing months, I wasn’t ready for anything more and neither was he but we had such a lovely, easy ‘relationship’ at times we came home together, other times we didn’t but he was always the same, each time I saw him I got the same greeting and we always talked, other times we would come home together, we’d talk, end up in bed, he’d kiss me goodbye at some point the next day, if you were ever going to have a friends with benefits, this was definitely the way to do it.

At some point during this time we became friends on Facebook and through that discovered that we were both movie lovers, he messaged me saying he had a great movie that I ought to see, he then brought it round, we watched it together and ended up in bed, every time he had something he thought I’d like he’d arrive on my doorstep, sometimes he’d stay and watch it with me, other times he’d just drop it off and leave, I’d messaged saying I’d watched it, discuss the movie and then he’d come and replace it with something else, his taste in movies was impeccable, off the wall and he never failed to bring something that I didn’t love.

On one of these occasions he arrived on his bike; in his leathers which is where his name comes from, leathers can look good or bad on a man but a man with an incredible body in leathers is really quite a sight and he didn’t disappoint, that may have been an occasion where I was disappointed that he didn’t come in!

I loved how easy things were between us, no matter how long it was since we’d seen each other it was never any different, we sometimes exchanged messages between, we sometimes didn’t, there was never any expectation and I liked that, I think he did too but also there was never that empty feeling that I have found can come with sex but it wasn’t just sex.

Christmas that year he turned up on my doorstep, he was upset as his Gran had died, he said that I was the one person he could talk to and it never mattered what he said, I thought that was rather lovely, I comforted him, we talked things through and he stayed.

We have confided in each other about all sorts of things over the years, it was me he turned to when he was having problems with his girlfriend and asked what he should do, when he was having family issues it was my door he knocked on, that’s not the only time he’s turned up though, his timing over the years has been impeccable, his ability to know I’m having a bad time and to arrive at my door with a great movie has always been incredible.

Over the years our ‘relationship’ has evolved into different things, there’s been sex, friendship, companionship, comfort, advice, sometimes all of those things have been together at other times independent of each other, over the years this has continued on and off, at one point I was seeing someone for about a year and he was too, though I don’t think at the same time, so during those times the sex stopped but we never did stop being friends, if he sees me now he’ll stop the car if he can so that we can chat.

I don’t honestly think that he would ever realise that he’s been a bit of a hero in my life, although I have told him in the past, he totally doesn’t get how important he was in that first year after the break up, it was incredibly hard for me and he was the one that scooped me up, told me how amazing I was and made me realise that there were not only good men out there but good men that were incredibly hot, he definitely set the bar for dating! He is the one that turned up through those early days when life was really shit, he’s the one that when someone in the village was bragging that they’d slept with me he unashamedly pulled them up on it (after checking with me that it wasn’t true) he is the person that I know wouldn’t be in a room if someone was slagging me off and not totally defend me.

The last time we slept together was about 18 months ago, it was the first time in a while and rather unexpected as I kind of thought we were ‘done’ with the whole sex thing, seems we weren’t, I felt a shift that night though, it didn’t quite feel the same for me, I just wasn’t as ‘into’ it as I had been before and in the morning when he suggested sex again I said I wasn’t feeling it (which he knew isn’t very like me) for the first time, he was totally cool with it though just as I would expect and I think that sadly because my head is out of having sex with him that will be the last time, shame as that might be, however I know that we will always be friends and would be there for each other at the drop of a hat.

I had never really believed that Friends With Benefits was a concept that could be successful before this and I’m still not sure that I believe there are many situations where it can work and not feel unfulfilling and empty but on this occasion it worked perfectly.

Although I myself forget this quite often, good men and superhero’s really do exist, sometimes they live just a few doors away and instead of a cape they wear bike leathers just like My Knight in Shining Leathers does.

Am I just too slow for modern day dating?

I had lunch yesterday with a former work colleague, someone I’ve always got along well with that has left under a bit of a cloud.

It was early 2015 that he left his wife (that also works for us) for a girl that works on his team and was dating another of his team, she was promoted in this time and is quite frankly as useful as a chocolate teapot on a bonfire. If I wasn’t already suspicious about them once I heard she had been promoted I definitely was! However it was apparent before the split that they were always in the same place, despite the fact that they didn’t really need to be.

He and I never discussed it as he knew that I wouldn’t approve of the cheating and I wouldn’t approve of sleeping with one of your staff, it’s such a bad plan and to be fair it was, I’m pretty sure it contributed to his fall from grace, however both she and the boyfriend she left (who will be her husband next year!) both still work for the company, the only innocent party I see here is the wife, I felt for the boyfriend too until the muppet took her back and asked her to marry him, I see a rocky future ahead of those two.

So since early January he has left his (second) wife and been seeing the girl he promoted, they split and within weeks he was seeing someone else, within weeks he’d met her child and she his, they moved in together fast and they broke up in the late summer, since then he’s been dating which we discussed yesterday, since this time he’s had a short relationship with someone else and several dates.

He went on a date last Thursday, had dinner, then Saturday he stayed over and did the same on Sunday, in the space of the week they’ve been talking, he’s had several dinner, two overnight stays and met her parents.

Then you have me, for one I’d struggle to fit that many dates into four days, I wouldn’t be having someone stay over within the first week because I’d want to get to know them before they were getting into my bed, so my question is, am I too slow with all of this? Should I be upping my game and just moving them in by date three instead of cracking on with my life and being such a snail?

I seem to be kind of a slow dater, initially seeing someone once or twice a week is just fine for me, my weekends are usually booked up way in advance and I’m not making changes to plans I’ve already made.

At first I thought this gung ho chuck yourself into it was a man thing but there are women involved here too and what sort of woman introduces her kids to someone she doesn’t even know yet?

Lets go back to baggage boy, who I had 3/4 dates with before we decided that friends was the better option for us. One of our last conversation’s was when I told him that his son didn’t need to meet everything his cock touched.

In the short time we were friends there were more women than I could shake a stick at walking in and out of those doors, now at first I thought he was a good Dad, he had his son every weekend, which I was terribly impressed at, it was only later that it dawned on me that his little boy (who was four) just had to fit in with whatever he was doing, if he was going out on a date he’d get a babysitter and if he had a woman over it was no big deal, the little one many times went to sleep with a babysitter and woke up to a woman he’d never met, if she’d gone by the time he woke up I would have had more empathy with this but that wasn’t the case.

The little boy had a lot of issues, although Baggage Boy would never admit to them, there were a lot of issues with BB and the little boys Mum, I only heard one side of the story which of course made her out to be evil and him to be the hero, this I don’t believe but I can assure you that if Boy was my child he wouldn’t be meeting different women all the time as I wouldn’t have allowed that. He definitely had attachment issues, from the minute we met he was very cuddly, wanted to hold my hand all of the time, if we watched a movie he wanted to be sitting on my lap, now children to tend to like me but I think that’s because I’m a little nervous around them and I’m not one of these people that always wants to grab them for cuddles etc but normally I find children of that age are a little shy at first, he desperately wanted to be loved which made me a bit sad.

He also had some anger issues and wasn’t reigned in by his Dad, now most things I can tolerate, however one day when I was there I spotted him being cruel to the hamster, I don’t care who you are animals aren’t meant to be dropped from a metre in the air, so I told him that he couldn’t do that and got his Dad in, ‘he loves the hamster’ is what I was told and I could believe that totally, until he thought no one was watching, I imagine that quite a lot happens when he is unsupervised and his Dad is too busy entertaining to keep an eye on him.

He had a girlfriend in Germany for a while, a girl he’d met while he was with his wife and she was with her husband, but nothing had happened…… she was the love of his life, he wanted her to move over which was what they were planning, he’d also propositioned both me and a waitress when we were on a day out with his son at this point.

Then suddenly within days of all this on Facebook his relationship status changes to ‘in a relationship with………..’ a girl that didn’t have the same name as the girl in Germany…….. despite our conversation she had posted photos of her with Boy and him with her children and all of his posts were how much he loves his ideal woman and he’d never felt like this before…….. I know I’m a sceptic but……

We had a conversation about it and I told him that I felt he was rushing in, that while I was happy for him in the last year he’d told me he was in love many times and I had concerns and also concerns for Boy, he brushed them off, put it down to me not being happy for him, which categorically wasn’t the case.

The next conversation we had was a couple of months later, Facebook and Instagram were covered in how happy they were but our conversations were filled of how insecure she was, how she wasn’t as adventurous as him in bed and how he didn’t like one of her children.

The next minute they were on holiday and an engagement ring appeared, surrounded by messages of how much in love they were and how perfect for each other they were, he rang me after and I congratulated him, mentioning that it was only a week ago that they weren’t terribly happy and the holiday was make or break, that was the last I heard of him and I was deleted from Facebook.

They have got married, Instagram is covered in photos of how perfect they are, I did note that the child he doesn’t like doesn’t appear in a lot of the photos though, take that as you will.

A little side note about Baggage Boy, on a night in 2016 (before the now wife but when he was with the German GF) we had planned a night out, we were going to a car show, then for a night out and I was staying at his.

We’d gone to the car show and come back covered in dust, so I went to get showered and ready, as I headed into the bathroom he said ‘I’ll be in, in a minute’ which I laughed off thinking he was joking, he wasn’t. Now there was no lock on the door but it was shut, he then walks naked into the bathroom and climbs into the shower with me, very brazen, I’m not sure what he expected but I finished my shower, got out and went and put my dress on, I was pretty shocked if I’m honest but I’m not the sort of girl to wobble with something like that and I fronted it out, we had a brilliant night out but if I’d already worked out before this that he couldn’t be trusted but this really did clinch it, if I’d given him the slightest hint that I was up for it he would have been straight in there, despite the girlfriend, he spent the evening giving the come on to anything that had a pulse, even exchanged numbers with some and I was totally fine with that but he did then try it on when we got back to his, even drunk I’m pretty firm in my resolve, it did come up over the coming months how I’d batted off his advances but it was long before that we’d decided that we were just going to be friends and in the months that followed all of the reasons that was a brilliant idea became apparent.

So, should I throw caution to the wind when it comes to dating?

If I had I could have well ended up with Baggage Boy and many others that I’ve been saved from but does my caution hold me back because by the time I’ve worked out I do actually like them they’ve found someone else?

We all know that most people multidate these days, do I want to be with someone that isn’t prepared to wait? I honestly don't think I do but I wonder if I've wasted chances by being cautious, like the Shoe Guy, the friend of a friend from two Christmases ago that got in touch recently and today in fact. 

A tough night...............

Did the message come? Of course it didn't, I knew, really deep down that it wouldn't but that doesn't mean that I didn't desperately want it to.

So, the evening was spent with some tears, feeling rather sorry for myself to be honest, if I checked my phone I checked it a million times but the message didn't come, I know he'd been online as he'd updated his Instagram (I know, I know!) 

Mr Bumble has been quiet but to be fair I have brought back a rule of mine that I have been neglecting for some time now.

In December I saw this little picture and on seeing it I decided that instead of not making a New Years Resolution like normal that this year I would make one, that resolution was to #bemorerudolf which essentially means that I will try to treat people how they treat me, if they take ages to respond I do the same, if they look after me when I need it, I'll do the same, if they don't treat me very well, I'll do the same. It's been a bit of an eye opener really and it's making my circle a lot smaller but is that a bad thing? 

Some examples of how #bemorerudolf work are the Evil Twin, she wasn't around when I needed her in December, you'll note this is a theme, I'm there for her, she's not there for me, so I've not messaged her since Xmas and guess what? She's not messaged me either, so six months along and we've not spoken, funny that eh? 

In January, I arranged to go to the cinema and for dinner and catch up with a friend, she then invited other people (that I didn't know) so when she asked about tickets in a group chat (I hate group chat anyway) I private messaged her and told her I wasn't going, she didn't seem to get the idea and we've spoken very little since, had she asked I would have been fine with it but people seem to have no manners these days. 

Anyway, back to Mr Bumble, I sent the last message (unread) so when he messages I will ensure that I don't do my usual and message straight back, to be fair one of the reasons I message straight back is because I forget about it if I don't. 

I still feel a bit down in the dumps today to be honest, I wish I was brave enough to take myself off on holiday by myself but unfortunately I'm not, I kind of want to escape myself and my head but sadly it's the thing that you can't get away from. 

Will another message come? Maybe, who knows, maybe when he needs something, or someone? Maybe when the new girlfriend bins him? Will I run to him? Time will tell I guess.