Friendship – the art of bonding

When I was contemplating divorce number two, I realised that I needed awareness about the faults within my relationship.  It was necessary to look; to really look and understand which parts were good, which parts lacked growth and which parts were downright destructive.

In the end, I asked myself if I was stuck on a dessert island with just him, nothing and no one else for conversational stimulation, could I survive.   The answer was no.   To this form of decision making, one of my best friends scoffed “he doesn’t need to give you mental stimulation; no man will ever give you enough of that!  That’s what your friends are for!”

In some ways she was right; friends are a big part of life and maybe if that had of been the only issue I faced with my husband, then I’d have adopted that line of thought and moved on with my expectations downgraded.  Of course if I fast forward to the present; I quickly realise that if I had of made that choice, I’d have wasted years and probably made us both miserable. 

The Squeeze manages to cover off “friend” and “partner” quite well.  Admittedly, in the eternal negotiation that is life, I’ve given up having a guy with an intricate knowledge of power tools or who can tweak a car engine but I guess you can always just call a tradesman for that.

As per usual, I’ve gone off on a tangent.  What my entry was supposed to be about, was friends.  On Sunday, I went off to catch up with a couple of girlfriends in the city.  We did coffee and a bout of shopping followed by a long lunch where we cover off ‘life’.

When the Squeeze goes off to his “kid” stuff, I almost wet myself with glee and skid around the house with a sense of freedom that you can only experience when you live with someone else.  Love him to bits, but hey, me time is high up there on the list of special moments…

This is not the case for the Squeeze.  In fact, I don’t think he likes “me” time.  Whenever I am out; he goes out, as though fearful of being home alone.  So I asked him what he intended to do and got back a summary of “pick up the kid, go see one of the other kids”.

WTF?  What about friends?  What about manly testosterone dripping conversation..?

When all is said and done, the only thing weirder about a guy having a day pass and using it to go pick up his fifteen year old kid to hang, is the fact that a fifteen year old kid has nothing better to do than hang with his father.  After all, he hung with him last weekend and will hang with him this weekend.

I love my dad, but hey; no way would I be hanging with him when I was fifteen.  I had places to go, people to see!  This kid needs an intervention!