Single Women's Shoes Hurt the Feet

It is amazing that in a relationship there are different rules for each accomplice involved. Take the woman – she really only has two options, either end up in wedded bliss/agony or learn something from the breakup. While the man - he has one, walk away and don’t look back. Fair? Not by a long shot, and it brings about a question: How many lessons must a woman learn until she too can just walk away and not glance back? More importantly: Do men ever learn anything? Wait, I just realized the stupidness of these questions. Men don't learn! I’m not trying to put any of them down, I realize I’m contradicting myself, but they just don’t, thus why many relationships fail so often, although it’s not just solely on men to bear that responsibility, since women apparently learn to believe that men can in fact change, hence the continual circle on the tutorial that is dating, until everyone involved realizes that there is no lesson to be taught, if you truly think about it, who is putting the lesson plan together anyway?

I will, however, from a momentary lapse in judgment, play into the stereotype, and tell you my lesson learned this time around ... my feet hurt!

It's a good hurt. It means shopping for, wearing, loving and hunting down fabulous shoes! Single women; let's not kid ourselves, or anyone else for that matter, rock out amazing footwear. Incredible, higher than high heels, peep toe, strappy little numbers, soft as everything leather, spend your grocery money on a rare find, shoes. However, once in a relationship, it seems those types of shoes only see the outside of the closet for special occasions, but for a single gal?

Special is found in just about everything, and, yes we will have the shoe to match it!

I don’t particularly like being a fool.

255 days (or thereabouts) since, what, I then thought, was the end of my life. Ominous, right? You see, at that point I was 114 days away from getting married (yes for the first time), then, on that fateful evening as I opened the front door to my fiancé, he sat on my living room couch, allowed me to go on a eloquent speech about “I think we can work through this”, “I’m willing to give us another chance” and various other sound bites of the same lamented tone, after which he looks at a spot on my wall and pronounces that his intent all along – well before my speech – was that he no longer wanted to be together. Actually let me rephrase, he vehemently stated that he no longer was in love with me – so, truthfully that’s what ended it. The fact that I still loved him made me a fool I suppose.

I don’t particularly like being a fool.

What got us to that point I don’t know if I’ll ever identify; I changed, he changed, he wasn’t intuitive towards my feelings, I smothered him with infinite chatter, he often misinterpreted me, I every now and then abhorred what he said, we stopped communicating, things escalated, and eventually turned bitter. It seems that love does not indeed conquer all; small variations in lifestyle make it astonishingly hard to do most things together. Regardless, there’s no need to dwell, I wish him peace, love, tranquility; actually I wish for him what I desire myself. Karma has a way of coming around, and I am well aware of all the actions that I am guilty of, for which karma should be getting her retribution. Was this it? Can I say lesson learned, probably not; I wish I could.

So here I am nine months later, no longer in my blithe twenties, not yet in my “established” forties, with no children, having never been married and wondering if either is in the cards for me. I haven’t dated yet, I’m not much a dater anyway, so it is a bit foreign to meet someone new and throw caution to the wind. And so, we’ve returned to being ominous again.

Darn!