Passenger Ten - Pants on Fire

Trust is the most fundamental requirement of a relationship. Once you have lost it, you are pretty much Bus fodder unless there is a monumental shift in attitudes, a whole lot of therapy and the initial problem is addressed seriously. It is hard work, and unless you have a really, really good reason to try, and you BOTH want to try, I wouldn't recommend it. So...if you start out with trust issues...well, it isn't good.

Passenger Ten was a whirlwind romance. An old fashioned, see each other across a crowded room, can't take your eyes off each other, passionate affair. And sadly, it was an affair, though I didn't know it at the time.

Now, if you follow The Bus of Doom then you know I have been burnt this way before, so you can imagine I am pretty careful about this kind of thing now. When we met, his brother told my friends that he was still with his girlfriend (and mother of his young daughter), so I was extremely cautious.
1. I confronted him - are you? No! Why would he say that? Jealousy issues and too much to drink.
2. I asked his best friend - are they still together? Because if they are you MUST tell me, I have a child, he has a child, it's a serious thing - No, not still together.

It makes me feel better that he convinced not only me, but all my friends, that what his brother said was all a lie. And when I found out? I told him to sod off. Bus fodder...However, he confessed all...to me, to her, to his family. He left her with no expectation of us being together and... I fell for it.

I tried to resurrect a Passenger...but as we all know, there are no survivors.

Our trust was shot from day dot. I didn't completely trust him, after all we started out on a pretty major lie, and he didn't trust me, after all, if he was a liar, maybe I was too.

At first it can be flattering to have a man jealous of you. He must really care if he is worried about other guys, right? He must think you are really worth something. However, after a short period what it comes down to is not that he thinks you are amazing, but that he doesn't think you are trustworthy. In this case it started with being uncomfortable about me talking to an ex (fair enough), then of me talking to men I had just met (even though he was right next to me), he then upped the ante to male friends I had known for ages, and finally settled on being jealous of me saying "how you doing?" to male friends I passed on the street.

This led to some disturbing side issues such as
Testing - I'm going to move to WA to get away from it all - just to see if this would upset me. If I was not sufficiently upset it meant I didn't really love him.

Checking up - So, what you been up to today? Out with friends? Any of them men? - While he didn't actually SAY if there were men he would be upset, it was implied.

More Testing - I want you to come and see me RIGHT NOW because I love you, if you don't come RIGHT NOW no matter how inconvenient, then you don't love me.

Isolation - We should move in together RIGHT NOW because if you love me you will want to, and we should move to where I am despite it being inconvenient so we can make a fresh start together. OK, so it's where all MY friends and family are and NONE of your friends and family, but it is important that we get you away from all those people so we can focus on US.

And the last step
Jealousy of the past - I want to be your daughter's Dad (well you can't be so get over it). I don't want you to ever mention that you had previous partners in any context and all contact (other than hand overs) with your ex must cease.

Now the hardest part of all this is that it is easy when writing this down to see what an awful situation I was in. But at the time it doesn't seem that way at all. There were romantic dinners, there was loads of attention and affection. There was flattery and charm and a willingness to give me gifts, do chores around the house and look after me. I had NEVER had ANYONE be so sweet to me. He would ring me every day and text me 20 times a day, he would never think it was weird for me to call him, he would never NOT want to see me. He was polite and played with my child in an unselfconscious way. He was PERFECT except for the small COMPLETE INABILITY TO TRUST issue.

So, what happened next?
He left me. And that was the most surprising thing of all. We went on a holiday together, arrived at our destination and then he dumped me. Why? Because he was too jealous of my past, my present and possibly my future. He simply could not cope with not being the only person I had ever known or cared about and so he left. In the end he returned to the partner he had cheated on to be with me, because she had his child. He returned to her not because he loved HER but because in his child was everything that he could not find in a woman. Here was a person who had never loved anyone but him. He was the centre of her world and, for now, he could be confident that she would not want anyone more than him. He even worked hard to be more loved than her mother, because that is how he needed it to be.

For a while after the break up he could not stop himself from calling to make sure I was still single, because the idea that I might not still love him was too much for him, but I told him I did not want ANY contact as he was rebuilding a relationship with someone else and being untrustworthy himself would not help that. And now...well what a blessing it was that he went.

And from this Passenger I learned something that none of the others had taught me...there are men out there who, for whatever reason, will LIKE it when you call them and not think it is needy if you say you miss them, there are men who will take you out and tell you that you are beautiful. They will be interested in what you have to say, and will spend time doing things for you because they want you to admire them and they want to make you happy. They will want to call you their girlfriend and will be proud to have you on their arm. You will not have to rack your brain trying to figure out what to say or trying to figure out what you did wrong. It was a revelation and it gave me a standard to work from.

And this leads us to Passenger Eleven, who doesn't exist, because I finally found a man who is everything I was looking for and a bit more, and I have all the lessons of the past to help me know what I DON'T want in a man.

So, darling readers, if you recognise your partner in any of these Passengers - put them on The Bus sooner rather than later, there is plenty of room to spare, and go look for someone new, because he may be the next one to come along. And once he is on The Bus, leave him there - there are NO survivors - and give the next guy a genuine chance. If you aren't ready for that, then you are just Bus fodder yourself.

Don't dispair, I may be out of Passengers to write about, but I still have things to say about the lessons I have learned. And please feel free to pass on stories about your Passengers. Your lesson learned may help someone else.

Passenger Nine - Casanova Tom Cat

Graffiti in public toilets used to serve a useful purpose. When you moved to a new town you could go for a quick wee and find out a concise run down of who was a good root, who was a bad root and who should be avoided. It's a damned shame that this service is now so lacking. I suggest we re-instate this tradition. If it were still in place, I would not have slept with Passenger Nine. All the local women know, of course, because they have all slept with him too...but was there some kind of written warning? No. And men like this take advantage of the lack of toilet graffiti, and who can blame them?

It's true, some of the local men tried to warn me, but sadly, it was the very same men who were hitting on me and failing so how could I believe them? Especially when he swore blind he was not like that (and who wants to believe negative things about someone who is good in bed? Really?)

And as he said - he REALLY liked me, REALLY...he just didn't feel comfortable with public displays of affection (around other women he might want to sleep with) or being in phone contact during the week, after all he was a busy, busy man (busy with other women) and he didn't feel right putting a name on it like girlfriend / boyfriend, we were just getting to know each other, but he wasn't sleeping "with any other woman" (Nope, he was sleeping with many other WOMEN). Turn up somewhere just because he said he would see me there? That was asking a bit much wasn't it? Turning up with another woman to a date? Why not? After all, we weren't a COUPLE. Besides, he hadn't chosen her over me. Yeah, she was his GIRLFRIEND, but that didn't mean he preferred her to me...or any of the others...

Starting to get the picture? Time to go on The Bus, sunshine. And any ladies considering moving to Daylesford, please PM me for your own personal "public toilet" warning.

The follow up?
I have spoken with numerous women who have slept with / are sleeping with Casanova since I stopped seeing him and they all agree - THEY are the one he REALLY cares about, the others don't mean ANYTHING.

On one night I ran into him out with a female friend of mine I knew he was sleeping with. Lets call her Woman A. I asked how they were getting on and his reply? "I'm not with her! What has she told you?"
Me: "Well, that you are sleeping together"
Casanova: "Well, yeah. But I'm not WITH her, I'm with Woman B!"

I was pretty offended on my friend's behalf to find that he would say this when they were clearly out together and later I discussed it with her.
"Oh, that's not the half of it." She tells me. "He went home with Woman C that night."

The sad part? Women A, B and C and many, many more will keep sleeping with Casanova because he tells them up front that it is not a relationship, and so they can't really expect him to be faithful to them. Personally, I don't need to be in a relationship to require basic levels of respect from a man. And by the way if you are the one he REALLY cares about...then why isn't he caring about you?

As for the poor woman he has actually named as his "girlfriend". Honey, expect an on again, off again thing. Because Casanova Tom Cat will not be able to keep it in his pants, never has, never will, and sadly, there are just too many ladies out there that will go behind your back because they can.