If we’re out and there’s an attractive woman in the room, I can feel her eyes slipping and sliding over her.
When I was younger, I had a boyfriend who I was sure was cheating on me with his housemate. I confronted him and he denied it. A couple of months later he broke up with me: “Yeah, we may have been sleeping together…” he said guiltily.
The experience made me wary. I was more careful in future relationships; I kept my heart safely to myself until I’d tested the ground beneath me. And I trusted my instincts.
Blue Eyes and I have been back together for a month but things aren’t peachy. More and more I feel like she’s constantly checking out other women. If we’re out and there’s an attractive woman in the room, I can feel her eyes slipping and sliding over her, can feel her drifting in and out of our conversation. On the tube or in the street, I catch her staring at women, brazenly.
I raise it with her: she tells me she’s just “looking around”, “it’s not sexual”, she “looks at everyone”, but I can feel the weight of her gaze, its texture, is different. Things get worse. Every time we go out, we fight about it. She gets angry and storms off and I sit on the night bus home in sunglasses so no can see me cry.
I start shedding self-esteem like a second skin. When I look in the mirror I see only my shortcomings – the wrinkles and gappy teeth. She tries to reassure me: tells me I’m gorgeous and hot, I’m lovely, she loves me; but her words and her actions are two bits of a puzzle that don’t fit together.
“We need a break,” Blue Eyes says, and so we head to Barcelona: to Gaudi and flamenco and tortilla and fucking in a hotel room and cava on the terrace – and girls, girls, girls everywhere. She denies looking at anyone: “You’re crazy,” she says, “it’s all in your head,” “you need therapy”.
And then; this:
We fly home. She comes over to mine a few hours later, all worked up. She stands over me, with tight little fists, eyes swimming in hate and she says:
“You know, I’ve been reading up on this and I’ve realised you’re a very controlling and manipulative person. Soon I’ll have to walk around staring at the fucking ground. You’re actually abusive.”
“What the hell?? I am not abusive,” I say crumpling into tears. “How can you even say that?”
“See? This is you being manipulative. You need to accept this is all your fault.”
A little voice inside of me pipes up, no, no, no it isn’t.
It carries on, the accusations and the fury. She twists everything I say until I have no idea what the truth is any more. Maybe I really am deeply insecure? Maybe I have become controlling? Once she’s vibrating with so much anger, I flinch, and she barks: “Stop acting like I’m going to hit you.”
Eventually, worn out to my very bones, I fold.
“I’m so sorry,” I snuffle. “I’ve got you all wrong. I’ll get counselling I promise.”
She takes my hand; softens. “The problem isn’t whether I look at other girls; the problem is why you care.”
We go to bed. I lie in bed and this is what I think: love isn’t clenched fists. It isn’t a look filled with disgust. It isn’t twisting someone’s words. It isn’t guilt-tripping. It isn’t bringing someone to tears. It isn’t shouting that someone needs therapy. It isn’t making someone afraid.
This isn’t love. This is toxic.
I ask Blue Eyes to leave, shut the door; and breathe.
Catch up with past Girl Meets Girl columns here and visit the official blog at girlmeetsgirl.co.uk.
Only reading DIVA online? You're missing out. For more news, reviews and commentary, check out the latest issue. It's pretty badass, if we do say so ourselves.
divasub.co.uk // divadigital.co.uk // divadirect.co.uk