State We're In Read Online Free PDF Page B

secured through my resolute loyalty and ability to remember their kids’ birthdays – but the fact is I also have an endless trail of faithless, irresponsible or arrogant exes which I’m all too aware that I’ve acquired because my growing desperation has led to a terrible lack of discernment.
    I do look younger than my thirty-five years. I could pass for thirty-three in dim light, younger still from behind, as I make an effort to eat sensibly and dress well in an attempt to defy gravity and the facts. I have long dark hair and huge brown eyes that are framed with thick lashes. I used to think my eyes were my best feature but I’m not so sure now, as there are depressing crow’s feet showering from them. I’m considering Botox, although whenever I dare to hint as much to my friends or my sister they howl with laughter and tell me not to worry for another decade. ‘You’re still a baby,’ Lisa often says, but I’m never sure if that’s an out-and-out compliment.
    I’m not a baby, though, am I? Next birthday I’m thirty-six, literally in my late thirties. That’s just maths. No denying it.
    The issue is, I have always wanted to marry. Some people hate the idea, think it’s an outdated institution, restrictive, unrealistic, etc., etc., but it’s always been something that I thought would be part of my life plan. My parents have been happily married for thirty-eight years this weekend; they’re the gold standard – well, technically closer to the ruby standard, I suppose, but you know what I mean. They are happy, fulfilled and inseparable. Lisa and Henry have been together forever, as I mentioned. Even my younger brother, Mark, is happily married and has been for three years. Divorce statistics are trumpeted in newspapers; the pessimists like to present the UK as a country falling apart at the seams, populated with people unable to maintain a relationship for as long as they maintain a hairstyle, but that isn’t my experience. I sometimes think I
only
know married people.
    I’ve been actively trying to get married for over half my life. When I was sixteen, I begged my parents to let me attend a sixth form that had only just started to accept girls so that I’d meet lots of boys while doing my A levels. I only settled on a university after carefully studying the male/female quota of not only the university itself but my subject in particular. Naturally, I wasn’t daft enough to think I’d meet men at
Loving Bride!
, but I was engaged to Martin when I took the job; I wasn’t on the lookout then. Deal done. Or so I thought. Considering all my effort and vigilance on the matter of meeting a mate, it does seem a bit weird that I’ve mucked it up and I’m still alone.
    I have made mistakes. Perhaps I have a tendency to pursue the wrong sort of man; not necessarily the marrying kind. I’m fatally attracted to the wilder sort of guy; the sort with chiselled cheekbones, cool clothes and eyes and a heart to match. I’m drawn to exciting, sexy, unobtainable men. Damaged or divorced men. Worse still, married men who ‘forget’ to mention the existence of their wives until the said wife makes a phone call or – in one humiliating and heartbreaking case – finds me in her bed. Like metal shavings to a magnet I cling to bad and bold men; the sort of men who can undress women with a glance. Acutely improper and inappropriate men.
    It is an issue.
    Improper and inappropriate men tend to last only a matter of months or even weeks. My problem is, I don’t see my potential boyfriends in such bleak terms as I approach the relationships. Of course not. I date each man I meet with renewed optimism. I’m a hopeless romantic. Lisa says I’m just hopeless and old enough to know better; I should learn from past mistakes but I don’t. I hear her, I respect her view, it might even be advice I’d give a