The self destruct button...

The bane of my dating life. An itch that I can’t seem to avoid scratching sometimes or maybe I’m just a rebel at heart and know I shouldn’t do it therefore I just can’t stop myself!

If you are one of the fortunate and illusive people that don’t have this affliction then I envy you and will explain to you the torturous nature of this dreaded dating disease. A lot of it stems down to a belief that things can never be easy, due to them having been difficult in the past, so those of us that suffer with this seem to need to cause a drama before we have drama thrown upon us.

Usually this will occur around the six month milestone but in some extreme cases it can happened much sooner. It comes in several forms, let’s list them.

1. Verbal faux pas; this is when you don’t engage brain before opening your port hole.

2. Physical gaffe; you either do something that causes swords to be drawn, your body language becomes cold or you throw a TV remote at them.

3. Nit picking; They seem perfect but they can’t be surely, you turn into a private investigator to discover their faults when there probably aren’t any. Failing to find some, you turn to making them up.

4. I’m a wally; You doubt their motives for being with you, you can’t possibly deserve to have someone this nice interested so they must be after - A. Your Money. B. Your Car. C. Your best mate. D. Your Soul. E. Your cat, contents of your fridge and Nintendo Wii. F. All of the above.

5. Loss of decorum; Something happens, let’s say they do something that’s slightly embarrassing for them. You forget yourself and either laugh so hard you pee, call them names, forget to prevent a look of horror / disgust descending across your face or worst of all, tell everyone.


Unfortunately all of the above are down to your own self confidence which is incredibly hard, no matter what all those self help books / websites / blogs tell you, to change but if you are honest and open with your new partner about the concerns of your short comings then they can help you address them. Now I am not saying that you should come across self loathing and say “I’ve got a really bad track record, I’ve done this, this, that, them” because that’s one way to set them running quickly in the other direction.

As I’ve said in other blogs having the “ex chat” should try to be avoided if at all possible, I see no positive aspect about going into great detail when it comes to your previous bad decisions and actions but what might need to be eventually mentioned is your reasoning behind doing whatever you did.

By this I mean if you don’t want to rush into things because you’re scared you might ruin it suggest you take things slowly. There is nothing wrong with wanting to take things a step at a time if this is going to help you gain confidence in yourself and your date. If they really like you then they’ll be prepared to take it at a pace you are comfortable with.

You do need to do the most daunting thing of all though, look inwardly. Not realising why you’ve hit the self destruct button in the past will only cause you to hover your finger over it again. It’s not a simple task of course but the best way to get to the root of your problems is talking about it with someone you trust, but not your partner, for now anyway. Turn to your close friends and face your fears, I’m willing to bet on the fact they’ll also echo what you are saying most of the time.

One thing you definitely shouldn’t do though is hide away from getting involved with someone just because of what has happened in the past. Everyone is different and just because your last relationship ended badly does not mean a new one will too. From each experience we gain knowledge and we must do the most obvious thing and learn from it. To do this we need to open our eyes to it.

So take off your goggles and have a ruddy good look, what you see won’t be half as horrific as you imagine it will be, I promise.