22 April - Thirties suck
Life may be hard at 42 odd extra years. For example, I run into a colleague who’s got an art magazine and he told me his next issue’s theme is ‘the future’ and would I perhaps want to contribute to it. I told him the future scares me. Because now there’s much less of it to f uck around with and f uck around are we still, no doubt about that. Still finding it hard to take decisions that would alter life for the better (like, disappear from these rainy shores for example) and certainly not possessing any impetuous ways any more. Everything is sort of planned and as I said plans are forever procrastinated. Till eventually you die when least expected.
But boy, is it so much better than being 35ish. As exemplified by a recent evening when I took Toph and a younger spare male friend of his out for dinner with a couple of women I know who are in their mid thirties and high achieving - (o be not achieving in your mid thirties is a sin… it’s only later that you can relax into a sort of ‘it went the way it was meant to go’ motif about your (lack of) career.
At dinner S. was giving Toph her thoughts on work – she works too hard, has just applied for a better/higher position in a rival firm but her other half of the brain is constantly telling her she should slow down, slow down, not be this hard nosed bitch who can jet off to see a fuck buddy in NY and go skiing with him in Aspen, but come back to London and on a Friday night have dinner only with the same old g/friends whilst endlessly discussing their sparse lives and agreeing to go run half a marathon on Saturday morning because they’re not busy in bed with a lover. Then they’ll have coffee and then they’ll ring around to see what anyone is doing on Saturday night etc. Which will be much the same and then they’ll go play tennis or run again on Sunday morning.
After dinner she’s still talking to Toph about all this and trust a man to spot the contradictions. In the car back he says ‘One minute she’s saying she doesn’t want a Ken and Barbie life, and two sentences later she’s saying she wouldn’t mind a Ken and Barbie life because she would like a man who’s more than a shag – she says she can get those any time. So which does she want?’. I point out that she would need to shut up first and let the conversation go elsewhere. I know she knows Toph’s taken and so was talking to him like you talk to a girlfriend, but I don’t know that away from business meetings, she can be normal with a man and just not make him part of the interior monologue about life. I also point out that Ken and Barbie are two unfortunate figures to aspire too. It’s well known that they’re both airheads with cash for swimming pools and personal horse drawn carriages but they’re not a great couple are they??? Toph says he enjoyed listening to her (gave him a chance to offload where he also thinks he went wrong in life) but that at no point did S. talk about movies, books, friends, family.. it was all ‘Should I keep working to get somewhere and how do I meet the right guy’. Not at the Walmer Castle on a Friday night counselled Toph. I disagree. We were there and we brought an eligible friend though he’s at the same stage as the girls. He sort of half wants a relationship that will be stable and has legs but he’s still not able to buy groceries for his fridge and compromise on basic stuff like participating in some sports if the g/friend likes them. No, he’d rather stick to being himself and keep his nose in a book. It can never work if it’s ‘me first, you later’.
But I also had to come off my high horse and try and remember what I was like at 35. Similarly banging on and on and on about what seemed like an unsolvable dichotomy. You have to remember that back at that age, the choice of partner is totally complicated by the ‘Would I have kids with this guy and if so, when? AS am so busy working /making progress and I want to be equal’.
It was damn easy to look at my watch at 11pm and say ‘We’re going home’ and leave the girls to it. But they chose to leave at the same time. They are Europeans so not for them the picking up drunken guys two hours hence.
But boy, is it so much better than being 35ish. As exemplified by a recent evening when I took Toph and a younger spare male friend of his out for dinner with a couple of women I know who are in their mid thirties and high achieving - (o be not achieving in your mid thirties is a sin… it’s only later that you can relax into a sort of ‘it went the way it was meant to go’ motif about your (lack of) career.
At dinner S. was giving Toph her thoughts on work – she works too hard, has just applied for a better/higher position in a rival firm but her other half of the brain is constantly telling her she should slow down, slow down, not be this hard nosed bitch who can jet off to see a fuck buddy in NY and go skiing with him in Aspen, but come back to London and on a Friday night have dinner only with the same old g/friends whilst endlessly discussing their sparse lives and agreeing to go run half a marathon on Saturday morning because they’re not busy in bed with a lover. Then they’ll have coffee and then they’ll ring around to see what anyone is doing on Saturday night etc. Which will be much the same and then they’ll go play tennis or run again on Sunday morning.
After dinner she’s still talking to Toph about all this and trust a man to spot the contradictions. In the car back he says ‘One minute she’s saying she doesn’t want a Ken and Barbie life, and two sentences later she’s saying she wouldn’t mind a Ken and Barbie life because she would like a man who’s more than a shag – she says she can get those any time. So which does she want?’. I point out that she would need to shut up first and let the conversation go elsewhere. I know she knows Toph’s taken and so was talking to him like you talk to a girlfriend, but I don’t know that away from business meetings, she can be normal with a man and just not make him part of the interior monologue about life. I also point out that Ken and Barbie are two unfortunate figures to aspire too. It’s well known that they’re both airheads with cash for swimming pools and personal horse drawn carriages but they’re not a great couple are they??? Toph says he enjoyed listening to her (gave him a chance to offload where he also thinks he went wrong in life) but that at no point did S. talk about movies, books, friends, family.. it was all ‘Should I keep working to get somewhere and how do I meet the right guy’. Not at the Walmer Castle on a Friday night counselled Toph. I disagree. We were there and we brought an eligible friend though he’s at the same stage as the girls. He sort of half wants a relationship that will be stable and has legs but he’s still not able to buy groceries for his fridge and compromise on basic stuff like participating in some sports if the g/friend likes them. No, he’d rather stick to being himself and keep his nose in a book. It can never work if it’s ‘me first, you later’.
But I also had to come off my high horse and try and remember what I was like at 35. Similarly banging on and on and on about what seemed like an unsolvable dichotomy. You have to remember that back at that age, the choice of partner is totally complicated by the ‘Would I have kids with this guy and if so, when? AS am so busy working /making progress and I want to be equal’.
It was damn easy to look at my watch at 11pm and say ‘We’re going home’ and leave the girls to it. But they chose to leave at the same time. They are Europeans so not for them the picking up drunken guys two hours hence.
Labels: 30 something, age, relationships
posted by Lisa Taylor @ 5:07 AM
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