In another little excerpt from Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl Book Two, I talk about adding more baggage onto your already overflowing load….

I doubt that there is anyone on this earth that can claim to have no emotional baggage, but there’s baggage…and there’s BAGGAGE! Not only do you love men that scream “Help me!” or “I’m really f*cked up!” but you love letting these men put their baggage ahead of you. So when he has a girlfriend, a wife, a gazillion kids, a babymother, an ex girlfriend that he is still secretly or even openly pining for, something in your brain goes “Ping!” and you’re all over him like a rash. When men put us down their list of priorities, it caters to that voice that follows millions of women with “You’re not good enough” and you then make it your vocation to get him to prove that you are good enough by moving you up the chain and throwing off some of his baggage.

The trouble with taking on men with baggage is that you go into overload mode because you are already carrying far too much baggage of your own. However his baggage detracts from your baggage so you don’t have to look too closely at yourself, but baggage does attract baggage. It doesn’t have to be like for like but you have to have some issues of your own to be willing to take on a crash landing waiting to happen…

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In another excerpt from Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl: Book Two (I promise to explain the when’s, how’s and the delay), I explore the all too familiar “daddy feeling” - Basing many of your relationships and dating choices on unresolved issues and beliefs that derive from your relationship (or lack thereof) with your father and unknowingly creating a familiar comfortable (yet still uncomfortable) feeling in your adult relationships.

“With parental relationships, it can all be about setting the tone. You may or may not have a good relationship with your mother, but your chances of having a bad relationship with yourself and future partners, further increases with a dubious interaction with your own father or strong male figure.

The pattern of systematically being involved with emotionally unavailable men can be deep rooted due to patterns that we have learnt in our childhood. It doesn’t have to be an absentee father or a ‘bad’ father; it may just be that the significant male figure in our life didn’t express his emotions or made you work hard for his attentions and affections, and for all intents and purposes, he was emotionally unavailable.

It’s called going after what you know.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This morning I checked the Femail website to see if an article that was being written about women who use the internet to write about their exes and relationships had been published. I was shocked when I read the this:

“Don’t get mad, get E-VENGE!”

In the Daily Mail newspaper, it even adds

“It’s the new mantra for women using the internet to take revenge on cheating men!”

I was shocked to read this headline and what unfolds is a total misrepresentation of me with a lot of inaccuracies and is particularly alarming because I said that I didn’t want to be part of some ‘revenge’ feature’.

I took part in the feature to highlight how my experience and sharing my insights about dating and relationships, and specifically emotionally unavailable men has helped thousands of women, and instead, I’ve been summed up as a woman who is getting revenge on her cheating ex fiance! It was an opportunity to promote my site and ebook which I was promised and they failed to do!

Let me ask you something - Did any of you even know that I had my ex fiance that cheated!? For someone who is supposed to be taking revenge, I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions!

Over at Dollymix, you can read the lowdown on what really happened and I hope that you will all agree that this blog is about empowering you, not taking out revenge! You can also read the article over at Femail - I’ll let you draw your own conclusion!

Note that they don’t seem to be publishing comments - I’ve had a few people email me to say that they’ve commented but they seem to be holding them back…

Your thoughts?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This is an excerpt from…Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl Book Two. Yes it has been delayed a bit…more on that very soon but here is an excerpt from the chapter ‘Betting on Potential’ - one of the recurrent destructive behaviours that keep Fallback Girls rooted in dubious relationships…

“Potential is something that should be derived from the promise of actual actions that have already occurred, not the blinkered fairy tale in your head. Potential is about the potential of the relationship, NOT the potential of what the guy could be if only x, y, and z were to occur. Here is the difference:

You should see potential in a relationship that has the positive hallmarks of a relationship with direction. This normally occurs because both parties are getting to know each other, there is consistency, there is no ambiguity, there is communication of feelings, and both parties have both their feet in the relationship.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Brad K has a thoughtful but still rather entertaining take on reinstating a chaperone for dates…

A duenna, according to my Funk & Wagnalls (dictionary, that is), is a lady who watches over a family’s daughter; a chaperone to a young lady.

What better way to avoid drama, than to bring a reliable coach and chaperone when you date?

Ok, stop laughing. Think about this. Take someone with you who has a vested interest in preserving your virtue. You can avoid unwanted or unseemly sexual or social compromises. But especially, you have someone to watch you and especially to observer and evaluate him.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

“Hi NML, I read your post about coping with work drama and I am worried. I have been dating a guy at work (most people don’t know about it) and he is really starting to p*ss me off. I suspect that he’s trying to get this other woman that we work with but he has the front to be asking me for sex. I’m sure he has even told her about us and they are laughing at me. When I ask him where this is going, he tells me to ‘relax’. He says that he cares about me but I keep hearing little things about him flirting with other women Even though he is p*ssing me off, I’m really in love with him and I don’t want to believe that I have wasted my time with him. Help me!”

This is one of those situations where it is, what it is. Sometimes all you need to do is write down what is happening to you and then read it back to yourself. Seriously.

I’m going to be blunt - Don’t p*ss on your own doorstep unless you are pretty damn sure that 1) it could have some serious potential, 2) he’s not a playa, or 3) you’re only working there on a temporary basis or planning to leave anyway. Or as another reader put it “Don’t sh*t where you eat” - crude, but true.

The fact of the matter is that you don’t want to believe that you have wasted your time and you don’t want to be believe that he’s an assclown that you’ve wasted energy on.

But….Sometimes…it is what it is… This is most definitely one of those times!

Ladies, sometimes, in fact, often, we over analyse and try to see shades of grey when in actual fact, black and white is what’s needed.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’m going to start this post by stating the obvious - Sex does not a relationship make. It’s not the be all and end all and all that jazz. OK, moving on swiftly now that we have that established!

But…and there is a big frickin’ massive BUT here…

Bad enough that a guy gives you a bad relationship but if he’s not even giving anything in the sack, I have to wonder why the hell a woman would be sticking around?

In the past I’ve had a lot of emails from women where they tell me the most awful things about their relationship with a guy and they finish it off by saying how they love him and the sex is amazing and yada, yada, and it’s what I’ve previously referred to as Great Dysfunctional Sex - sex powered by lots of negativity normally created by drama and insecurity. Crude as it may sound, you’d be amazed at the number of women that will stick in a bad relationship when a guy has a big dick and/or can sex them like crazy. It’s not an excuse, but I kind of understand a bit how someone can get blinded by the sex.

But I’ve noticed over the last few months that I am getting a lot of emails and comments from readers mentioning bad relationships AND bad sex. What the hell is all of this about?

So let me get this right, some of you are with guys that are:

mean with the relationship

mean with their time

mean with their affections

mean with their investment into the relationship

mean with their emotions

AND mean in the bedroom!!!

Where the hell have we gone so wrong that we would be prepared to take anything that we can get from man just as long as we get a semblance of a relationship?

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It’s day 30 of the 30 Days of Drama Reduction series, and I’ve had an amazing month and a lot of emails from readers telling me their stories and telling how much they have changed even in the past month! Of course, I didn’t squeeze in everything especially the last few guest posts so look out for these to follow over the next few days.

The last post is especially for the most hardcore of Drama Seekers, addicted to Relationship Crack, that want to break…they just can’t quite do it by cutting off contact.

The hardcore No Contact Rule is really the ideal way to extricate yourself from men that don’t want to break and just bring a whole load of drama to the table, but for some of you…breaking up is hard to do, even when you say it’s what you want to do. You know who you are - you’re the women that want to break up with him but if he says or does the right thing today, your knickers will be swinging from the light fixture tonight. Unfortunately tomorrow you’re going to feel pretty awful.

So what do you do?

Have a Get Out Plan - a carefully coordinated effort where you start to ease out of the relationship in preparation for cutting off contact.

Why am I suggesting this? Because if I don’t, some of you will still be yo-yoing in ten years time and you aren’t very good at cold turkeying. If you’ve been struggling with no contact and falling off the wagon, more often than not, you’re struggling to manage the fear, the anxiety, and the insecurity that come rushing in when it happens. The relationship crack is too intoxicating for you.

ONLY use this option if you keep applying the No Contact Rule and keep falling off the wagon with the same guy.

BUT, don’t beat yourself up if you have fallen off the wagon a couple of times because sometimes this needs to happen in order to have a proverbial straw to break the camels back.

BUT, some of you need a halfway house…a Get Out plan…

I would love for everyone who needs to apply the NCR to be able to stick to it but quite frankly, some of you just won’t make it if there isn’t a halfway house that allows you to extricate yourself out of the drama filled haze slowly but very surely.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

It’s surprising the number of women who have been involved in drama filled relationships with men that they work with and I’ve had several requests asking for advice on how to reduce the drama.

It is so difficult to suffer a break up but it’s made all the worse when you have to say their face day in day out. You have to put on a braver face for a larger portion of time than you would if you didn’t work together.

As usual, I have been there, done that, worn the t-shirt, as the guy with a girlfriend was someone I worked with, so I have first hand experience of having to fend off an assclown that worked within spitting distance of me.

For a start, you need to decide whether you love the job so much that you’re prepared to see his face every day even though you’re no longer together. Or you may be in a situation where you can’t leave the job. Whatever you do, you need to ensure that you are staying in your job for the right reasons…

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

I’ve written about red flags before, but I wanted to cover the subject especially in the context of drama seeking and helping you recognise inappropriate, abort mission, sprint in the opposite direction, take off the Rose Tinted Glasses and the Bruised Ego Fur coat.

A red flag is a signal in the other parties behaviour or about the relationship which flags a serious problem in the relationship, whether that is straight away or further down the line.

It is likely that a red flag will deal a fatal blow to your relationship - It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but soon, although many women continue with the relationship regardless, because they have travelled too far down the road and are heavily emotionally invested, or just plain scared of walking away. Or the sex is too good…

So actually, they deal a fatal blow to the relationship…you may just choose to ignore it.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!