Heart surgery

It's always the nice people, the generous ones, the ones who give their love completely and honestly, without question or expectation. They get routinely and royally fucked. Taken advantage of. Manipulated. If you've got someone, someone who loves you for who you are without any expectation, then you should really know just how lucky you are. Not a lot of people get this.

I've seen nutter boyfriends and girlfriends come and go so many times over the years, but hey - that's the point of exes, right? So you can learn from your mistakes and (theoretically) make a more informed decision next time around. If a relationship's right, then there's always a way to make it work. If not, well, you can blame whatever you want - work, distance, other people... but it comes down to the simple fact that you weren't right. I've heard it all before; just be big enough to admit that you weren't the right fit and work on finding the one who is.

It tears me up inside to see people I care about getting exploited by others, or making decisions that I know aren't healthy or sensible. Pretty much everyone I know, at some point I've had varying strength urges (depending on just how ridiculous the situation was/is) to scream at "WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING?" But I guess when people are in 'relationships' (although I think a lot of the examples I'm talking about couldn't even be called that without Trading Standards getting involved...) they invest to much emotion in that other person, they don't want to see when it all starts to fall apart, buckling and shaking at the seams. I don't profess to be an expert on love and relationships and whatnot, but I've had some pretty horrendous experiences at the hands of some pretty horrendous people, and and midway through 2007 I decided to remove my silly-little-girl head and screw on a new, sensible one. Firmly. After I broke up with my ex-boyfriend, I made a conscious decision that I'd rather remain single forever than put myself through such a circus again. It sounds extreme, but I realised that I was one of those silly people, too. Maybe I'd reached the top of the learning curve, maybe I had some sort of emotional epiphany, but I decided that relationships were out of the question until I wokred out exactly what it was that I wanted and needed, and what exactly I could offer some one in return. I'm not a cynic, and when I love, I love completely, wholly and unconditionally. I'm in a very healthy place now, I'm with someone and what we feel for each other easily transcends what either of us have ever felt for another. I know because we communicate. He told me, and I told him. It might sound ridiculously simple, but a lot of couples I know hide things, shround parts of themselves in secrecy and then stumble around in genuine confusion when it all falls apart. Not healthy. It therefore might sound easy for me to judge, but I can view it objectively now, having seen and experienced both sides of the spectrum. If we can be this happy, so can you. (I know I sound like Paul McKenna here- this was not intentional, and for that, I apologise.)

I see couples every day, mutual loathing and resignation etched into their faces, held together not by adoration but desperation. Fear of loneliness; the social stigma of singledom. I love you reduced to a punctuation mark, used only as a point around sentences are hinged, because - like the full stop followed by a capital letter, they know they should. Thats how language, and love, should work. But no one feels grammatically, it's not supposed to be functional, it should be beautiful. When was the last time you got all enamored over a semi-colon? I see people desperate for affection, putting their all into unions which to me just seemed doomed, clinging to commas for dear life. The needs of their partners and themselves mutually exclusive; they invest so much and get nothing in return. I've seen someone trapped by jealousy and suspicion, checking text messages, e-mails and Facebook accounts with the precision of an MI5 hacker. Without trust, relationships rust.

I really love my boyfriend, but my bit on the side's got a really nice chin. It's alright for me to text/e-mail/ring my ex all the time, as long as my girlfriend doesn't find out. Kissing isn't cheating, really... it's not like I shagged her. Using someone so you aren't alone when you'd really rather be with someone else. Exploiting people's kindness and offering nothing in return, not even a token gesture or a heartfelt thank-you. I'm just chatting to girls online; I'm never going to meet them, so it doesn't mean anything. I'd drive the four hundred miles to see him this weekend, but I can't be arsed so I'll feed him the old 'no money' line. Drunken cliches at Christmas parties (I really love my girlfriend, though!)

Relationships are fucked; complex. You can complain about your boy/girlfriend (that makes it sound like you're dating a hermaphrodite) and the resultant situations and predicaments all you want, but as soon as someone else suggests that your relationship might be flawed, you angrily jump on the defensive. As an objective force, one can never really understand the nuances between two people when they're alone together and how they interact one-on-one. You can, however, and do, form opinions and ideas. You want to protect your friends, especially those you know have been hurt before. You want to wrap their hearts in cotton wool and bubble wrap, so when they inevitably get broken it won't hurt. You can't bear to see that crushed look again, total devastation. But, at the same time, we need to make these mistakes. If we don't ignore that little voice in our head occasionally, we won't have that point of reference, that scope to avoid the same mistakes again. Some people inevitably fall into the same trap over and over, but maybe the resultant heartbreak is the only way they'll learn. I guess all we can do, their friends, the people who love them, all we can do is be there to pick up the pieces, glue them back together and never, ever say I told you so. No matter how stupid we think (or know) they've been.

We are the surgeons who will crack the ribs and repair the broken hearts.