The effects of being a Complete Relationship Failure (CRF)

I'm a Complete Relationship Failure. I know this because I've dated girls for the last 17 years and yet the longest relationship I sustained was just over 4 years and even that I managed to screw up. My shortest relationship was three months and everything else including flings that never got off the starting block, have been something in between.

12 of those 17 years of failed relationships have been in Brighton and most of my exes are scattered about the city. I've noticed that my exes get rather friendly with each other once we've split up. It's not uncommon to discover that they are now BFF. I had a mate I was due to meet up with once, call me from 'The Marly' the local Brighton lesbian hangout,

"Susan, you may not want to come here this evening, there's enough of your exes in here to have their own party!"

As a result of being a CRF it means I'm now quite insecure which doesn't help my prospects much. This insecurity might be age, but I also think it's because I have come to believe from experience that it's only a matter of time before the person I'm with has had enough, my faults (as long as your supermarket till receipt) too much to bare and leave just like all the others with blame firmly placed at my door.

I find it amazing when I meet anyone who's had a relationship longer than five years wondering how they did it. As a child I always said I would marry the person I made it to five years with. Now 36 I'm still waiting for that to happen and question whether it ever will. At least marriage will be an option in law by the time and if it were to ever happen.

I've noticed increasingly the adverts of lesbian nest building activities as brands begin to target the 'pink pound'. Flick through any Diva or G3 these days and it's full of adverts for home purchasing and articles about having babies with the images of lesbians all coupled up in love-you-forever-after situations, enough to make you vomit into the nearest container you can find. I almost can't bare to look at them any more, giving me about the first five of 30 pages to read, before I toss them asside.

The portrayal of lesbians that we like to believe is real, is that which we are fed as a child by Walt Disney, the reality is that civil-partnership dissolvement is at 3.3% and not every lesbian is in a nest building situation. As we increasingly gain equal rights and acceptance for our relationships and families, it means that we are now provided with ideals by the media that for some are realised, for others remain a longing dream and for others a desire they are completely uninterested in. I have enough exes across Brighton reminding me that I'm a CRF, I don't need a further reminder from the media.