It’s been a while since the last time I’d pondered the reasons that I’m single, so I thought it’s about time I that I do it once again. Recent events have reminded me of this story indirectly, and I have told it a few times before to different people.

It happened to a friend of a friend and I shall name the couple John and Mary. So it was John’s birthday coming up, and Mary asked John what did he want to do to celebrate. John had said that he didn’t want to celebrate, and that they should just buy some takeaway food, a bottle of wine, go rent a movie and relax at home.

Mary didn’t feel the same and insisted that a celebration be had. She said that she will cook something and will buy a cake too. On the day, Mary tried to call John at work. He didn’t answer his phone due to being busy at work. When John returned her call a few hours later, Mary was annoyed about the late reply and asked John to pick up the birthday cake. That wouldn’t be that bad except the cake shop was a 20-minute drive from John’s work. Now John was getting annoyed because he had to use up his lunch hour to pick up the birthday cake that he didn’t ask for.

Nevermind, John thought. Once he gets home, he can relax like he wanted to. When he got home, Mary was cooking up a storm. He did the good boyfriend thing and helped her out. “I will relax after dinner”, he thought.

Dinner was had and it was nice. John said to Mary that he will wash up the dirty dishes and to just leave them in the sink. He then got a beer and sat down in front of the TV. He didn’t get up for an hour or so. Mary had seen the dirty dishes still in the sink and asked John to wash them.

John said that he will do it after watching another show. Mary said why couldn’t he do it now. John said that he just wanted to relax for a while. Mary said that if he’d wash the dishes, he could get to relaxing earlier. Both of them were getting on each other’s nerves now.

And you could guess where the conversation was headed. “I didn’t want any of this anyway! If we had gotten takeaway there’d be no dishes to wash!” “I can’t believe you just said that! I went out of my way to cook and to order a cake and you don’t even appreciate it!”

And on and on …

Heheh. I can see it from both points of view. I understand why Mary did the things that she did but it’s almost like she was forcing John to appreciate her. Let’s not forget that it was his birthday and he had stated that he wanted to relax and not do much. If Mary had listened to him instead of insisting on having his birthday her way, all of this could have been avoided.

As for how this applies to me being single? Well, I’ve seen this scenario and other similar ones happen to different guys and I am always on the side of the guy in the relationship. Why? I can appreciate my girlfriend doing nice things for me but not when I’ve already said there’s no need for them, or if I’m made to appreciate her out of guilt. So when she does the nice things for me, and I’m not as enthusiastic or as grateful as she’d hoped, we’d have an argument back and forth about how ungrateful I am to have her, and why doesn’t she ever listen to me – all punctuated by her yelling at frequent intervals, “That’s not the point!”

And while we are arguing, I’ll be hearing this over and over again in my head,

This doesn’t make any sense to me!

:P