True love doesn't have a happy ending, true love has no ending...

Mr Simpetar posted an excellent comment, intended to guide us single gals.
‘Hence my first advice to girls: do not work too hard at finding The Right Man: instead, work to become the Right Woman. BE the woman that your intended Mr Right would want to marry, and one day he will come to your door.’

One girl that I know who already is what Mr. Simpetar calls the ‘Right Woman’ may have found her ‘Mr. Right’. Essentially, Mr. Right may have walked directly into the life of a girl who reads this blog. This girl has kept her virginity with the intention of firstly not wanting to scar her soul with the weapon of mortal sin. But also so that in being virginal, she will have the best chances of happiness in love.
Here’s the story of how this ‘Right Woman’ met a ‘Nice Guy’/Possibly Mr. Right. To preserve their identities, and prevent their faces from blushing deep hues of red, we shall call her ‘Mia’ and him ‘Oscar’.

CHAPTER ONE

Mia was beginning a journey home from the far and distant reaches of the North of England. She wore her long black coat that complimented her long blond hair, and wore green sparkly earrings to match her bright green eyes. It’s her way to ‘make the most of herself’, and always look beautiful even if she was just about to go on a five hour train journey with a huge suitcase. A heavy suitcase with pointy edges! Mia brought the suitcase on the bus to the train station. Then Mia had to wade through the streams of people who were darting around the station all looking for their platform and for their connection. Mia thought to herself ‘oh if I didn’t have a suitcase, if I didn’t have to feel my wrist ache and feel my arm stretch! Oh, if some guy would just materialise and take the weight from my hand! Why can’t this be like an old black and white film where a gorgeous guy just strolls up, and says ‘allow me madam’ and takes the suitcase as though it were his greatest pleasure on earth?’ Instead, Mia lost count of the times she said ‘sorry!’ when the suitcase went into another traveller.


Mia waited on the platform for the train that would take her to London. The train pulled in and as she tried to get into the train with the suitcase, people kept shimmying and skimming past her to get on the train ahead of her. Taking a deep breath, she tried to get the suitcase into the train. She then heard these beautiful words. ‘M-may I give you a hand?’ A sporty looking fellow in a rugby shirt and glasses put his hand on Mia’s suitcase. Mia hesitated and gulped. She delayed and Sporty looking fellow took his hand away and stratched his gelled light brown hair. Mia felt a spark. There was definitely a spark running through her as she said ‘please...’ and gestured towards the suitcase. ‘I’d love it if you lifted the damn thing, and..and...and’ Oh no, why was she stuttering ‘and’? She felt momentarily foolish. ‘I’d be delighted to carry it.’ He took the suitcase like it were a feather, and stowed it in the luggage department.
‘Thank you , thank you so very much...thank you...’ Mia gushed. Oh no, now she was stammering thank yous. She looked up at him and saw that he was staring intently at her. This wasn’t usual. You don’t just meet someone and exactly two minutes later feel a charge of electricity pulse through your veins all because you are in the presence of a good looking man. Or do you...? They caught each other’s eyes and found that they were looking at each other a bit too intensely...
He cleared his throat, and said ‘am right, well, am do you know where you are sitting?’
‘Oh yeah...sitting...’ Yes, she was on a train, it was the idea that she find a seat. Instead, she was a sitting duck for this Nice Guy.
‘Am, right, well we could take a walk down this way, and see if there’s any seats available...’
Mia pretended to look for a seat, but really wanted him to look for the seat and invite her to sit next to him. He found her a seat, beckoned to it, and said ‘it’s all yours’. More clearing of his throat, ‘well, I’m Oscar, and you’re?’
‘I’m Mia’
People brushed past behind Oscar, and he had to lean in a little closer to Mia.
‘I couldn’t help noticing that you have a sticker for the football team of my university...I’m a PhD student there...’
‘Oh, I’m reading a degree for medicine there!’
‘Wow! We’re both going to the same uni.’
‘We’ll both have ‘doctor’ before our name!’
‘Am. Yes. Can’t believe I haven’t seen you before. My PhD is based on the poet Keats, so I never have any reason to go into any of the science buildings or the medical library...’ Oscar then gave her a long stare, a stare that’s considered ‘odd’ if you don’t have attraction for the recipient of the stare. But Mia when she saw his eyes alight felt a rush of something...
Oscar had to find another seat in another part of the train. Mia sat on her own wondering if that would be that. He would get off in London and wave goodbye and she would be left wondering why she felt so alive and so
A few train stops later, and the seats emptied around her. And then suddenly, he sat down opposite her.
‘Am. I hope you don’t mind, we go to the same uni, I’d like to chat to you some more’. There it was again, that feeling that their eyes were somehow connected. ‘You seem an awfully nice girl’. He may as well have said ‘I think you are the most beautiful woman in the world, and I’d really like to propose to you, but since I’ve only known you for half an hour that might be a tad premature’.
The next five hours went by very quickly. The small talk wasn’t really that small, it was a conduit into the bigger issues of their lives. How long Mia spent on the wards as a fourth year med student, and why he laboured over the fine points of Keats’ poetry.
They lingered on the discussion of Keats’ poetry.
‘What did you think of the film Bright Star?’ Mia asked.
‘I didn’t see it...’ Oscar replied.
‘But it’s all about Keats and his thwarted love affair with Fanny Brawn.’
‘Oh yes, and I’m investing four years into getting a PhD that centres totally on Keats’ poetry. But the film isn’t really accurate...the film portrays the Keats and Fanny Brawn story like they had been in love, like they had shared love. What really happened was that Keats fell for Fanny but she didn’t fall for him.’ Oscar frowned and then said ‘whenever I study La Belle Dame Sans Merci I think of the pain Keats must have suffered because his love for Fanny was unrequited. Have you read much Keats Mia?’
‘Well, I did study a selection of his poetry for A-Level English...’
‘Oh you didn’t mention you had an A-Level in English lit! Here I do behold a woman of many talents. Not only a student at our prodigious university with what at least three science A-Levels?’
‘Four science A-Levels’ Mia said and blushed. Oh no, she had allowed her cheeks to blush!
‘But also an A-Level in an artsy subject like English lit.’
A gap came in the conversation when Oscar said that he was going home to Kent and that it would be good to see his girlfriend again. Mia’s throat became icy. What, he has a girlfriend? Why does he go lifting other girls suitcases onto trains? Does his girlfriend know he’s a serial suitcase-of-other-girls-lifter? But Mia looked into his still blue eyes. He was being sincere. He gave her a hand with the suitcase, but was telling her gently that he had a girlfriend and that it would be best if she didn’t get ideas. Mia looked at Oscar and gave him a smile as if to say ‘oh how nice that you have a girlfriend’. And then without thinking Mia said ‘oh my boyfriend lives near me too. He’s about three miles from my home...’ What boyfriend? Mia had no such boyfriend...but felt compelled to say she had one because she didn’t want to seem available.
Yeah...but...an hour later, and Oscar had got Mia a coffee and chocolate muffin in a cafe in Victoria. They were still chatting and enjoying the surreptitious smiles that passed between them. Once when Mia checked a text, she saw Oscar’s eyes travel around her face and settle on the fall of her hair on her shoulder. She then thought, but he has a girlfriend and we’ll probably say goodbye now and I’ll never hear from him again. Her expectations were raised yet again though when Oscar raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Look we’ve been at uni for a number of years and haven’t met...could I have your number in case I happen to need a doctor in a hurry?’

Enter yours truly, Philomeena. I got a text from Mia to meet her in Victoria train station. I met her and the bashful, but brilliant Oscar for a coffee in a bustling cafe in Victoria.

Oscar got the last train home to Kent.


CHAPTER TWO

Over the following days Mia was in a quandary as to what to do next. She had Oscar’s number. Would she send him a text just to get things started? Why did he have to have a girlfriend? Why had she told him that she had a boyfriend? Had she wrecked her chances? Because Oscar thought she had a boyfriend, did he think it useless to pursue her affections? And anyway, what type of guy sought the affections of another girl when he had a girlfriend? But because she had told him that she was ‘taken’, did that mean he would never considering ending things with the present girlfriend?
I, Phil, got an e-mail from Mia seeking my help with the issues listed above. Here was my reply;

Dear Mia,

I take what you wrote in your last e-mail very seriously. And I affirm it. There was Definitely An Atmosphere of Attraction and Mutual appreciation between you and Oscar. I would bet that he has already seen You around the campus, but may have pretended never to have seen you before to save his pride. These modern men, afraid that a woman will know that they like her!

When we were drinking coffe, he was looking at you, and did not want to look away. He was memorising everything you were saying, and DID NOT want to get his train. Also, am I the only one who noticed or didn’t he embrace you and give you a peck on the cheek?! Yes!

He had a perfect opportunity to leave when I arrived. Most lads his age would have made their excuses to leave when ‘the female best friend’ came for a coffee. Men always have a reason for staying. They are not altruistic like women. He would not have stayed to give us a nice warm feeling. Oscar’s reason for staying was that he found he was magnetised by Mia. Also, the fact that he liked you calling him ‘Ozzie’ is a real give-away. He told you you could call him ‘Ozzie’, but he insisted that I call him ‘Oscar’. We’re in England, letting another use the shortened version of one’s name is done to further closeness. This is very obvious to ‘the Irish girl’, new to these cold climbs such as yours truly.

To be objective; you both are in different academic fields and this is a good thing. There will be no competition for success in similar professional pursuits. He’s mad if he doesn’t find you very attractive. It’s not just physical between you two! There is a 'link up' in terms of tastes and intelligence.

It’s a sign of integrity that he told you about the ‘other girl’/your nemesis/his girlfriend. And she may be his girlfriend – now – but that means that she is one girl of the 8 billion of us that he is having a dalliance with.

Don’t worry about the white lie. You probably have many fellows in your area who would LOVE for you to be their girl. Pity for them. BUT the fact that you gave that little lie is actually indicative that the chemistry between you and Oscar that was happening of its own accord. You wanted to seem unavailable so that he would think otherwise of your attraction for him. Your unconscious mind interpreted your body’s attraction before your conscious mind did. The last point is Essential. We have material bodies, and our bodies do the details without us being cognisant of the subtleties and the consequences. A perfect example is an ‘unplanned pregnancy’ where one has sex and your body enables the pregnancy. And so in falling in love.
Trust me, if ALL his emotional energies were involved with his girlfriend/your sworn enemy, he would not have been so open to attracting you. But I did use the word ‘emotional’. And that is a different thing to ‘physical involvement’ aka being ‘sexually active’ with her.

The difficulty is...he may be sleeping with her. I write that last bit hesitantly because I know what it’s like to get thoughts of men-that-I-fancy out of my head. But hey, I’m neurotic anyway.

If he is in a relationship where they both strip themselves down, swap special bodily fluids, and release hormones that are only meant to be released when you are in a lifetime relationship with someone, then there will be complications. I wrote the last part, not to be gross, but to put a context to my next point.

I had a very serious attraction to Dr. Lion last year. And it was returned. He liked me too. His family (All doctors) urged him to go out with me, and this is important in Ireland. In Ireland if the man is encouraged by his family to go . But he was going out with a Londaaan girl, who he was also giving a million of his sex cells to on a very regular basis. He had such a sexual bond with this girl – that he could not break the relationship – and start a new one with yours truly. He knew he’d be giving me no sex cells till the marriage bed was made! I thank God that the disappointment of not ‘getting’ Dr. Lion didn’t hurt me more than it could have... And the reason it did not Hurt me as much as it could have... Dr. Lion was not ‘my first’.

Which brings me onto the subject of First Love. It’s claw like tenacity is unlike anything on this earth. I ‘fell’ for someone many years ago, and did I fall hard. Some of us are like that. When we fall, we fall hard. And since that ‘fall’, I never really fell again with the same gravity. The ‘someone’, let me call him ‘Iggy’, fell with me, and I was informed that he Iggy was, indeed, in love with me. Ah, but we were so very young. So very young. With so little influence and were unable to go out with each other, namely because neither his family or my own were willing to lend us the support needed for such a young engagement to happen. We were not really given ‘permission’. And we met just before that Romeo and Juliet stage of teenage autonomy where you do go out with another, if in doing so you go against your parents, that’s alright, you know you’re the ‘legal age’ for both sexual involvement and for marriage. But ‘we’ happened when we were pubescent and under the patronage and protection of parents. Had our races been the same, had we been from the same ethnic group, then I believe our parents would have seen to it that we ‘got together’.

Many years later I’m still looking up Iggy’s profile on Facebook. I was advised just today NOT to look at this fellow’s profile. He’s the man, and the hunter. He should be looking up my profile and then sending me a friend request. So, while Iggy is my first love, he may not be my last. I get emotional when I watch Romeo and Juliet, and when I read Hallmark cards with greetings such as ‘true love does not have a happy ending, true love has not ending’. Why oh why can’t I be in a relationship with Iggy, aka My One True Love and send him those Hallmark cards? And I think such things as ‘no woman will ever love him as much as I love him.’ I even feel a sense of grief and loss, as though someone has just died, when I think that it’s almost a certainty that I will never have his kids.

These romantic illusions such as ‘getting’ one’s true love can motivate us to stay in the love-less desert where we are always looking ahead, sustained by the mirage of ‘getting’ one’s first love in the future. But for many of us, it stays a mirage, an illusion with no reality.

God bless you Mia, God bless your healthy attraction for Ozzie (I’d better call him Oscar, I’ll leave it to you to call him ‘Ozzie’), and God bless your many talents, and lovely personality,

Phil.