Why do I do it??????

Buy the Mail on Sunday that is.

I rarely buy any newspapers these days, I get my news from the net or the 24 hour news channels. I'm less and less interested in 'celebrity' gossip, unless it comes from the PopBitch mailout, so tabloids hold no interest for me.

Anyway yesterday, I was a bit early for the acupuncture session so I popped over to the local shop and picked up the three papers I buy with anything like regularity, Sunday Times, MoS, and the News of the World. I figure that gets me the widest viewpoint of what's going on in the world.

One of the regular features in You Magazine is a column by Liz Jones. She used to style herself as an upmarket Bridget Jones type, then four years ago she found someone to marry her. Happy ever after you'd think? Well no, cos for the last four years she has divulged his every shortcoming - affairs, never cleans the house, and a lack of enthusiasm for anything other than his own wants and need - and seems to expect us to feel sorry for her or admire her. Gawd knows what she expects.

He's never worked from what I can tell so she's kept him while he wrote his book about marrying older women and sponging off them whilst decimating their self-esteem, a guide-book for other wankers it seems. She's thrown him out and taken him back, she spends thousands on beauty treatments in a futile attempt to make him fancy her, and she humiliates herself and her marriage in a national newspaper supplement every week.

Her reason for putting up with all this crap is that she 'loves him'. I don't doubt she does, but I would say he doesn't really like her all that much, let alone love her. Mind you why would he? She doesn't love herself much does she?

Every time I read her column I get so worked up, if this was a friend of mine I would slap her repeatedly till she saw sense, as would any of my friends if I was behaving as pathetically as she is. Doesn't Ms Jones have any friends who give a shit about her?

Amongst my female friends there are those who are married with kids, others in long term relationships, another who's a serial monogamist/eternal optimist, declaring each man she finds on the internet to be 'The One' - I like her positivity, one of these days one of em will be The One. Then there's me and my mate T. We are both attractive women, we both have great careers and gorgeous homes, money in the bank, we're great cooks, incredible shags and have fairly decent self-esteem. We are both in our 40's tho neither of us look it, and we are both single.

Why?

Its not like we can't get a man, we've both had brilliant relationships in the past, some lasting longer than two weeks! We've both found true love only for it to go awry, but we've both picked ourselves up and gotten back on the dating circuit. Then we both stopped.

For me, the last 19 months of celibacy coincided with me discovering Buddhism, and a burning desire to deal with all the issues from my childhood, the last thing I needed was a man coming into my life and confusing everything. T has gone through a similar period of re-evaluation, working out what really matters in her life and launching a new business.

Outside of our friendship we move in pretty different circles, yet all of our friends express shock that we are single.

'Why hasn't someone snapped you up? You're a great catch' they say. And we both agree, we are bloody good catches, few hang-ups, no kids or pets, careers, looks, money, great personalities, you name it we got it going on...well apart from pert tits but then as I said we are in our 40's.

We were discussing it the other night and T mentioned that someone told her she was too fussy. That's something I hear a lot too. When did being choosy become a bad thing?

Yes I would love to meet someone I could share part or all of my life with, but not at any price. I want someone who is capable of loving and respecting me at least as much as I love and respect myself. Is that being fussy?

The reality is, neither of us are that fussy. I've dated every man who ever asked me out, what's fussy about that? What I haven't done tho is put up with any crap cos I was too scared to be alone. I can honestly say that the only time in my life that I ever felt really lonely was while my then partner was sitting in the other room watching tv.

And if we are fussy, what's the alternative? To marry someone who sees us as a mother/provider of cash? Someone who will knock our self confidence a little every day until we start to believe we are lucky that they deign to let us do their washing and keep them in designer clothes?

The alternative is to be someone like Liz Jones (or at least the character she portrays in her column) and to be really honest If that's the alternative I'd rather be single till I die!

I don't need that validation, I don't feel that I need another person to make my life complete. It would be great to find someone to hang out with, but if I never do, its not the end of the world to me.