Romantically Challenged

by Sami Lukis

  ‘He knows you’re not a gold digger, Sam.’

  ‘He knows you could pay your own way.’

  ‘For the love of god, please just go and have hot sex with your gorgeous boyfriend in a stunning resort in Mexico. At least do it so we can all live vicariously through you!’

  And so, for the first time in my life, I broke through that wall of pride and independence I’d been steadily building over the last forty years and I allowed myself to be spoiled by my man. Elaborately, magnificently, luxuriously, splendidly, spoiled.

  We stayed at the most exclusive resort in Cabo San Lucas, the place where paparazzi snap pics of Jen Aniston and Courteney Cox chilling on their BFF getaways all the time. This place was off the charts ah-may-zing. The sand was pure white and the water was aqua blue and our spectacular oceanfront villa came with three private butlers, available at our beck and call twenty-four seven. I mean, who the fuck needs three butlers? On holiday! Who even needs two? Ridic, right?

  I didn’t argue when he organised a sexy speedboat to zip us around the crystal-clear waters off Cabo. I didn’t flinch when he popped open a bottle of champers at lunch. I didn’t resist when he booked me in for a three-hour spa treatment. I’ll stop now, because it’s seriously nauseating. But you get the picture, right? It was pure heaven (with the best guacamole ever!).

  The holiday hit a snag when Mr Money Bags arranged a romantic private bonfire for us on the beach and presented me with a small blue box. Tied up with a perfect white ribbon. My heart stopped momentarily as I mentally prepared myself for things to get super awkward. I wasn’t ready to marry the guy. We hadn’t even said the ‘L’ word yet.

  (Inside voice: ‘Please don’t get down on one knee. Please don’t get down on one knee!’)

  As I tentatively opened the box, I was blinded by the sparkle of diamonds. A plethora of spectacular, shiny, brilliant diamonds. Now I really did feel like Pretty Woman. It was a drop-dead gorgeous Tiffany & Co diamond bracelet. (No ring – phew!)

  Ordinarily I would go all deliriously bizonkers at the sight of a Tiffany & Co diamond anything. But not this time. I’d already agreed to the all-expenses-paid lavish overseas holiday. Diamonds were not in the brochure.

  I tried to explain to him (again) that I really didn’t care about the material things he could give me. I was more interested in the things money can’t buy, like honesty, loyalty, manners and respect. And if our relationship had any hope of reaching the next level, he needed to show me the real him, and not just the enchanting lifestyle and all the pretty sparkly things he could so clearly provide.

  He assured me, again, that he wasn’t trying to buy my affection. He just enjoyed spoiling me. Because he could. And he looked so sincere and vulnerable when he said it.

  That’s when I checked myself.

  Maybe I was already seeing the real him. Sure, my boyfriend was wealthy. But he also appeared to be kind and caring and fun and funny and outgoing and my friends all loved him. He always called when he said he would. He (or the driver) always turned up on time. He was safe. And dependable. And he never let me down. He was the kind of man I could fall in love with. Maybe he was the kind of man I should fall in love with.

  So I decided to stop sabotaging the relationship and punishing the guy because of his financial status. I put that divine diamond bracelet on my wrist and, I have to say, it was the most spectacular piece of jewellery I’ve ever worn. I felt pretty fabulous whenever I caught other women admiring my four carats from afar. You know how they say Tiffany diamonds shine brighter than any other? Well, it appears that’s absolutely correct.

  And just when I finally gave myself permission to nudge that chip off my shoulder and allow myself to fall in love with the guy, things turned to shitsville when we returned to Australia and the monster-in-law entered my life. And put her big fat fucking Louboutins in it.

  We’ve all heard horror stories about the in-laws from hell. There are even online forums dedicated to advice on how to deal with the worst ones.

  Stories about interfering in-laws also make great radio content, by the way. I had a listener call in once to proudly explain how he put his mother-in-law in her place by buying her a cemetery plot one year for Christmas. And when she asked him why he didn’t buy her anything for Christmas the following year, he told her, ‘Well, you still haven’t used the present I got you last year.’

  So naughty. (Also: hilarious!)

  I hadn’t even met my fella’s mother yet, but turns out she was very much alive and very much involved in her only son’s life. Every. Single. Aspect. Including his love life. She knew all about the weekly flower deliveries and the Chanel wallet and the sojourn on the seaplane and the shag-fest in Cabo. Oh, and let’s not forget the $30 000 Tiffany & Co diamond bracelet. And she didn’t like it.

  The dra-mah only came to light when a friend of mine ran into mother dearest and casually mentioned how thrilled she was about the budding relationship between her son and little old moi. Which is when the monster-in-law snapped and screamed, ‘That Sami Lukis! She’s a gold-digging whore!’

  Ummmmmmmm . . . Say what?

  My friend tried to explain that she was seriously barking up the wrong tree with the whole gold digger accusation. But I think she was already convinced that I was only dating her son so I could get my greasy little hands on his big fat bank account.

  OK, so I’ve been called plenty of disparaging names over the years. Having a public profile makes some people think they have the right to be as mean to you as they like. People make assumptions about me all the time. Mainly that I’m a blonde bimbo. But I don’t let it get to me. Sadly, it comes with the territory.

  The only label I can’t cop is ‘gold digger’. (Look, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with ‘whore’ either, to be honest. That was completely unnecessary, don’t you think?)

  I called my fella to relay the story and tell him how insulted I was but instead of apologising for his mother’s outburst, he defended her. He told me she was only protecting him. And that maybe she had a point, actually, because, come to think of it, I hadn’t really seemed that interested in him until he paid for the five-star trip to Mexico.

  Big mistake, buddy. Big. Huge.

  I had let him know from the very start that his outrageous generosity made me uncomfortable. And the one time I let my guard down and allowed him to spoil me, he used it against me. I couldn’t fucking believe it.

  If that was even a glimpse of what a future with him might look like, I wanted out. So I thanked him for showing me his true colours and for making it easy to break up with him. And I promptly returned the Tiffany bracelet and the Chanel wallet (still perfectly wrapped and untouched since the night he gave it to me).

  Of course I wondered afterwards if I overreacted. He was, mostly, pretty wonderful to me. And being single in your mid-forties can get a little lonely at times. Is a potential mother-in-law who doesn’t appear to respect me, and a boyfriend who won’t always have my back, a small price to pay for not being alone?

  Simple answer: no.

  Because that would mean doing the one thing I have steadfastly refused to do for the last thirty years. I would have to settle.

  And that? Well, I’d rather be alone. And buy my own damn guacamole.

  As a professional dater, I really should have mastered the art of breaking up. But, honestly, I don’t think I ever will.

  If we’ve only been dating for a few weeks (or sometimes months), my go-to method of indicating that I’m no longer interested in seeing you is to ‘ghost’ you. Yep, I’m the witch who just stops replying to your calls and texts. I am she who inexplicably disappears. I know it’s rude. It’s immature. And it’s downright selfish. As a reasonably intelligent, somewhat sensible adult person, I should know better.

  But it’s also, by far, the easiest option for someone who prefers to avoid awkward conversations and potential confrontations at all costs. I’m just going to go ahead and blame this hideous behaviour on the emotional scars f
rom an especially traumatic breakup with the first boyfriend I ever had sex with. We were each other’s ‘first’, so it was achingly passionate, crazy teenage love, but when I tried to break up with him, he threatened to drive himself off a cliff. Of course I couldn’t dump him. I was seventeen and terrified of feeling guilty about his death for the rest of my life. I tried calling it quits with him again when I thought he was stable enough to handle it, but he turned on the same emotional blackmail, so I ended up being held hostage in that relationship for a year longer than I wanted to be in it. When I finally decided to risk eternal guilt and dump him, he did not attempt any self-harm. Praise be.

  In an ideal world, when a relationship comes to an end, it would be lovely if you could both politely agree that it hasn’t worked out, accept that not every person who walks into your life is meant to be there till the end, close that chapter and move on. C’est la vie! You might even promise to stay friends, with cries of, ‘Catch up soon for a latte, babe,’ and double air kisses as you leave.

  Yeah, nah. In the real world, splitsville is just not that pretty.

  My serious relationships never end well. There’ll inevitably be floods of tears, amid a series of long, drawn-out, heart-wrenching debates over who’s right and who’s wrong. There’ll probably be raised voices, harsh words and some unsavoury name-calling as we each try to blame the other person for the failure of the relationship. If I find myself singing along (with gusto) afterwards to Beyoncé’s ‘Best Thing I Never Had’ then I know he’s to blame. And I feel infinitely better.

  Break ups can be all kinds of brutal. Comedian Steve Harvey’s ex-wife sued him for sixty million dollars when he opted out of their marriage. She said he ‘murdered her soul’. That’s a woman who loved her man so intensely, she ended up hating his goddamn guts. Now, while I do think sixty million bucks is a bit ridiculous, the whole ‘you murdered my soul’ schtick? Well, I kind of get it. The pain of a broken heart can absolutely feel like someone has pulverised your life force.

  But let me tell you something. You find yourself in an especially horrific hell when you break up with someone while you’re on holiday together. I should know. I’ve done it three times. Before Ze German in Port Douglas and mash-gate with the snoring carb-nazi in Austria, there was also Thailand.

  It was the last night of what had been an otherwise idyllic holiday on a tropical island with my boyfriend. After a few too many sunset cocktails at the beach bar, my tipsy, loose-lipped beau accidentally confirmed my suspicions that he’d cheated on me a few months earlier. There’s probably some wonderfully prophetic metaphor I could use here about the sun going down on my relationship in that moment blah, blah, blah, but the only way I can describe it was an overwhelming sense of relief. The relationship had been going downhill for a while, but I’d hung in there, clinging to the whole ‘I’d rather stay and argue with you than be with anyone else’ messed-up theory. That theory is not healthy, by the way.

  So the revelation that he’d been unfaithful was my ‘come to Jesus’ moment. And I knew I had to end it, right then and there, on that stunning beach in Phuket. Emotionally, I knew it was over. Logistically, it wasn’t so simple. We were twenty-four hours and 7000 kilometres from Australia.

  The journey home the next day was excruciating. We sat in stony, miserable, awkward silence the entire way. It wasn’t the flight from hell. It was the flight in hell. Crashing would have been less traumatic than having to sit next to my cheating ex for ten hours. I don’t recommend it.

  My all-time favourite breakup was the guy who managed an act of stealth revenge after I dumped him. We’d been together for about six months before I painfully accepted that he just wasn’t going to be my Mr Happily Ever After. A few months later I decided to use the gift voucher he’d given me for my last birthday for a weekend away at a beautiful golf resort just outside of Sydney. I was desperate for a mini-break at the time, and a golf weekend was just what I needed, so I called the resort to book it in. But when I quoted my voucher number over the phone, the receptionist said, ‘I’m sorry, Ms Lukis, that voucher has been refunded.’

  The little shit had called the resort to cancel my gift voucher and demand his money back after I dumped him. I guess nothing says ‘fuck you, bitch’ quite like reclaiming a gift voucher. Although that really is the gift that keeps on giving.

  I knew a girl who could walk into any bar, restaurant or party in Sydney, and be confident that she had slept with at least two men in that room.

  That’s a big call.

  It’s downright scary for most of us to run into one guy we’ve slept with. Anywhere. Anytime. So imagine knowing you’ll be coming face to face with at least two men who’ve seen your lady bits, pretty much anywhere you go? Heidi didn’t say it with a bragging-about-the-shagging, ‘notches on the bedpost’ kind of vibe. It was more matter-of-fact. Like she was just stating the obvious. And, from what I observed when I was with her, she wasn’t exaggerating.

  We would easily run into at least two former fornications on any given night in any restaurant in Bondi. We once walked into a friend’s engagement party and immediately identified three men she’d shagged. We went to the footy one afternoon and she pointed out two past lovers, who were both on the field, playing in the same team.

  Look, I think it’s a fair assessment that Heidi has been pretty active on the local dating scene. But I don’t want you to judge my friend. She’s a great girl. She’s funny, clever, outgoing. She’s sexy as hell and a natural flirt. Men love her. And she loves men. And she enjoys sex. Nothing wrong with that.

  Still, I think if I reached the point where I couldn’t go anywhere without having intimate knowledge of at least two penii in my immediate vicinity, I might start to wonder if I’d perhaps dated too many men?

  I was unexpectedly forced to ponder this very question when I experienced two ‘Heidi’ situations of my own.

  The first time it happened, I walked into the Four in Hand pub in Paddington and was immediately confronted by the fact that I had slept with three men in the room. Three! There was Skinny Harry, the guy I was meeting at the pub for our fourth date. (Yep, awkward.) There was Fat Harry. The guy I’d broken up with about six months earlier. Aha, same name, very different body shape. And there was the Eternal Student. The lovely guy I’d had a brief fling with a few years earlier. (My friends called him the Eternal Student because the guy was in his mid-30s but he was still studying. I think he was onto his third degree).

  And there it was. My sexual past colliding with my sexual present. In a cosy Sydney pub, on an otherwise lovely Sunday afternoon.

  If this had happened while I was out with the girls, we would have all laughed our tits off about it. They’d be like, ‘Three in the bush at the Four in Hand’, ‘Ha ha ha ha’, ‘Ménage à quatre, anyone?’, ‘There are three men in the front bar who’ve all seen your front bum’, and that kind of ridiculousness. But I didn’t have any of my girlfriends there for support. Because I was on a date.

  Of course I didn’t mention it to Skinny Harry. He didn’t need to know that he was in close proximity to two other men who’d been in my bed. I’m sure he didn’t think I was a virgin, but I’m guessing that’s not something a guy wants to hear from the woman he’s just started dating. I told myself I had nothing to be ashamed of anyway. I’d been in relationships with Fat Harry and the Eternal Student after all.

  But I couldn’t help wondering if it was some kind of sign, that I might be getting dangerously close to reaching my Sydney dating limit.

  I conveniently didn’t give it any more thought, until it happened to me again, a couple of years later. Only this time it happened in Aspen. The ski resort. In Colorado. USA. On the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

  I was enjoying a cheeky pinot grigio in my favourite après bar, when I spotted a guy I’d been on one date with in Sydney a couple of years earlier. It was the naughty surgeon who went out with me, even though (I later found out) he already had a girlfriend.

  There
are plenty of Aussies in Aspen during ski season, so I wasn’t at all shocked to see him there. But I had to do a double take when Neville No Pay walked into the same bar five minutes later – I’d only dated him a few months earlier. I knew he loved to ski but he’d never mentioned an imminent trip to Aspen. Strange. (Side note: it wasn’t lost on me that the guy couldn’t pay for one fucking rice paper roll the whole time we dated, but he could suddenly afford a trip to Aspen.)

  Okay, so here’s the freaky bit: Neville No Pay and the naughty surgeon didn’t know each other. But they both lived in the same Sydney suburb of Bronte. And I’d been on dates with both of them. And now they were both here, in the same bar as me, 14 000 kilometres from home, on the other side of the world. What a crazy coincidence! It might have been the pinot grigio talking, but I decided it must have some profound meaning. This time, the Universe was definitely trying to tell me something.

  Had I finally reached my official dating quota?

  Was I meant to give one (or both) of those guys a second chance?

  Should I consider moving to Bronte?

  The whole thing was pretty funny at the time. But the more I thought about it, the more it rattled me. And it forced me to face some home truths about all my years of dating.

  Most people remove themselves from the dating scene once they’ve met and settled down with their forever person, right? But what happens if, after decades of dating, you still haven’t found your person?

  Am I supposed to just keep dating, endlessly, until I die? Or at some point, will I be forced to conclude that there is no Mr Happily Ever After out there for me, throw in the towel and become one of those women who invite all my friends and family to a lavish celebration to watch me marry myself?

  (That would never happen, by the way. Even though furchild Lolli would be the cutest ring bearer ever.)

  After reading about my unfortunate dating disasters, you might agree that I have been exceptionally unlucky in love. Or maybe you’re thinking I don’t have a hope in hell of ever meeting Mr Right because I have unrealistic expectations about men and relationships.