This, that... and the other

I have always thought women should come first.
Like when a ship is sinking and they are getting people into the lifeboats.

Perhaps it’s the way I have been brought up. I mean, we would be on the park – me and my mother – and I wanted to go on the swings. And just as I was about to climb up, a little girl arrived. And my mum might say: George, let the little girl go first. And, being a little gentleman, I would let her go on the swing. And I would stand there, basking in my mother’s approval but with a voice inside me screaming: you were there first – you should have made her wait. But I didn’t. I waited myself.

I think that has been the story of my life – putting the needs of others before my own. It has shaped my relationships with the opposite sex. Georgina, for example. In the first few years we were together I devoted myself to her well-being. Thinking, would she like this? Would she like that? Would she like the other?
She usually ended up liking the other.
And of course, I was basking in my mother’s approval – this time, the mother in my head.
And I was screaming deep inside. Just as I had been with the little girl on the swing. WHAT ABOUT ME? the voice demanded. I managed to keep it quiet – for a while. But at what cost!

Needless to say, it wasn’t just Georgina. There were the others too. They all came first – with a couple of exceptions. (They say it is the exception that proves the rule. I never understood that – until recently)

And now this ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’ thing. Do you think it is something that came about gradually because of this business of mine with women (plus, of course several other behaviour traits that caused me problems)? Or do you think I started off with the ‘disorder’ and that is WHY I behaved in the way I did? (I’ve just noticed I used the past tense there… now why, I wonder).

Anyway I’d like to talk a bit about this B.P.D. – as I shall refer to it from now on. That is, if you don’t mind. Share a few thoughts. That sort of thing.
Because, as you will appreciate, it does cast a different (rather pallid) light on things.

But not now. I have had a busy, not to say traumatic, day. So manyana it will have to be.