My 'ah ha' moment is not a positive one. What a surprise, I hear you all cry.
For 30-something years, I knew I was single because I was fat and ugly and weirdly, this gave me confidence. I knew that being fat and ugly made me invisible and that I could go where I wanted and no-one would see me, I joked that it was my 'cloak of invisibility' and I had mine before Harry Potter had even been thought of.
My 'ah ha' moment came about 7 years ago when I fell victim to a PUA student.
Despite just using me for fun, he did open my eyes and make me look at myself properly.
I realised that I wasn't the fattest woman out there.
I realised that I wasn't the worst looking woman out there.
But instead of this being a positive step it made me start wondering what it was that was so awful about me that I was still invisible to men.
I plucked up the courage to ask the cause of all this turmoil what was so wrong with me, but he just shrugged.
I turned inwards to try and answer this question. I stopped going out, not that I went out a lot before, after all, it was obviously an act of cruelty to impose this on the world.
I still don't know the answer.
Although if someone did appear to be taking an interest, I would probably just assume that they were also making fun of me.
For those of you who are unaware, PUA stands for Pick Up Artist. There are various online providers of PUA courses and they also arrange meet ups and parties, there are books and other materials available too, it is big business.
Not long after I became aware of these materials I happened to catch School For Scoundrels on the telly one Sunday afternoon, the original version with Terry-Thomas and Ian Carmichael, and I thought how similar it seemed.
As I understand it, it was originally thought up to help men attract women who were out of their league, after all, who doesn't want a beautiful partner? It also helped shy men who struggled to speak to women overcome their obstacles and live happily ever after.
All this is very commendable, I would certainly like to learn how to have enough confidence to speak to men outside of work/college.
However, it soon become a tool for amusement.
Men who had no problems in getting women, some of whom were actually in relationships already, would choose a woman in whom they had no interest whatsoever and then make them fall in love with them. All the while laughing at them with their friends, and even girlfriends or wives.
This is what happened to me. He had links to PUA sites all over his social media page but at the time I had no idea what this was so took little notice. He said all the right things, we seemed to have the same tastes in films, books and music.
We used to speak every day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Had he asked, I would have given up everything to be with him. As far as I was concerned, he was 'the one'. I know that at the time we were both working shifts, but I realise now that it should have been much easier to arrange meet ups.
All of a sudden, all references to PUA had been deleted from his profile, all the posts, videos, events, all gone, he had met the woman who was to become his long term partner. I don't know whether he used his techniques on her, but she seems to be able to forgive him anything, she still, 4 years later, seems to be as smitten as I had been.
Has anyone else had any experience of this?
