“The Jelly Baby thinks she’s pregnant.” Not what I was expecting!

“Ok, why does she think that?” I asked the contraceptive conscious carpenter.

“She’s been a bit crook in the morning.” The phrase ‘Sucks to be you’ sprang to mind. Only fifteen hours earlier he was confessing a realisation that his lover ‘doesn’t have a clue’.

“Pregnancy can do that to a girl. How long’s she been sick?”

“Just one day.”

Surely a 26 year old woman had more reason for scaring the living crap out of her man than that. “How late is she?” I queried, certain I would find sound foundation to the Jelly Baby’s pregnancy panic in the response.

 “She’s not.” (WHY?)

“Sore boobs or anything the like?”

“Nope.” (OH DEAR, WHY?)

“So she’s peed on a stick then?”

“Nope.” (For the love of sin, why?) “She’s going to the doctor today to get tested.” (Are some women this BLOODY ridiculous?)

What on earth would possess a woman, after nothing more than an upset stomach one morning to think, let alone tell her partner, that she was with child? It’s common knowledge that some unscrupulous women use pregnancy, the lack of it, the imagination of it, and just plain old faking it, to manipulate their man, or those they want to be THEIR man. I can only reason, many do it to gain the level of commitment they don’t think they’ll get any other way. Most, I fear, have just watched too many episodes of The Young and The Restless. Maybe it came from being raised around so many men, or having a mother that is far more mentally stable than myself, but I’ve always believed telling your fella he’s going to be a father when you’re not pretty dam sure is, to quote Jenifer Aniston, “Really uncool.”

Twice in my life I’ve thought it was possible, but not probable, that I could’ve been pregnant. One of those got me as far as counting little blue lines on a little white stick. Never did my partner have a clue. (Granted he was a corpse by then, but details shmetails.) Don’t mistake, my motives are entirely selfish and have less to do with protecting HIS dear heart and more with protecting MY relationship. There’s not much that will end an affair faster than, “When you take the onesy back can you pick me up some tampons?”. Previously experience, however, dictates that often I am far from the norm of female thought. A general consensus was needed before I could judge the Jelly Baby adequately so, I gathered the Princesses (aka. my friends) and posed the question, ‘when would you tell HIM if you thought you were (unplanned) pregnant?’ There was more variation than I had expected.

“If I was a week late,” said one.

“After the stick came back positive,” said another.

“Not until the doctor confirmed it,” said the three reserved royals. “I’d want the facts before I released that bombshell.”

“Five years after the abortion,” said the last. She was kidding… I think.

The inconsistency prompted me to call The Boys (aka. Men ranging in age from 23-45). Their answers were slightly more clustered. “Not until she’s sure.”

“When she doesn’t think, she knows.”

“After the doctor puts her on pre-natal vitamins.”

You get the idea.

“If she’s not my wife, never.” (There’s always one.)

I’d bet my Christian Louboutin red leather sling-backs The Jelly Baby isn’t pregnant. More likely she’d smelt the stink of the dump not far down the road and created a little drama to buy more time. One thing less certain is how any of us would actually react when faced with the turmoil of an unplanned pregnancy. We like to think we’d hold our own and our sanity, but until they’re tested no one can be sure. Besides, the Jelly Baby might surprise us all and actually be pregnant… of course, after that I’d be asking her to pick the lotto numbers for me. As for The Dirty Little Carpenter Boy, if this doesn’t slow the spreading of his wild oats, I don’t know what will.

“I love you”. Utter these three words when your partner doesn’t want to hear them and you’re booted. Don’t say them when he/she does and tears, drama, and the always deflating ‘where is this going’ conversation, are doomed to follow.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it right. Though, I can take consolation in the fact that neither has any of the men I’ve dated.

The first one told me mid-make-out. I disbelievingly returned, “Define ‘love’.”

The second chose the moment I was eating a Hot Dog on a park bench to declare his affections. “I love you.”

“No, you love the visual you’ve got going on in your head right now.”

The one I desperately needed to hear say it would simply give me a look and kiss the top of my head instead. So, I never said it either. (Perhaps the only regret I’ve managed to acquire in 27 years of life.)

Then there’s Norway (because I can’t pronounce his name without concentrating and he’s from…), who only says it when he’s been drinking, apologises for doing it at all, takes it back when he’s scared, and has now erased all memory of ever doing it entirely. “I never told you I love you!” he declared on the phone Friday night.

You know that game at carnivals where you put the ball in the clown’s gapping mouth as it slowly rotates? That was me, with a glass of Cab Sav instead of the pointy hat, and Norway had just won himself a fat, pink, elephant that smelt like sawdust.

“But you don’t want him to love you,” queried She Who Brought Another Bottle, aka Nikki and she was right. I’m not in love with my lover. Our relationship has the shelf life of tinned tomatoes. We’ll keep for a long time if let be, but we’re not forever. What we are is not for everyone, but it seems to work for us… at least from a distance. Add to this that most women would substitute the word ‘love’ when used by Norway, for ‘lust’, ‘infatuation’ and various other synonyms for ‘I really like shagging you’. I’ve never really cared if he said ‘I love you’ or not. If anything, him loving me would be entirely what I didn’t want. Why then did it bother me so much that he couldn’t remember saying it? I had gone from carnival clown to chump chip, scratching my head and trying not to let fur fall in my wine glass. What was I mad/livid/irate about?

Three days later, after checking for booby traps, Norway called. (A new pair of Marc Jacobs shoes, collected half price at the David Jones’ clearance, had probably helped more than the 72 hour cooling off period.) “I just don’t understand what you got so mad about,” he yodeled.

Truth be told, I still wasn’t sure right up until he asked the question. Then the words just sort fell (flew rather quickly in a pouty little child sort of way) out. “Do you really not remember telling me you love me all those times? … Don’t I count?” And there it was, less an issue of the heart and more one of the ego. “I don’t need you to love me. I don’t love you either, but I need you to remember bloody saying it!”

Twenty minutes later the call ended with two conclusions. Norway did remember saying it at least once… he’s just prefers not too. (I am not the only one with ego issues in this relationship). And secondly, I will no longer be taking his calls on nights he’s out drinking. As I hung up the phone I realised, he’d argued over telling me he loves me, but not over whether he felt it. I poured a glass of wine. It was a thought best drowned thoroughly. Even a chump chip could see that.