For once, these men are the objects; I am the subject. Me, me, me.

A memoir about dating and romance, or lack thereof – from one terrible man to the next.

Thanks

With thanks to Grace Pilkington, Senior Publicist, for the invitation to be a part of this glorious BlogTour from READ MEDIA.

Introduction

It is with great delight that I am able to bring you a wonderful extract from This is Not About You: A Menmoir by Rosemary Mac Cabe.

Extract

Scott

Some relationships are harder to write about than others, for reasons that seem obvious and, sometimes, for reasons that seem less obvious. The obvious reason is that this relationship lasted half a decade. I spent five years thinking this was the man I would spend my life with, that this was the man I would make a family with.

The other reasons are that I’m not really sure, now, looking back, what brought us together
– nor am I sure what drove us apart. It feels like there was very little driving us in either direction, except, perhaps, sheer force of will.

I met Scott when I was twenty-seven; he was twenty-three, although he told me he was twenty-four. We both started out that relationship lying – him about his age, and me about the time that had elapsed between my last relationship and this one, about the days I’d spent single, mourning the end of a relationship that had given me a best friend, a house, a dog and a collection of bespoke artworks modelled after my own face.

It wasn’t so much a lie as it was my attempt to fudge the truth. We’d been broken up ‘for a while’, I told him, which was true, in a way, if ‘a while’ could be taken to mean two weeks and not, say, the twelve I was hoping he’d assumed it meant.

I was still living with Liam at the time, sleeping on the couch in our shared house because he had a bad back and had to sleep in the king- sized bed. My friend Ciara was renting our spare room, but I couldn’t share with her because she had a new boyfriend and he was staying over a lot.

I was on my first night out since the breakup. Friends of friends were having Friday night drinks of a celebratory kind – a birthday, perhaps, or an engagement – in a newly opened five-star hotel near my house. We swigged Prosecco and listened to a Ladies’ Night playlist on Spotify while we got ready.

I have photographs of that night – me, wearing Ciara’s dress, with backcombed hair and fuchsia lipstick; the gals, posing for selfies like we used to when we cared about taking photographs with other people, and not just of ourselves. (Now, my phone memory is three-quarters full of photographs of myself, taken from a variety of angles, in different lighting. The other quarter is my son – I’m not entirely self- obsessed.)

Clare and I – we’ve been friends since meeting, at the age of four, in the Irish-language playschool my mother ran – had recently taken a course in burlesque. I had lied to everyone I knew, and myself, I suppose, in telling them that it was meant to be a great workout. To be honest, it was because I had just seen the film Burlesque, starring Cher and Christina Aguilera (in a terrible wig), and I just wanted to be sexy, like a cat, but wearing lingerie and high heels. I did learn to remove a pair of silk gloves with my teeth, but anything more than that was, I am sad to report, beyond me.

The studio was mirrored, which added insult to injury. Without them, I think, I could happily have shimmied and sashayed away, in the mistaken belief that I was doing ‘it’ right – being sexy, walking seductively and in time to the music – but there was no avoiding the glare of my reflection. Next to a half-dozen other women walking the same walk, shimmying the same shimmy, my distinct lack of grace was all too apparent.

As it turns out, all I needed was a few stiff drinks, because after a scattering of Proseccos and several expensive gin and tonics, quaffed on the rooftop of the latest ‘place to be’, Clare and I began to show off our newly acquired skills. We walked in tandem, and I was right – without the mirrors to shame me with a vision of my true self, I was a goddess. I was Julianne Hough, or (a much younger) Cher, removing an invisible glove to the beat of the music with glistening, pearly-white teeth.

Scott approached with a friend – asking, I think, what it was that we were doing. At the time I thought they were asking in admiration, in awe. ‘Where did you learn to do such a thing?!’ I imagined them asking us. The reality was, I’m sure, slightly more pedestrian. ‘What are you doing ?!’ could be interpreted as admiring, bemused or, I dread to think, horrified.

What a great extract from This is Not About You by Rosemary Mac Cabe. Rosemary Mac Cabe obviously has a good sense of humour and isn’t, at least in hindsight, afraid to be the one on the receiving end of it!

BlogTour

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Book blurb

For once, these men are the objects; I am the subject. Me, me, me.

Rosemary Mac Cabe was always a serial monogamist – never happier than when she was in a relationship or, at the very least, on the way to being in one. But in her desperate search for ‘the one’ – from first love to first lust, through a series of disappointments and the searing sting of heartbreak – she learned that finding love might mean losing herself along the way.

This Is Not About You is a life story in a series of love stories. About Henry, with the big nose and the lovely mum, with whom sex was like having a verruca frozen off in the doctor’s surgery: ‘uncomfortable, but I had entered into this willingly’. About Dan, with the goatee. About Luke, who gave her a split condom. About Francis, who was married…

But mostly, it’s about Rosemary, figuring out just how much she was willing to sacrifice for her happy ending.

Published: Unbound (6 July 2023) |ISBN-13 978-1800182431|304 pages

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Unbound

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Author: Rosemary Mac Cabe is a journalist and writer from Dublin, Ireland. She has written for publications including the Irish Times, Irish Independent, Irish Tatler, IMAGE, Irish Country Magazine, STELLAR and more. Her work was featured in the mental health anthology You, Me & Everyone We Know, published by Inspire Ireland. She lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with her husband, Brandin, and their sons, William, Finn and Atlas. This Is Not About You is her first book.