There Are Many Breeds of Men: Hot and Spicy with a Little Fear but a Bird Can Always Fly from the Dark to the Light

By Josephine-de-France MSC MAPM

Writing a book is an amazing reward, and I personally found it quite therapeutic, but at first, it was blooming difficult to start writing. Getting started was hard, but I thought of it like a striptease as in, the first sentence ought to make you feel compelled to read the next and so on, so much so that when you finish the first page, you ought to feel like nothing short of a house on fire will stop you from turning to the second page and so on.

However, once I managed to start, I found it difficult to stop. I was carried away, and I kept amending and could not let go or leave the words alone. Like a roller coaster, life has many ups and downs; however, with true pain and inner strength through travelling the journey, you must remain determined to move towards the light on this roller coaster of life that never stops.

So I take you through my journey of that roller-coaster life, moving from the dark with the Sloth, to the retreat with my Rock Bunny, through my soul with the Tiger, to a date and a night with a band and a bunch of flowers, even though I may be referred to as old, fat, and ugly. Then you will see my move across fear with the Hyena, my visit with the Parasite, and finally, at last, my transition towards the light with my Meerkat. Once there at the end of my journey, I reflect upon myself and my own presence and being, and then I move on to question myself. What am I? Am I the Chameleon, the Black Panther, or just your regular everyday Swan, whos a little larger than most birds?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Oct 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491879719

Josephine-de-France MSC MAPM

Josephine-de-France is a senior project manager specialising in information technology. She is a mother of three – a son and two daughters – so she feels she has contributed to the human population. Josephine loves walking by the lakeside, plays a tune or two on the guitar, rode the saddle on both a horse and a motorbike through the British Isles, and has enjoyed sailing across the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. Actually, this girl enjoys just about anything that leads to having fun or provides a challenge to stretch her. This is the first time she has written a book, so go easy on her, but she says she has found writing this book to be fun and also therapeutic in a way that she could never have imagined.

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© 2013 by Josephine-de-France MSC MAPM. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/03/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7970-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-7971-9 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1       The Dark

Chapter 2       The Retreat

Chapter 3       The Soul

Chapter 4       The Date, a Band, and a Bunch of Flowers

Chapter 5       The Fear

Chapter 6       The Visit

Chapter 7       The Light

Chapter 8       The Reflection

Conclusion

About the Author

About the Book

Introduction

I explore the fact that there are many different breeds of men, scenarios, and priorities, allowing multiple permutations which can lead to barriers preventing the building up of confidence within a relationship. I learnt this by always reviewing and looking to control and monitor a relationship. This led me to realise that such barriers can be unhealthy and very dangerous, resulting in a high and painful cost to both parties. I felt that I really needed to create some common goals, reduce friction, and be more collaborative and resist negative confrontation. I knew I would have to compromise and become more accommodating to smooth the way ahead, but knowing this and acting on it were two very different things. I needed to come to terms with the fact that competing in a forceful way could create the perception of avoidance, leading to the disastrous outcome of withdrawal.

So what is the answer? I simply don’t know, as it just isn’t clear-cut at all. There are many ways I could execute a relationship with the aim of reaching a common agreement with someone. Do I think deeply and go for casual analysis versus resolution at every hurdle, or do I just create a list of outstanding actions, showing all the discrepancies in the relationship? What a dilemma. So here I go; let’s start at the very beginning, and I will try to explain.

I began by taking a look at the different phases in the full cycle of life relationships from all angles, from the initial, to analysing, to establishing, to acting, and, of course, to learning from the mistakes I have made. It also includes all relationships with the different breeds of men, especially not forgetting the biggest relationship of all—my relationship with myself. I was reflective through the generations of life, one generation being my parents’, a second being mine, and lastly, but by no means least, the generation of my children. As I moved forward, I slowly began to feel that I like my generation the best. If this turns out to be the last phase of my life, then I would certainly feel that my generation was the best.

It was really difficult when I started aligning my relationship and thoughts to myself versus aligning them with the thoughts of others. Moving forward from initiating the start of a relationship and linking up, I then developed my requirements and worked out what’s important: age, looks, financial stability, interests, or just a simple style of living. Once I had some idea about these things, I was able to begin to construct a relationship by joining and performing together with another. As I moved along, I constantly tested the relationships I had by looking at the acceptance and readiness of each party. I then took this through to deployment and worked out whether I could actually tailor the results. I found myself wondering, What if I cannot tailor? What if I cannot accept? What if I cannot see a way forward so I can be in a position to accept? I had to realise that if a relationship was incomplete, I needed to be brave and reach closure. In other words, I needed to be able to link, lock, and bind together with the other party so tightly that nothing could come between us. To achieve a bond like this, I needed to be prepared to put some work into my relationships and then sit back and allow the sequence of events to take place.

I found that it was sometimes best not to be too prescriptive and not to look to acquire the perfect relationship. It really was a balance of being deliberately consistent (leading to being too boring) and being too exciting and unique (which identifies that significant changes are required which must be translated into action). The conclusion is a very transient endeavour that cannot be properly enacted and maintained.

So how do I appraise and measure a high-performing relationship considering the roles and activities I perform and drive change through to stabilise to the heights of happiness? If I were more present in my life and a lot less judgemental, would everything be better? If so, why didn’t this occur to me before? Sometimes such ideas are best left alone, as they are hardly ever going to gain sustained traction. It might be a good thing to be less judgemental, as I wouldn’t get very far on just an idea alone. In fact, I thought that might just make me feel more inadequate or actually out of control. I began to feel that for a relationship to be effective, it would require an embraced engagement on the part of either party or indeed both parties; that this would be the best solution to derive contentment within a relationship.

A strong commitment is more than just a good idea that seems right at the time. It is more a cultivated practice—one that becomes clearer and deepens over time. I found that it was most beneficial when I could show commitment to myself and to the other person in the relationship, creating the strength to be disciplined whilst still enjoying myself and having some fun. The stakes were just really too high, and I felt ultimately that the quality of a relationship could feed into the quality of my very own life. I felt that if I could build a trustworthy partnership, then it could provide the strength for me and both of us together to be able to deal with whatever arose.

In this increasingly fast-paced and fraught world I am still living in, it almost felt that it was extremely important to be conscious of my own health and sanity. Sometimes I just had to be plain selfish and brave to radically break my current bad habits and open up to change a circle of a lifetime and evolve my own being into the new me. This is easy to say but harder to do, and ultimately it means putting trust, faith, and a great inner belief in the most important person of my life now: the very selfish me!

Hence it is not about how I am going to end up and crumble drastically down in a crash-and-burn scenario, but how I am going to rise up again and get back into the boxing ring of life. The one thing I was fighting against was depression, and I went to the doctors, but their answer was pills to wake up, pills to keep me going through the day, and pills to sleep at night. Oh no, not me! I was not going down that road. Hence, once I managed to pick myself up, I did not want to fall backward with an even bigger crash, because once you have been in that dark place, trust me, you never want to go back. What am I to do? What will my own life be? What will my own self develop into? Well now, let me tell you, because this is exactly how it all began.

It all started at Terminal 3 in the airport: sun lounges and a bottle of wine… and it was only nine o’clock in the morning. Business class all the way. This took me back thirty years to the back seat of the coach section on a school trip to the seaside, but this time I was forty plus on the front row in business class with my very own designer wash bag and real pyjamas. By the way, I have never used a blindfold before when flying, and I wasn’t going to start now. I was full of joyous and excited feelings, and my friend Alison was also very hyper. Then, when we arrived at our destination, I was shattered. We had not slept at all, but we certainly did giggle—so much so that it became very clear to me what the saying splitting your sides really means and how it really feels.

I started to reflect back on the journey and remembered there was champagne flowing all the way. All I kept hearing was Champagne, Madame?

Of course, I said as our personalised steward poured large glasses of a class year—very famous bubbles. The giggling got worse, and then the food came. Well, when we decided what we thought we would treat our bellies with from the long list of tempting delights, it ended up being one of everything on the menu. Of course we had silver cutlery, and there was even a silver salt and pepper pot too. In true girlie fashion, we ate in a pick-and-mix style, sharing with each other as we realised how the other half live their lives.

I started to reminisce and experience a bit of unrest, and I realised there was more to life than men, even though there are many different breeds and I am just not sure there is one breed out there for me. So I started to get deep and think of life—yes, my life—and what it had become and what would come next.

Nothing happened—well, not just yet, anyway. When we arrived at our hotel, we received some toiletries in a designer bag. Plus lots of high-class toiletries in the five-star-plus hotel room. You know what I mean, girls, when I say my suitcase was heavier on my return home. Those bottles came in handy, and I still have some of them even today. I have never written a book before, and I really think my pronunciation and spelling are terrible, but when I started writing down my journey, I felt it was so therapeutic to keep on going and get it all down. Then I thought Oh, go on! Have the book published, dammit.

I was on the plane when it suddenly struck me that I was with the wrong man. He just didn’t love me; he never did love me, and he never will love me, ever—not in a million years. Coming to terms with all this and deciding what to do was like the turbulence I have experienced on a plane, but this was different, as what I was feeling was actually my life. My stomach spun around like a washing machine during the fast spin cycle, my head was like a pile of mashed potatoes, my heart was like melting marshmallows, and my arms and legs were like sticks of jelly. I asked myself whether this feeling was due to the champagne and high altitude or whether it was actually real. As time went on and the bubbly left my body, I knew this was reality, as the feelings and the fear just never left me.

I try to explain the start of my journey in chapter one; however, at the time when I started to write all this down, I never thought for a moment that I would continue to write and not be able to put the pen down, thinking that there is no one anywhere—not just in the world but in the universe as well—that could prise my fingers away from my newfound friend the pen. As my journey developed and continued on, I really just couldn’t stop. What happened next was something I could have never ever imagined.

In taking you through my journey of troubled waters, I will walk you through the different phases of relationships in which I began to discover certain characteristics of the many breeds of men and how I related this to their behaviours. I will guide you through the way we humans easily start to run on autopilot as compared to being in a conscious and very aware state of mind, realising we are so clearly in the dark. Plus this is where I will introduce you to the Sloth. Then I will move on to where I was being overanalytical, then to where I became very sensitive to the point of retreat, where I met the Rock Bunny, who helped me to be strong and led me to make what I later realised was one of the biggest decisions of my life. I then go on to where I strove for acceptance and where a moment of passion with the Tiger put fire in my soul to take me to hidden depths and let me see a glimmer of light, albeit for just a few seconds.

In the following pages, I go through my mind, from the time the Sloth told me I was old, fat, and ugly and no one would want me, to the time I moved into a position on a date, spend the whole night with a band, and then received a bunch of flowers from another man. This began to teach me how to see and feel the difference between the thoughts which are real versus the mental events. Even though I didn’t realise it at the first moment it started to take place, I know now that I must never ever be taken in by the Weasel