The Spare

The Daily Mail had a hot newsflash (back in 2014).

HALF of women have a fall-back partner on standby who has always fancied them, in case their current relationship turns sour

 the back-up is likely to be an old friend who has always had feelings for the woman in question.

But other candidates are an ex-boyfriend or ex-husband, a colleague - or someone who they have met at the gym.

The survey of 1,000 women also found Plan B is also likely to be someone whom she has known for around seven years, who will be 'ready and waiting' because of 'unfinished business'.

Yes, this is a real, honest to Bast, true thing. Women, like men with spare Mag-Lites, tires and wrenches, often keep spare men. Ya know,  just in case, the main one shits the bed (so to speak).

No one likes to be thought of or, for that matter, know beyond doubt, that they’re the Plan B.

I knew a dude who had a wickedly complicated personal life. He was married with two teen kiddles. The marriage had long before gone all catawampus+. Harry and June didn’t fight. No. they just had fuck-all in common – they'd grown apart. Radically. He’d become utterly immersed in his job (for which he traveled extensively, meeting lots of new, different people all the time) and she’d become equally consumed by her religion of choice, Mormonism. Yep, clear up to the magic underwear level. They were trains on WAY different tracks.

Life at home was benign though. Ya know, a lot like the menigiomas in my head. They’re not cancerous. I won’t croak from them BUT at some point, if I don’t do something about them, they’re gonna fuck me up.

Harry was lonely and became more so every time he entered his wife’s very Mormon home. Eventually and unsurprisingly, he met another, single, woman and fell head over heels in love. They were having a brill affair – an epically blazing romance. It went on for five or six years. They both wanted to walk off into the sunset together BUT she wanted that soonly (after all, they’d been at it for a number of years) and he wanted to wait until his kids were, at least, out of the house and in college. Tension entered the previously magnificent passion-fest.

Penny began seeing other, not married, guys but continued to keep time with Harry. He figured that, in part, she was just trying to stay busy while waiting for Harry’s kids to grow up. Still, he knew that he had to be attentive and continue to lavish her with gifts and gushingly romantic-sexy poetry – i.e., keep up his A game. What he didn’t understand was that he’d become Plan B – the spare.

Eventually Penny met her forever guy and cut Harry loose but she waited until the very last moment – practically walking down the aisle with Plan A Man.

Harry was crying to me about Penny’s plans – he wanted to know how he could win her back. I hated like hell to tell him and certainly tried to be gentle but he had to know that he was Penny’s spare and had been for years. Their big, glorious relationship train had left the station the minute she started seeing other dudes.

I’ve often wondered if she did it on purpose – let Harry think he still had a chance. Why? So that he would experience what she had – being kept waiting, strung along, for years.