They say six months is a kind of a milestone in a relationship. They say it’s a kind of a make-or-break thing. Well, that’s certainly proved to be the case for me.
It is six months exactly since I took the step of purchasing the very latest (fully-interactive) Version 6.1 Hitachi Fembot and I am afraid that I am now in the position of being able to say, without any danger of contradiction, that it just hasn’t worked out for me. It started out fine of course. These things always do. Everything was just perfect between us at the beginning – the only stress in my life back then in the ‘golden honeymoon’ period of our relationship was the stress of having to make the monthly payments, which were (and still are) considerable.
As I say, everything seemed wonderful for those first few months. I know people might say that I was looking at life through rose-tinted spectacles but I swear to God I was genuinely happy. Possibly for the first time ever in my life. And there was genuinely no sign of any problems between us. She was so attentive to me, so interested in everything I had to say, so considerate of my wishes. She laughed at my jokes, liked the same TV programs I did, wanted to hang out with me, didn’t put me down in front of other people. All the things you’d want in a proper relationship…
When we went out together I’d catch other guys giving her quick admiring glances when they thought I wasn’t looking. I’d feel their raw desire for her, their sick envy of me, and that would make me feel good. And she’d treat me right, she’d look at me in that way that let me know she admired me, respected me, approved of me. All of that kind of stuff. I was so happy back then, for those two months. I thought – naively, as I can now see – that my relationship problems were a thing of the past.
And then it all started to change. The relationship started to go the way all my relationships seem to go. Her attitude somehow altered – more and more frequently she was in bad humour with me, going into moods unpredictably, not talking to me, and that sort of thing. The atmosphere was more often than not strained between us. The conversation didn’t flow like it used to.
Then it slowly filtered through to me that she didn’t look up to me in the way that she used to. It was like she no longer respected me. She just wasn’t interested in me any more. I got the feeling that she was impatient with me, contemptuous even, but trying to hide it. I sensed that she was bored with me.
Of course she denied it when I confronted her about it. She said that she loved me and that she was happy in the relationship and all the rest of it, and that would satisfy me for a while. But then it would all start happening again and I’d notice her being sharp with me, making cutting comments and generally saying things about me that I found humiliating.
Things only got worse after that. It all started to go downhill. When we were out together she paid lots of attention when other guys said something, laughing and acting as if they were all so bloody marvellous, and then making a point of looking completely disinterested when I had something to say. She was all over other guys and completely cold to me and this – I need hardly say – made me feel terrible. She’d put me down in company, belittling me in front of my friends, and then they’d all be laughing at me. They’d be having a great old laugh. I didn’t know who to be angriest with – my so-called ‘girlfriend’ or my so-called ‘friends’.
It got so I didn’t want to go out with her any more. She flirted blatantly in front of me – it didn’t even matter who with, as far as I could tell. Any man would do, just so long as it wasn’t me. Any man was more interesting than me – I was only good for being the butt of her jokes, her cruel put-downs.
Towards the end I started to fear that she was being unfaithful to me. I eventually plucked up the courage to ask her outright if this were true. I felt a bit lame asking her this, to be honest. I mean, she was a fully-programmable Fembot for God’s sake, and here I was being suspicious that she was cheating on me! It wasn’t possible for her to go against her basic programming, as the owner’s manual explicitly stated. Loyalty was a given.
To my utter amazement, she never even bothered to deny it. “Why shouldn’t I see other people?” she replied coldly, “You don’t own me, you know.”
Later on of course it occurred to me that I did in fact own her – or at least I would do when I finished making the repayments – but I would have felt like a heel saying that to her. It would have been embarrassing to come out with it.
Two weeks after that she moved out for good. Just gathered up all her stuff one day and walked out, hardly saying a word to me in the process. Obviously she didn’t give a damn about how her treatment of me made me feel. What that did to my self-esteem. She couldn’t have cared less, as far as I could see.
So how did all this make me feel? Not too great, pretty obviously. Not too great at all. In fact to be perfectly frank about it the whole experience has left me feeling like a bit of a loser…
