Hello all!

This weekend there will be changes happening all over the blog as I implement the new design and layout, do a general tidy up, and resolve a few issues.

What does this mean?

Posting will resume as normal on Monday

It shouldn’t affect you being able to visit and comment

The blog will have a bit more of a portal feel but still maintain the sisterhood and intimate feel.

The forum issue of logging in will be resolved….but it will be members only once it is. This is to protect users and to make it more efficient. If you have already registered, whether it’s for the forum or for subscribing to posts, you won’t need to re-register. If for some reason you have any problems logging in, please email contact [@] baggagereclaim.co.uk (remove the brackets) and put technical issue in the subject.

I am going to start limiting comments on certain posts and diverting the conversation to the forum. Ladies, it’s fantastic that you leave so many comments on certain posts but the blog nor the actual individual pages where this is happening can’t cope with hundreds of comments. Where an ongoing discussion is taking place, you must use the forum. I have had to hide two posts with 1400 comments on them and I don’t want to have to do this again as they are a fantastic contribution to the blog so please stick to the posting guidelines which will go up over the weekend.

I will be correcting the notifications for the forum so that I can actually see what is going on!

There volume of posts is going to start to increase over the next few weeks over a variety of subjects.

And now to answer the burning question of Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl

It will be available to buy as one book (all parts 1,2, 3) together as a paperback from July 1st. Look out for further details from the beginning of June!

Have a great weekend

NML x

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

1&1 have botched up an update on the server for this blog and as a result it has been bringing up a series of errors for the past few hours.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused and I should hopefully get this rectified shortly

NML

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Christina asks: “Are women supposed to offer to pay for first dates? I have just had this guy that I went on a date with tell me that even though he ‘liked’ me, because I didn’t offer to pay, he doesn’t think that it ‘bodes well for our future’! I was very taken aback as he showed no signs of annoyance at the time and he even tried to invite himself in!

I don’t think what I did was so wrong. He asked me on the date. It’s not like I made him take me to a place with an extortionately priced menu. I don’t deny that I could more than afford to pay but hell, it was our first date. If he hadn’t jumped the gun and gone to a second, I would have offered to go dutch or even pay.

I don’t care about him but I don’t want to find myself in this situation again. Am I in the wrong? Have I missed something?”

Christina, the only thing you have missed is the opportunity to be with an assclown, which means you haven’t missed anything at all!

You have actually got lucky because he has shown you who he really is which will spare you another moment of indulging him.

Controversial as this may be for me to say it, he asked you out, he pays. This is a lame, cheap trick on his part and there is one particular thing about this that makes him look cheap…and nasty…

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Leila asks “I read your site often enough to know that you have some pretty strong views on men that take more than they put out which is why I’m writing to you.

I’ve been with my guy for a couple of years. In the beginning, man he could not get enough of me. He chased and chased me and the sex was off the chains for the first few months. And then he kinda went a bit cold on me…or should I say ‘limp’ and since about five or six months into the relationship, I am lucky if we have sex more than once a month and when we do, there is a lack of effort or feeling from him. I don’t know where the man I met has gone to but he’s not with me when we have sex because it’s pretty bad. Initially I thought maybe I had done something wrong or he’d gotten too used to me so I pulled out the stops with the lingerie, massage oil, and I even stepped out of my zone and put on some porn. Zip. He hardly touches me and he NEVER reciprocates oral sex! If I try to talk to him about it he just clamps up or tells me to ‘leave things be’.

Thing is, I do love him but I don’t know how much longer I can do this for and I don’t know if he’ll ever be the man I met again. He won’t go for counselling, he won’t discuss it, he won’t do anything. I’m sure he’s avoiding me because we don’t go out as much anymore (we don’t live together) and I’ve even wondered if he’s cheating???? He doesn’t even say he loves me anymore!

I don’t know if it’s me or if he’s just not that into sex. What do I do?”

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Rena asks “NML, I’ve recently met this really great guy - he’s gorgeous, sexy, funny, and I feel excited around him. I’ve been bumping into him for a while and we always flirt like crazy but it never seems to go anywhere. I don’t think he has a girlfriend but he does seem to flirt and pull back a little. He’s never actually asked me out. Some of my friends were saying he’s a playa but I think they might be being a bit hard on him as they don’t want me to get hurt. I decided to ask around with his friends and they say they think he just broke up with someone. I have read some of your posts before and you say we shouldn’t mess with guys who are just out of a relationship but I just know he’s interested! What should I do? Should I make a move on him? He might be shy or something!”

Rena…I don’t deal in a fluffiness so I have to tell it to you like it is. Be very careful of making excuses for a mans behaviour, especially one that you don’t actually know very well.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In part one I talked about why excess emotional baggage is a recipe for overloading the emotional plane and in part two I show you why it is so damaging and give you a way to access whether you are ‘overweight’ in the baggage department…..This is another excerpt from the soon to be published Mr Unavailable & the Fallback Girl….

“Basic human interaction between people is based on acceptance and rejection which means that when a guy displays an unacceptable behaviour for the first time, at that point we have the choice to either accept or reject it. If we accept it, he will assume that it is OK and continue, and you are essentially opening the floodgates. If you reject it, he has the option to play by your rules or walk away. Some guys will try the behaviour again, but repeated rejection of behaviour sets a tone, just as much as repeated acceptance. With the first, it will become apparent to both of you that something needs to change or it can’t work, whereas the latter says ‘I’m a pushover’.

Look at the capacity to accept ‘baggage’ in relationships as if we have a check-in desk at an airline.

Every passenger has hand baggage (maximum 10kg) and let’s say that they’re allowed to check in one additional piece of baggage that must not weigh more than 20kg.

There is no ‘excess baggage’ option which means the combined weight must not exceed 30kg. If you are overweight, in order for the baggage to board the relationship plane, something needs to be removed from the case!

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In another little excerpt from Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl Book Two, I talk about adding more baggage onto your already overflowing load….

I doubt that there is anyone on this earth that can claim to have no emotional baggage, but there’s baggage…and there’s BAGGAGE! Not only do you love men that scream “Help me!” or “I’m really f*cked up!” but you love letting these men put their baggage ahead of you. So when he has a girlfriend, a wife, a gazillion kids, a babymother, an ex girlfriend that he is still secretly or even openly pining for, something in your brain goes “Ping!” and you’re all over him like a rash. When men put us down their list of priorities, it caters to that voice that follows millions of women with “You’re not good enough” and you then make it your vocation to get him to prove that you are good enough by moving you up the chain and throwing off some of his baggage.

The trouble with taking on men with baggage is that you go into overload mode because you are already carrying far too much baggage of your own. However his baggage detracts from your baggage so you don’t have to look too closely at yourself, but baggage does attract baggage. It doesn’t have to be like for like but you have to have some issues of your own to be willing to take on a crash landing waiting to happen…

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

In another excerpt from Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl: Book Two (I promise to explain the when’s, how’s and the delay), I explore the all too familiar “daddy feeling” - Basing many of your relationships and dating choices on unresolved issues and beliefs that derive from your relationship (or lack thereof) with your father and unknowingly creating a familiar comfortable (yet still uncomfortable) feeling in your adult relationships.

“With parental relationships, it can all be about setting the tone. You may or may not have a good relationship with your mother, but your chances of having a bad relationship with yourself and future partners, further increases with a dubious interaction with your own father or strong male figure.

The pattern of systematically being involved with emotionally unavailable men can be deep rooted due to patterns that we have learnt in our childhood. It doesn’t have to be an absentee father or a ‘bad’ father; it may just be that the significant male figure in our life didn’t express his emotions or made you work hard for his attentions and affections, and for all intents and purposes, he was emotionally unavailable.

It’s called going after what you know.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This morning I checked the Femail website to see if an article that was being written about women who use the internet to write about their exes and relationships had been published. I was shocked when I read the this:

“Don’t get mad, get E-VENGE!”

In the Daily Mail newspaper, it even adds

“It’s the new mantra for women using the internet to take revenge on cheating men!”

I was shocked to read this headline and what unfolds is a total misrepresentation of me with a lot of inaccuracies and is particularly alarming because I said that I didn’t want to be part of some ‘revenge’ feature’.

I took part in the feature to highlight how my experience and sharing my insights about dating and relationships, and specifically emotionally unavailable men has helped thousands of women, and instead, I’ve been summed up as a woman who is getting revenge on her cheating ex fiance! It was an opportunity to promote my site and ebook which I was promised and they failed to do!

Let me ask you something - Did any of you even know that I had my ex fiance that cheated!? For someone who is supposed to be taking revenge, I didn’t do a very good job of it, but I’ll let you draw your own conclusions!

Over at Dollymix, you can read the lowdown on what really happened and I hope that you will all agree that this blog is about empowering you, not taking out revenge! You can also read the article over at Femail - I’ll let you draw your own conclusion!

Note that they don’t seem to be publishing comments - I’ve had a few people email me to say that they’ve commented but they seem to be holding them back…

Your thoughts?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

This is an excerpt from…Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl Book Two. Yes it has been delayed a bit…more on that very soon but here is an excerpt from the chapter ‘Betting on Potential’ - one of the recurrent destructive behaviours that keep Fallback Girls rooted in dubious relationships…

“Potential is something that should be derived from the promise of actual actions that have already occurred, not the blinkered fairy tale in your head. Potential is about the potential of the relationship, NOT the potential of what the guy could be if only x, y, and z were to occur. Here is the difference:

You should see potential in a relationship that has the positive hallmarks of a relationship with direction. This normally occurs because both parties are getting to know each other, there is consistency, there is no ambiguity, there is communication of feelings, and both parties have both their feet in the relationship.

[Read more →]

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!