The journalist Rosemary Mac Cabe’s first book, This Is Not About You appears – at least at first glance – to want to have it both ways. While the title addresses the men she has dated, warning them this book is not about them, the subtitle describes the book as “a menmoir”. I have a feeling Mac Cabe would not argue with the idea that she wants things both ways or at least that she wants to live on her own terms, as this memoir seems to be a reaction to having pandered to other people for far too long. She writes with appealing candour – which is perhaps why the book is dedicated “To my mum, who will hate this”.
Aside from a preface and epilogue, there is only one other chapter, Beginnings, that does not have the name of a man. All the other chapters, from Henry to Brandin, are named after the man she happened to be dating at the time. This is far from a rose-tinted view of romance – she describes losing her virginity as “a little like the time I’d had a verruca frozen off in the doctor’s surgery: uncomfortable, but I had entered into this willingly”. It is notable that even the first time she had sex she lied about enjoying it, as she says it was important to her not to hurt a man’s feelings.
Alongside these boyfriends and flings, Mac Cabe’s career – including writing for this newspaper – was developing but she was also coming to terms with her own mental health issues
This happens throughout the book. She repeatedly prioritises a man’s pleasure – both in and out of the bedroom – over her own. Horrifyingly, she goes home with a man, Frank, who has trouble sustaining his erection so that they had sex with some difficulty but she tries to compensate for this by “giving him three blow jobs throughout the night”. There is an earlier boyfriend, Dan, whom she whisks away to Paris to celebrate her birthday, but on the day he only wants to watch the rugby – a sport he has heretofore expressed little interest in. And worst of all is the boyfriend whom a doctor suggests has borderline personality disorder and undiagnosed bipolar disorder. This boyfriend frequently tells her she looks terrible, and tries to jog off “like a plumber who’d just finished fixing my U-bend” after the first time they sleep together.
Alongside these boyfriends and flings, Mac Cabe’s career – including writing for this newspaper – is developing but she is also coming to terms with her own mental health issues. This is where the book becomes somewhat opaque, and although depression never needs to be justified, the reader is left somewhat in the dark as to why Mac Cabe has become depressed or how the depression manifests itself, aside from her saying she is “on and off medication, in and out of therapy”. This is in stark contrast to all the self-exposing commentary she offers on blow jobs, orgasms and split condoms.
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We had sex maybe once a month. The constant rejection was soul-crushing, it felt like my ex didn’t even like me
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Mac Cabe is far from unreflective but is still baffled that anyone would choose to be single
It is also disturbing that, even as she discredits certain old-fashioned views such as the idea that if a man really likes you, he won’t sleep with you on a first date, there are others she appears to hold on to. She recounts, without apparent irony, that “the moment of orgasm is, for men, often the end, while for women it signifies a beginning”. This is offered up as an explanation of why she thinks a relationship will follow after she has slept with a particular man whereas he considers the matter to be over.
Mac Cabe is far from unreflective but is still baffled that anyone would choose to be single and argues against the idea that the way to find oneself is by being alone when she writes “I somehow managed to find myself – to learn who it is that I am, and what it is that I like – via a series of serious and semi-serious (though never casual) relationships”.
She is also at pains to unpick the idea of “the other woman”, reasoning “I’ve always wondered if the ‘other woman’ is having an affair, per se, or if it is just the man. If I am single, can it be an affair? Is just one person having the affair, and the other person having a relationship?”
Mac Cabe should ultimately be applauded for her openness and her account of her love life is never less than readable.
