He's once, twice, three times a cheater....

This weekend was spent comforting one of my oldest friends who found out last week her boyfriend of five years has multiple mistresses - Tiger Woods style.

After a tearful phone call from her on Wednesday I booked the train home to Birmingham on Friday where I met Vicky... She has been living in Leeds with said boyfriend but is now back in Birmingham with family for the foreseeable future.

Not one mistress, not two but three. And those are just the current women, how many more must there have been during the five years they were together? And how did she find out about said women? She became suspicious from a message left on facebook, then hacked in to his email account to find the unfortunate truth. Better to know the sad truth than to live a happy lie I told her, but it offers little comfort at this stage.

How was her cheating spouse accumulating all the ladies? Is he some Brad Pitt stud I hear you wonder. Far from it. In fact I wish I could upload a photo of the oaf here just so you could all see how far he is from that description. But unlike him I am not so cruel. No he did not have women flocking to him left right and centre, he attained them via the method of Internet chat rooms and dating sites, of which there were many listed on his email account for my lovely friend to break her heart trawling through.

One such site was not even a dating site but some sort of sex meet up website apparently. Such a shame that men like him, and Tiger Woods for that matter throw away what they have. They clearly still want to be with their partners otherwise they would leave them and not have to sneak around with other women. But they seem to have a self destruct button which detonates everything good around them.

Letting her hair down on Saturday night seemed the way forward for Vicky so we set off to our favourite nightclub in Birmingham, Flares. Vicky and I have been dancing to the same 80s songs on the same dance floor in Flares since we were seventeen...before she met said scumbag and life was far more simple. Our biggest concern at the end of the night was where to get some food from on the way home.

It was a night of highs and lows, alcohol bringing out a range of emotions from this car crash of a relationship. Luckily at the end of the night G drove to pick us up, redeeming our view of men to some degree and offering the male perspective that yes he was an idiot and yes she could do better. And even though I've been her friend for 15 years I think it meant more coming from G, who she has only met a handful of times.

I'll keep you updated with Vicky's progression. After she has had a chance to grieve this relationship I plan to find her a far more deserving and worthwhile man.. I already have a few lined up in my mind...

Absence makes the heart...go shopping to fill the void!

A strange mix of emotions this weekend as my boyfriend, who I left behind in Birmingham, came down for the weekend to visit.

It feels comforting being with him, like coming home. It has been a long three weeks and many phone calls and texts since we last saw each other and I was thrilled when he turned up after work on Friday night.

My boyfriend, let's call him G, is an engineer back in Birmingham. He doesn't have much interest in moving to London. He is happy in the small town we both come from, Walsall in the West Midlands.

Still living on the road where we both grew up, and going to the same pubs every weekend with the same friends, he is content to be doing what he has been doing for the last 15 years.

I got bored and moved away, but my heart didn't move away from G, and now I hope his follows me to London.

We met during my final year of university - when I lived in Bournemouth, so we know what it is to commute for our relationship. But it was different when I was at uni living with housemates and wanting to go out every night with them. It was different when we were in the early stages of the relationship and happy to take things slowly.

Now, we are three years down the line and have lived together for two and a half of those, including a year in Thailand. It feels weird to be apart, still strange for him not to be the first person I see when I wake and the last when I fall asleep.

So this weekend I tried to show him the best of life in London in a none too subtle attempt to get him to reconsider a move. We did a spot of Christmas shopping on Oxford street where the Christmas market was in full flow. There was a carnival type atmosphere and as it grew dark around 4 o clock and the Christmas lights began to light up the street, it was the first time I have felt the festive spirit this year.

After a successful shopping trip (successful in so far as he bought me some good prezzies) we walked towards Trafalgar Square and stopped off at Planet Hollywood for dinner. Two hours, some food and a fair few cocktails later we dropped our shopping back at mine and were ready for a club, so we got the tube to Pasha in Victoria - never an easy feat in heels and feeling a little tipsy.

Pasha was a hit with G, exactly his kind of dance music, and the famous DJ re mixers Freemasons were there making a guest appearance. Personally, I could have done with a little more cheesy music and perhaps fewer queues at the bar. But then again this weekend was aimed at making G reconsider London as a possible home, and dancing the night away to the 60's Motown hits I love would certainly not have done the trick! Although not my first choice of music (or in fact many girls' - it seemed 80% men in there on Saturday?!) we stayed until they closed at 5am - and then considered visiting nightclub Ghost - which had been recommended by a man dancing wildly next to us at the bar. It apparently opens at 5am and stays open until midday Sunday.

We decided however that this was a little over ambitious for our drinking and exhaustion capabilities so we headed home to collapse into a deep sleep and relaxing hungover Sunday.

Saying goodbye to G on Sunday night was hard but I am keeping my fingers crossed that he comes back down this weekend. Well to be honest I'm keeping my fingers crossed he comes down to stay eventually but we won't push him on that subject too much just yet... a woman knows how to time these things for the maximum chance of success :-)

Wish me luck people! x x