Rosemary Mac Cabe: My ‘menmoir’ was a necessary exorcism of the ghosts in my head

Rosemary Mac Cabe once had a Facebook folder of her exes on their wedding day, called “Photographs of men, with whom I have slept, at their weddings to other women”. This fascinating titbit does not make it into her new book, a “menmoir” as opposed to a memoir, but it tells you a lot about her dedication to forensic analysis of past romantic and sexual exploits. Mac Cabe, as they say, keeps receipts.

So look away now if you count yourself among one of the writer’s exes. Mac Cabe’s debut, This Is Not About You, is an exhaustive, entertaining, eye-opening trawl through her life’s most significant love (and lust) stories. Each chapter is dedicated to a different ex, some of them serious relationships, others casual dalliances, ranging from a few weeks to several years.

The book started out as a series of letters to each of the exes. “I was sort of therapising myself,” says the woman who has done a lot of therapy over the years. “I’m going to tell you all the things you did wrong and why you missed out. That’s how it started.” The letters evolved into first-person mini-essays where she puts each relationship and herself under the microscope.

Most, if not all, the names have been changed. We meet Henry who cheated on her when she was a teenager. Dan with the goatee who was into skydiving. Gary who dressed like a middle-aged banker. Ed who called to say he had chlamydia and she should probably get checked. They are not all terrible – Adam the college boyfriend is a sweetheart and Liam is even now one of her closest friends. The point is that Mac Cabe is someone who had, her therapist once noted, an intense desire to be in a relationship at all times and she often lost herself in them.

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But the book is not about Henry, Cian, Dan, Adam or Frank (or Liam, Shane, Scott, Johnny or Poncho). It’s about Mac Cabe, who says she “made and unmade” herself for the men in her life as a teenager in Kildare, and then later working in Dublin as a lifestyle journalist. It’s about how she “chose to present herself, on a platter, to so many, many men, many of whom would prove themselves entirely unworthy of me”. It’s about the bad behaviour she accepted because “I wanted them to love me”. “It’s not about the men,” says the writer and podcaster. “For once, these men are the objects; I am the subject. Me, me, me.”

Mac Cabe is speaking via Zoom from her home in Fort Wayne in America’s midwest, where, after all these awful men, she eventually found her ultimate happy ending. Her six-foot-six American husband Brandin is at work, her two stepsons are playing in another room in the house and her baby son Atlas is with the childminder. She’s wearing a Van Halen T-shirt and her arm has fresh tattoos. The plot twist of her life has surprised every one who knows her – including this writer who worked with her years ago in The Irish Times – and herself. “I’ve ended up surrounded by men,” she laughs.

Published by Unbound, the book was written with the financial support of friends, family and admirers of her writing who pledged various amounts to the publication in exchange for rewards. These vary from a signed copy to rewards like: “Tell Rosemary about your ex (in 50 words or less) and she’ll write you an ‘In Loving Memory’ card that will make you very glad that they’re just a memory!” or “Do you have some tough truths to tell an ex? Rosemary will write a bespoke email from you to them, outlining exactly what went wrong (and why it’s all their fault)”.

Mac Cabe does not come out well from many of the stories in her menmoir. Which of us would if we recounted the unvarnished truth of our teenage or 20-something romantic travails and errors? She is a serial monogamist but she steals boyfriends and is prone to stalking men on the internet. Time and again she ties herself in knots trying to be the kind of girlfriend her men will enjoy. She tries to impress them by pretending to be interested in Star Wars and beer. She sometimes has sex with men even though it wasn’t what she wanted. She has that affair with a married man. It is one of the strongest chapters in the book. It was the loneliest she ever felt in a relationship, and the experience turned her into a liar.

The book is deliberately messy. “It’s not a linear process. It’s snakes and ladders... I’ve learned so much about what I should accept from somebody, and, oh no, I’m accepting it again. So it was weirdly confronting to write about it... I was tempted at many points to make myself look better, as if I’d actually learned something and grown as a person, rather than ‘oh no, you’re still an idiot’ but it felt really important to leave those parts in.”

It’s kind of egotistical to say about your own writing but I did have younger women in mind as I was writing it. I feel like it will be helpful

She thought long and hard about including the chapter about one particular man. This was an unwanted sexual encounter, one of those experiences many women will recognise: “It’s hard even now, to think about all of this,” she writes. “I was kissing him, so that implies consent of some sort. But I did not consent, at least not verbally, to being undressed, to having sex. I did keep kissing him, and as he penetrated me, I thought, it’s easier to just let this happen than to keep saying no.”

On the one hand, I don’t want them to read it, but from an ego point of view, of course I want my parents to want to read my book

The book is funny, honest, insightful and painfully human. I tell her I will be recommending it to younger women and men I know. “It’s kind of egotistical to say about your own writing but I did have younger women in mind,” she says. “A lot of our thinking around sex and younger women is really focused on how to say no, when to say no and how to feel empowered to say no. We don’t talk enough about how to feel empowered to say yes. To ask for what you want.”

The book is dedicated to “my mother, who will hate this”. “She absolutely hates it, yes,” confirms Mac Cabe, even though her mother has not actually read the book and probably never will.

She has conflicting feelings about that. “From an ego point of view, of course I want my parents to want to read my book. And it’s the same with Brandin [her American husband]. I asked him if he was going to read it. And he said, no. On the one hand, I was like, I wouldn’t want to read that stuff about you. But then on the other hand, you don’t want to read my book?”

At one point she writes that she has never felt more whole than when she was one half of a couple. Her happy ending came, as so many do, when she was least expecting it. After a break up of the five-year relationship with the man she calls Scott, she embarked on a brief coupling with a man she calls Johnny and then came to live with her older sister Beatrice and her children in Fort Wayne. The pair are extremely close and co-presented a podcast, Not Without My Sister.

“I started to think, I’m not going to get married, I’m not going to have my own kids, I’m so far away from my sister and her family, like what’s the point. So I came over here and moved in with her... I think even if I hadn’t met Brandin I could have been quite happy. I’ve always craved a family environment, and I think that’s what relationships have always given me. And maybe I didn’t realise I could get that with a family rather than a romantic partner.”

When she was younger she had her fertility tested to talk about it on a TV programme. The nurse told her, by phone, that she had “the egg count we’d expect to see in a woman of 44”. She was 25 at the time. Her expectations of becoming a mother were low. Atlas was conceived “the first time we had sex during what they call a fertile period. It felt like a miracle to me,” she says.

Mac Cabe is busy. In addition to parenting and stepparenting three boys, she is releasing a podcast delving into other people’s romantic histories which will coincide with the launch of the book. She has also started a novel – “I want to move away from memoir”.

It was a necessary exorcism of all these ghosts that have been living in my head. And I’m hoping that now I can be free of them

Is she nervous about how the book will be received? “Yes,” she says. “I hope people will see the honesty, but I think there will also be people whose husbands have cheated on them, for example, who are going to hate me... I’m not so much nervous about what the men will think if they read it. But I’m really annoyed at the idea that they are going to read it and react to it and I’m not going to know. I almost would like to set up cameras and see them reading their chapter so I could know exactly what they think. I have advanced fomo about that. Which is really my own narcissism. What do you think of me? What do you really think?”

She laughs and says she was thinking recently about Ed, he of the chlamydia call. “Oh my god, I’m probably going to be thinking about Ed until I am 100 and he doesn’t deserve it. It’s just pathetic.”

Is she proud of the book? “I’m proud of myself for writing it, but more than that, I’m glad it’s done. It was a necessary exorcism of all these ghosts that have been living in my head. And I’m hoping that now I can be free of them.”

This Is Not About You – A Menmoir by Rosemary Mac Cabe is published by Unbound