Keeping in touch with my ex seemed after our breakup like a really good idea – until it didn’t.
Our breakup had been fairly civilized, apparently. After nine months she was looking for me to move in with her or at the very least spend much more time with her. The news didn’t come as a complete surprise to me but it was impossible for me to do what she wanted.
My ex-girlfriend lived quite far away and wasn’t able to travel to me so it was always me on the road. Plus I had nights with my daughter and going out with friends.
When I said I couldn’t do that she said it was best we went our separate ways.
A few times after the breakup she got in touch — mainly just small talk at first, then she started to ask how my dating was going and telling me about hers – mainly complaints that it was difficult to find the right kind of guy on the online dating apps, that kind of thing.
Sex marks the spot
Of course it wasn’t too hard to hear that she was having trouble finding a replacement boyfriend. This keeping in touch business seemed to be working pretty well. Then came the sex.
It was her who proposed it. “As we both know what we want, there’s no harm in us having sex is there?” she said. I agreed there was no harm.Quickly.
So we had sex a few times. It was really good, though it did seem strange when we were talking about dates with other people.
It was particularly strange when we found ourselves talking once about how one of the worst habits in dating with people who haven’t got over their exes.
“Yeah, we’re not at all like that are we?” I said.
A midnight call
Then she got in touch the other day.
“Hey, I’m in that square that we used to hang out at and I thought of you. How are you anyway?”
I answered right away as I had the phone in my hand at the time.
As it was she didn’t read my reply. This was unusual. She’d always put a premium on replying quickly – or if one couldn’t making a quick “busy now, catch up later” type stand-by reply.
At about midnight I sent her a message: “You know, you could reply. It was you that contacted me.”
I guessed she would get back to me in the morning. But I was surprised when she sent me a message about 1 a.m.
Can’t talk – giving head!
“Sorry, can’t talk. Met this guy. Get back to u tomorrow,” she said.
It’s never particularly easy for us to imagine an ex with someone else. But what hurt as much was the fact she seemed to have engineered the conversation to let me know that she was with this guy and she was staying with him (she had missed the last train back to her hometown).
I mentioned it to a friend a couple of days later. He texted: “she might’ve well have added ‘get back to u tmrw – just abt to give blojob’!”
The next day I told her I thought it was time we put some limits on our “friendship”. This upset her. She said she hadn’t intended to try and make me jealous, it just happened she had gone through that square that we was used to go together for the first time since we broke up.
Then she started to get angry and said I had always talked about how important it was to give the other person the benefit of the doubt when there was a misunderstanding.
This was true. I told her she could always get in touch with me if she needed me for something but perhaps generic conversations about new partners was something I would rather avoid.
Breaking up the second time is no easier
I’m trying to get into the habit of not reacting excessively strongly to incidents which feel hurtful – or at very least leave it an appropriate amount of time of acting in the heat of the moment.
I have also done quite a bit of thinking about why we stayed in contact in the first place.
A lot of people say it’s best to make a clean break of it with ex-partners. I had always agreed with that assessment. I thought we were the exception. Now I see I was wrong.
It requires a lot of tact and a lot of strong will to be in touch as friends post-break up and in this case that simply wasn’t present.
The worst thing is that in breakups like this you go through the pain all over again.
By Max
