My best friends include two girls, three couple that I had known for more than ten years, one ex-boyfriends and two other so-call-the-guy-that-you-date-but-not-work-well. I like them just as much, but they don’t get a ‘best’ because I only see them one in the blue-moon. If you know what I meant!
I don’t understand peoples who never see their exes at all. It suggests the relationships were merely about sex. I go out with people because I think (and I believed) they’re funny, clever, interesting or just plan nice, not because they have huge amount of money in the bank.
Having established these qualities, why on earth would I want to drop their owners from my life simply because one of us doesn’t want to look at the other one ‘dick’ anymore?
It shouldn’t stop us from having lunch or going to the movie or even night out. Personally, I am capable of remaining fully clothed in the cinema at least.
In the old days, people didn’t have exes. They just had a scandalous history with the vicar’s son because they once walked him home from the Church un-chaperoned and then failed to have a relationship with him. But in the world where we don’t ‘settle down’ until our forties (if at all), we all accrue as hand full of significant others along the way. They are part of the litany of experience that has made us the fascinating people we are, a living souvenir of times past. If you go on Safari to Tanzania, you frame your holiday pictures on the walls, you don’t rip the map of African out of your atlas and burn it.
We must find appropriate space for the significant exes we all have. The following are what I consider to be the duties of a former boyfriend. If you are still single, you should be available to escort your ex to parties when you are both allowed to flirt with other people and suffer no recrimination.
You should be on the end of the phone when he calls you, depressed in the middle of the night. You should laugh at old memories and still see mutual friends together.
If you have a serious new boyfriend, you shouldn’t have dinner alone with your ex or take his calls after midnight. But you should have lunch sometimes. Invite him to your parties and introduce him to your new boyfriend. And if he’s royal, you probably shouldn’t sell his old love letter to the newspaper like what happened to Princess Diana.
The move from love to friend is tricky at first, but in my experience it really, is work the effort. Your relationship has already survived, hearing his snore, meeting his parents, watching him burn the toast, pretending to be interested in each other work anecdotes and that time he caught you pointing at the mirror and whispering ‘you’re the one’ can it not survive the fall-out of a break-up and few tear? Are you not man enough to get over the jealousy and resentment, and remember why he’s still a great person you might want to hang out with?
Of course, sometimes you break up with someone because they turned out to be a bit horrid. No point getting them around for Pumpkin Soup or Sticky Date Pudding. But usually it’s because you started fighting too much or one of you are an asshole or control freaks or perhaps he abused the relationships, so it was time to move on. In these cases, a share history which’s includes, having found each other mutually delightful at the start is not to be sniffed at.
I am always charmed to see Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley out walking her baby, or Andrew and Forgie sharing a holiday. Why should that be weird? Perhaps I am amazed they can get over the bitterness and sorrow of parting. Is that because we live in the gay-life-style and they were straight? I say “For heaven sake, life’s too short, get over it. I am still friend with my first boyfriend. Every time we see each other I have to remind him that he’s a wanker, but three minutes of vitriol we’re ready to order the champagne”.
I quite convinced that Liz and Hugh often have conversation along the line of “can you pass the salt? I can’t believe you put your dick in the hooker mouth”. Have you read the new Philip Roth? But that seems as healthy a friendship as any.
It shouldn’t stop us from having lunch or going to the movie or even night out. Personally, I am capable of remaining fully clothed in the cinema at least.
In the old days, people didn’t have exes. They just had a scandalous history with the vicar’s son because they once walked him home from the Church un-chaperoned and then failed to have a relationship with him. But in the world where we don’t ‘settle down’ until our forties (if at all), we all accrue as hand full of significant others along the way. They are part of the litany of experience that has made us the fascinating people we are, a living souvenir of times past. If you go on Safari to Tanzania, you frame your holiday pictures on the walls, you don’t rip the map of African out of your atlas and burn it.
We must find appropriate space for the significant exes we all have. The following are what I consider to be the duties of a former boyfriend. If you are still single, you should be available to escort your ex to parties when you are both allowed to flirt with other people and suffer no recrimination.
You should be on the end of the phone when he calls you, depressed in the middle of the night. You should laugh at old memories and still see mutual friends together.
If you have a serious new boyfriend, you shouldn’t have dinner alone with your ex or take his calls after midnight. But you should have lunch sometimes. Invite him to your parties and introduce him to your new boyfriend. And if he’s royal, you probably shouldn’t sell his old love letter to the newspaper like what happened to Princess Diana.
The move from love to friend is tricky at first, but in my experience it really, is work the effort. Your relationship has already survived, hearing his snore, meeting his parents, watching him burn the toast, pretending to be interested in each other work anecdotes and that time he caught you pointing at the mirror and whispering ‘you’re the one’ can it not survive the fall-out of a break-up and few tear? Are you not man enough to get over the jealousy and resentment, and remember why he’s still a great person you might want to hang out with?
Of course, sometimes you break up with someone because they turned out to be a bit horrid. No point getting them around for Pumpkin Soup or Sticky Date Pudding. But usually it’s because you started fighting too much or one of you are an asshole or control freaks or perhaps he abused the relationships, so it was time to move on. In these cases, a share history which’s includes, having found each other mutually delightful at the start is not to be sniffed at.
I am always charmed to see Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley out walking her baby, or Andrew and Forgie sharing a holiday. Why should that be weird? Perhaps I am amazed they can get over the bitterness and sorrow of parting. Is that because we live in the gay-life-style and they were straight? I say “For heaven sake, life’s too short, get over it. I am still friend with my first boyfriend. Every time we see each other I have to remind him that he’s a wanker, but three minutes of vitriol we’re ready to order the champagne”.
I quite convinced that Liz and Hugh often have conversation along the line of “can you pass the salt? I can’t believe you put your dick in the hooker mouth”. Have you read the new Philip Roth? But that seems as healthy a friendship as any.
Thinks of them and think of us here.......
Till then....
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