Self Pity

Note to self: Do NOT write rants when one has just ended a long term relationship. On an altogether happier note, I'm now married to a lady utterly unlike the one who caused this rant, in that she's both beautiful and sane.



You would have thought that if a person were responsible for causing you more mental anguish and distress than any other human being on the face of the planet that you would take steps to avoid that person, or to cut them out of your life. You would think that perhaps when that person says something for the umpteenth time before going on to behave in a manner that would suggest that they actually feel the exact opposite of what they have said that you would stop believing that person. What you would not expect of intelligent and (sometimes pathologically) rational people is to allow themselves to go back for more time and time again. Nor would you expect someone who is a good person who genuinely cares for me to keep doing this over and over. If it's any help, I promise that this will be my last rant about love and relationships as I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the whole deal smells rather worse than a Leeds footballer's alibi.

Anyway, this is going to be rather more personal than most of my rants. If the sight of a grown man trying to understand why his relationship has turned out the way it has makes you feel sick then I really would advise you to stop reading now. It's not all about me though; I'm not the only person in History to have an emotional blind spot when it comes to one's partner/ex-partner. After all, anyone who has seen the string of spouses of the great and good who grimly and glumly vow to stand by their partner despite how much it clearly pains them will recognise at least some parts of this. Certainly I find that I have more sympathy now for the like of Alan Clarke's wife, or Ted Hughes. Hell even Sylvia Plath's short life is no longer the impenetrable "but what drove her to that?" mess that it once was.

Hm, I'm rambling aren't I? Right, I suppose that I had better start putting my thoughts in order and write something that perhaps you may want to read without getting faintly embarrassed on my behalf. I should make it clear that I'm not writing this in the hope of some sympathy. Frankly I find the awkward expressions of emotion that accompany any English person's attempt to show understanding somewhat uncomfortable. What I do want is at least some small grain of understanding about why 2 people who are sensible and intelligent and who admit to having some feeling for each other are able to effortlessly make each other feel like lukewarm shit.

So then; my fiancée and I broke up over a year ago. Nothing particularly unusual there. Relationships implode every day and as things go, ours was fairly civilised. There was no marriage to muddy the waters or children to complicate things. Just 2 people who reluctantly agreed that they really weren't good for each other as a couple and would try to stay friends with each other. All well and good. Lord, if only Kurt and Courtney had come to this solution then perhaps he would still be writing his music (better still, perhaps she wouldn't). Okay, so that was 14 months ago. What *should* have happened since then is that, after some time apart to adjust to not being a couple, we continue through life as the very good friends that we were and still to this day are. However as life is rarely simple this is of course not the case. Remaining friends is remarkably easy, it's the fact that we both still feel very strongly for each other that's the problem. We are both stuck in the most appalling catch 22; I want to move on and find someone else but I can't because of how I feel about my former fiancée. Nobody in their right mind will take the risk of a relationship with me for the very same reason.

The main problem is that whenever we spend any substantial period of time together, we fall for each other again. Simple as that. However, although our breakup was amicable, the circumstances that led to it were (for want of a better phrase) pretty fucking horrendous. So when we're together the bad memories come flooding back with the good and, rather than perhaps acknowledge the awful problems that we both encountered and either A: Call it a day forever or B: learn from them and try and move on together, instead one or both of us freak out and do something reasonably dreadful to the other. In the last year we've dealt with one screaming row that saw the house being smashed up, flings with people who have exploited our admittedly fragile mental state for the purposes of their own ego, the glorious sight of an illicit kiss shared with a best friend, and not to forget a sustained bout of accepting that we were meant to be together...until next week when we meet someone else. Interesting times indeed.

Now maybe you're reading this (assuming that you're still with me) and thinking that I'm like some sort of raw nerve. Perhaps you think I'm an immature and whining little shit. Yet the fact is that it is not just us who do this to ourselves. I have seen friends make a conscientious and sustained effort to flog a dead horse of a relationship beyond the limits of emotional endurance. I have seen others acting genuinely hurt and confused when something goes wrong in a relationship despite the fact that pretty much everybody else knew what was coming. Christ, I've ran a sweepstake at a wedding on how long a friends marriage will last! Not out of cruelty or callousness (although it was quite funny) but because a lot of people were less than enthusiastic about this couple's future together. It occurs to me that Shakespeare was guilty of the worst kind of ambiguity when he said that the path of true love never runs smoothly. I agree that it doesn't, but how does one tell what is true love and what is plainly a doomed affair from the beginning?

For example, let's go back to the aforementioned Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath. These two poets, a British man and American woman, were a couple back in the 1950's and 60's. Although their relationship was fiery and tempestuous, no one doubted the depth of their feeling for each other. A miscarriage led to the two splitting up as they couldn't cope with this event. Less than a year later she was dead by her own hand and Hughes turned in on himself, living a life of solitude broken by the occasional joyless fling. For all that there is tragedy dripping from this sorry tale, I would say that these two were truly in love with each other.

Now contrast that with the never-ending stream of Hollywood tittle-tattle and gossip; who is with whom, who has broken up, who has got back together again. None of it runs very smoothly at all, but I would imagine that love has very little to do with the emotional ups and downs of these pampered people. Publicity, hormones, and the need for attention are probably the true driving force there.

In any event, I'm not going to presume to state my case for whether what my ex and I are going through is true love or something altogether more trivial. What I am saying is that to love someone is probably the most difficult thing for anyone to do. We are all brought up on fairy stories and slushy tales where the princess and prince live happily ever after, or where 2 people are struck by a thunderbolt at the sight of one another and the rest is mere details. I'm not stating anything that anyone doesn't already know by saying what absolute unforgivable bullshit this is. We had to work bloody hard at our relationship. Not because of a lack of love but because the rest of the universe intrudes on your life whether you like it or not. And should you feel the urge to scream out "This isn't fair!" you may just hear the universe answering "Oh. Isn't it? And what do you want *me* to do about it?". Nowadays the amount of effort that we would both need to put in to try again is currently far too frightening for us to be able to say that we could honestly try. So yes, we tried hard to make things work out so where the fuck is our fairytale ending?