Vol. 2, Post #77 Have it your way

The post breakup ego and the eye roll. My weekly sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds, (people with readers).

I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but in sharing the story about my split with the man I referred to as The Boyfriend in several posts (we dated from June ‘24 till January of this year and I wrote about my relationship AND breakup here as well as in Jenny Magazine), I thought I was both kind, and accurate, in sketching out why I decided to end it, but apparently. I was not. You can start eye rolling now.

This was brought to my attention recently by not just a friend who ran into my former BF, but The BF himself. And it got me thinking, and reading.

The first thing I did was go back and read what I had written about our breakup. Yup, I stand by that accounting completely, which is this: The Boyfriend is a lovely man; I did not fall in love him and didn’t see that changing so that was also starting to worry me, given that we had been together for some time; this was compounded by the fact that I felt he had grown too comfortable in “just chilling” at my house. So I broke it off.

As I also wrote, I was also pretty sure he was not falling in love with me, so it seemed like the right thing to do. I gave the breakup almost no thought after I ended it, another sign that this was the right thing to do. My friends who knew him and knew us together could not have been more supportive of my decision.

Seemed like “case closed” and for that matter, case closed in a mature and no-drama manner. Life went on.

Sometime in the spring, I ran into The BF while, ironically, dining at the same restaurant in Kingston, NY where we first met. As he approached our table, I remember looking at him and thinking, “Oh, there’s X” the way you’d look upon seeing your dentist out to dinner. There was no racing pulse or pounding heart. He said hello to our table, shaking the hand of my pal, a man friend of mine who he slightly knew, and then he offered me his hand. I looked at him, incredulously. “Did you just offer to shake my hand?” I asked. At which point, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. That’s more like it. We exchanged a quick catch up and it was over. None of us at my table exchanged so much as even a mini-eye roll. Again, total grown up behavior.

So…

About a month ago, a friend told me she ran into The BF at an outdoor music fest and that it took her a minute to place him. While she racked her brain, trying to remember how she knew him, he amusedly kept answering her, “Nope, not from a work gig” or similar until she landed upon him as, yes, my ex. She shared that story with me in passing and again, life went on.

Now here’s where it gets interesting — well, at least to me, because I’m the Young Old who is about to tell you about the breakup recap she had with her ex.

I was driving back from an evening drink with clients a few weeks ago when I realized that not only was I hungry but that I had zero in my house on which to nibble, so I detoured over to a bar and grill (do people say “bar and grill” anymore? I feel like a ‘40s gangster right now!) and while on route, since it was a place that The BF and I enjoyed (a modern pizza and cocktail lounge, really), I texted him, “Hey, want to join me at Sorry Charlie?”

The request was a sincere one. I was near his house and when we ran into each other at “our” restaurant in the spring, he shared something about a family member’s health, an update as I had inquired, and it was slightly concerning. I was thinking that he might want to chat about this some more, since it was something we discussed often when we were together. And, of course, I assumed we were cool. It was a no drama breakup, remember?

He did want to join me and so he did. We sat at the bar and he updated me for about an hour on his family member. As he spoke, a few things ran through my mind:

• I was looking him over, his arms, his face, the way his T-shirt fit him. He has a nice body. I don’t miss him at all.

• I was listening to him speak about his family member and some of the adjacent family and how they were all moving through this. The ex usually thinks he knows better than others regarding this issue, sometimes to a pompous degree. Sometimes to an eye-rolling degree. That also had not changed.

• A group of younger people came into the bar, folks that the ex knew. He greeted them heartily and a few of them looked at me, immediately recognized me and said hello to me by name (these were people I did not know). This was something that used to really irk me towards the end of our relationship. I felt like my ex had been getting rather lazy in the romance/compliment departments, and said as much to him, that it was too early on to be lazy about noticing if I got a new haircut or whatever (remember, I thought he had gotten too “comfortable” with me). However, when we ran into people that I didn’t know back then, they’d often know ME by name, or face, or whatever, because apparently the ex did talk about me or show them my photos or whatever. This is precisely what happened that night at the bar and grill. Eye roll.

As noted, no one is perfect, including and especially me, and the evening was starting to wind down. It was a nice catch up and I was feeling fine about it in the most neutral of ways, and then my ex started talking to me about a few dates he had gone on, just out of the blue. A few dates that were not terribly interesting to him.

This seemed sort of weird and not at ALL what I was expecting. I reached out and gently touched him on the arm.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

He went on to say that if the topic was bothering me, he’d stop and I said, no, no, not bothering me at all, but I didn’t expect us to discuss our dating lives. I reiterated that I asked him to join me for pizza because I wanted to hear about his family (we were on our third date when something happened to a relative and it colored the rest of our relationship) and that talking about dating seemed, well, funny, but, hey, go ahead. He was going ahead, because clearly, as I realized in the next few minutes, my ex had something to get off his chest.

“I didn’t like the way you wrote about our breakup,” he said. “You made it seem like you were breaking up with me because I was just a couch potato and that’s not true.”

“Hmm, I don’t know if that’s correct. I wrote that we went on a lot of great dates and that even right before we broke up, you planned a fun weekend in the city. I think you misread.”

“Well, you made it seem like I was just sitting around your house too much.”

“Well, if I’m being honest, you were. You were upstairs watching football, even with the volume off, and I found that super boring.”

“Well, YOU were downstairs writing!”

“Yes, and that’s because you were upstairs watching football and decompressing after stuff with your family.”

What followed was a tedious exchange about how all of my friends thought the ex loved sports, even though my ex denied that at nearly every turn. Even after receiving an Xmas present from one of my besties, a book about The Yankees, my ex asked me, “Why did he give me that?” to which I answered, “Are you fucking KIDDING me?” Here was a man who took me to a minor league baseball game — something I was happy to attend since I hoped there would be great hot dogs at the concession stand. Alas, there were not. But the game was cute. Again, no big whoop, but the dude is a sports fan and the constant refrain of “No I’m not,” even over our drink that night, was just silly.

Sports chat aside, my ex finally got to the point he was obviously dying to make.

“I wasn’t feeling so happy towards the end of our relationship either. So it’s not like you dumped me. I was going to tell you that I thought we were not working and then you just basically texted me about how this was over ahead of that.”

I realized what was happening. Ego. He was butt hurt. Fine.

“Then I guess I did us both a favor,” I said.

He looked at me.

“I mean it. If you weren’t happy either, all I did was say something first. I know you had planned that weekend in the city as a way to show me you were trying to have adventures with me. We are just not the right match, and that became even clearer when I was having an issue with someone in my family who was in the hospital and you told me you didn’t feel like chatting on the phone when I wanted to talk. That was it for me. I just wanted out. I didn’t feel seen by you. It was the right thing to do, for both of us, clearly.”

My ex and I spoke for a little longer and then he walked me to my car. He had gone on to ask me if I was dating anyone and I said, Yes, I was starting to see someone who I liked and it was very very early days. He asked how we met, and if I’d written about him here and to this I said, No, I’m keeping this quiet for the time being. At my car, I hugged my ex goodbye and told him, “You’re a great guy. Enjoy dating. I’m sure you’ll find someone when you’re ready.”

Driving home, I didn’t quite marvel at how civilized our larger conversation went, but I did feel very grown up.

And that feeling lasted for a few weeks, until…

Well, a couple of things.

I was out with friends and got a photo text from my ex with no message. In the picture, he’s seated at a bar next to a guy we both know. A guy I went on exactly one date with a few years ago. Sweet guy, handsome, someone I think of as a friend as there was no real spark. Why was my ex sending me a photo of him with this guy? It immediately gave me “Single White Female” vibes.

But that’s not the real ew.

LAST NIGHT, I was with my friend who saw the ex at that music fest, and she told me a bit more about their conversation that day, including how my ex reiterated to my friend that “the breakup was very mutual” as if my friend would EVER be insinuating that it was not. She barely knew my ex (which is why she couldn’t place him when they first ran into each other). She thought it was weird, and a little pathetic. So did I. So did everyone who was gathered on my porch who heard my friend tell the recap.

YUCK. But this yuck comes with a dose of “bless your heart;” a proverbial spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.

No one likes being broken up with, even if logic and reason all point to a dissolvement for the better. No one likes feeling unwanted, discarded, not valued.

When we allow our ego to get in the way of our logical mind, especially in dating, even in Young Olds Dating, we end up at a place called Suck City.

^^^This is a great book, by the way.

My ex said he wasn’t happy either at the end of our relationship. OK then. Did it make him feel any better about himself to share that at our catch up at the bar? Maybe. Did it make him feel any better to tell my friend when they passed like ships in the night at a music festival? Maybe?

Did it make him seem like a sort of silly man with a pride issue, which is so not attractive? Yup.

I’m taking this as a life lesson, Dear Readers. Hope you do too. Because when we think we have to “air it all out” to mere acquaintances who we assume to know our dirty laundry, we look, well, like my ex.

Brings me to this. Now that “And Just Like That…” is blessedly finito — did I mention that I just got PAID to watch it, the entire series, by a magazine that wants me to write a piece on how dastardly UN-feminist the show and its characters had become over the years? I took the gig, watched the whole thing, but now need to bleach my eyeballs and brain — let’s think back to the early SATC days and to Berger and his infamous Post-It note.

So that was DEFINITELY another bullshit night in suck city for Carrie. But…how about Berger’s friends’ faces when Carrie was trying to “make her point” about him to them at that nightclub. Cringe.

See what I mean?

Bless your heart. Bless all of our poor, beating, sometimes aching hearts.