Sunday 27 November 2011

The Breakup

The last time I wrote in here I was reasonably secure in my relationship with the other half or so I thought. How wrong I was.

I thought she was away at a weekend with a new special friend, how wrong, well how right I was in some ways. She came home from a weekend with her new girlfriend to tell me that she was unhappy. What I didn't know at that point was that our relationship was effectively over. Being unhappy was her way of telling me that she had already moved on. Clearly in hindsight she hadn't just been with her new girlfriend.

I was unhappy too. I put it down to frustration at work but in hindsight I wasn't happy at the way things were going either but not so unhappy that I wanted to end the relationship. Both of us should have talked about this I guess and it is far too late now.

Then I started to unravel the layers of deceit and lies and the brazenness with which the new relationship had been developing in front of me. Of course the situation was by no means unique but it always feels worse when it happens to you.

She even told me the new guys name so in this age of social media it wasn't hard to find out a few things about him. Despite myself, as this was a really low point in my life, I said to myself. 'What the hell have you done you silly woman.' If you thought that the age difference between Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher was unsustainable as has recently been proved right then this new relationship has no chance and is doomed to fail.

I console myself that at some point in time you can just about guarantee that one of both of them are going to wake up one morning in the not too distant future and go 'what the fuck have I done?'

But then a fifty something woman's hormones and puppy love by some needy emotionally immature man roughly the same age as her kids looking for a shoulder to cry on as his own relationship breaks down probably make them impervious to the simple realities of such a relationship. Once these things get rolling they have an inertia all of their own which is hard to stop.

But for the ex when this happens there is a double whammy as she has chosen to move to the other end of the country and a new job. What is going to happen if and when the relationship fails and she is in a new city with no friends and family close by and potentially nowhere to live?

Unfortunately for the ex, the GFC and a prenup agreement meant that where she might have expected a bit of a windfall to start her new life there wasn't much to share and I have ended up with the house that she loved and a lot of the gear we accumulated together while she packed up her belongings in a few boxes and left with little to show for our life together.

This might be a source of bitterness in the future if it isn't already. I suspect that in some ways a little guilt on her part meant that she settled for a lot less than she should have in terms of what she took with her.

But life moves on for both of us and I still have my toys and I am enjoying them still.


So what to do next? Once the hurt started to fade.Too soon in hindsight, I joined an online dating web site. One part of my planned rehabilitation was to get back in the saddle as it were as soon as possible.Not just to find a new love of my life but to get out and meet new people and do new stuff.

In some respects this has been successful, in others not so.