Night of the Living Ex

My very first boyfriend, from years ago, has recently split up with his missus of about 3 or 4 years...who has he turned to for conversation and pro-active advice?

Me.

Who wanted nothing to do with the whole mess?

Me.

Now, I'll be honest, that it was not a good relationship and I did an amazing job of compartmentalising it and dealing with it in a healthy way. It was definitely a case of pat-on-the-back me. No need to open that can of worms and re-hash everything I so carefully put behind me.

Tonight I bullied into a taking a phone call from Ex No. 1. An hour of apologies and explanations later, I have to say, I'm worse for it. He picked apart every lie and manipulation he ever set on me in the course of this elaborate apology and with that, my tenuous relationship with trusting men is shattered for awhile. I wasn't aware of how deep the malady had run between us. I really had no idea how much I was pushed and prodded, moulded and twisted, in short - manipulated.

No one likes to hear, 'Yea, I lied to you about cheating on you to make you jealous so that you would come back to me.' or 'I knew that if I encouraged you to like art, you'd be more interesting to introduce to my friends as "My girlfriend, the artist" rather than, "My girlfriend, the business major."'

Terrifying to hear these things. There was more of course, apparently drug abuse and accusing his competition for my affections of taking drugs.

Truthfully, given my track record, I'm less concerned with what happened and my ability to discern good character from bad. Granted I was nearly 19 and very naive, so, maybe we'll let Ex No. 1 slide as a very big foray into the learning curve (I had to play catch up, most girls had their first boyfriend around 15 or something, back when I still had braces, no boobs and a bubble butt...oh, and Harry Potter glasses. Oh yea, teenage heartbreaker - that wasn't me.)

But the past two years have been really hard on me in the relationship department, if I'm being completely honest, they've been a lot harder than I care to admit and will not go into, as a matter of fact, blogging about it is rather cathartic, but selfish, I don't think many people will want to read about it, however, here it is.

It's been two years of hitting the 'replay' function. Not my best decisions - I have found that if a guy has been cruel or selfish towards me once, it's likely it will re-assert itself again at some point, and in all honesty, most of the past two years I've been bracing for the replay relationship to destruct the same way as before.

Tonight was horrible. What little bit of self-delusion I'd clung to concerning my strength in the face of manipulation is gone, added bonus, I'm not game for investing myself into another person.

I joke around about two things with a certain amount of frequency with Cocker Spaniel and Afghan Hound - that I have an empty half of my double bed that I aspire to fill. (And they know I don't mean in the temporary-revolving-doors-new-man-every-night, any girl could do that if they wanted.)

The other thing I've been saying for years in response to the male joke, 'Everyone knows you can't trust a creature that bleeds for a week and doesn't die.'

To that I say, 'And everyone knows you can't trust a two-headed monster.'

Tonight I'm a disciple of the latter.

So much for progress. At least my career will never wake up one morning and decide to stop caring about me.