Confusion.

A few weeks ago I started writing emails to my ex-boyfriend by instead of sending them to him I have saved them all in my draft email folder. It feels really cathartic and cleansing to be able to tell him all the things I feel about our split and about him, and yet for him not to know or respond. While we were together I used to tell him about how I felt and he used to not properly listen/ change the subject/ totally forget what I had said a few minutes later and so this way works even better as it means there is now no reason for me to get cross with him for having failed to listen to me.

I used to think that men in real life were not a patch on men in books and while this remains largely true I must add the caveat that men in books also fall short of the ideal. I know think that ideal men are probably best illustrated by film rather than fiction. Mr Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was a cold fish who was very rude to Lizzie Bennet and his only redeeming feature was his wealth, Anna Karrenina and Madame Bovary had a rotten time with men, Rhett Butler only amused himself with Scarlett O’Hara and then left her for merely being the same person she was all along and I can’t think of a single book in which the man both beautifully professes his love and then manages to live up to it afterwards. 

My ex and I have been split for slightly over two months now, two very long months in which I have not had nearly enough to occupy my time and so I have brooded rather while he has made himself very busy indeed and underwent no period of mourning where you don’t stir out of pjs all day and eat way too much while watching a lot of Murder She Wrote… We met up a couple of weeks ago to exchange our things which I found weird but he seemed to like. He wanted to see me again, in fact was most eager to do so and on Monday we did. We not only had lunch together but then met again in the evening for dinner and drinks. I am not being vain, I truly am not when I say that he wants to get back together. From some of the things he said, the way he tried to hold my hand several times etc. He does. And yet he doesn’t. He is not the kind to make any great romantic running after me, he is the type to sit back and see me lots of times and just wait for something to happen without planning anything romantic and without even thinking to himself that he should dress up, take me somewhere special and say wonderful things before kissing me. He will have no plan because that was the way it was when we got together in the beginning, he just kept asking me out and eventually things progressed.

I don’t want to sound bitter, I am not. In fact I was the one who split up with him. I am only confused and unsure of what I want. He is lovely and although there were other things behind the breakup the catalyst was definitely his pulling out of our plans to live together. That is what makes it so confusing: I split up with him because I loved him enough to live together but because he didn’t and I felt a great need to protect myself by not staying with someone who didn’t love me as much as I loved them.

What makes it all more confusing is that I can’t think of a single book where there is the same dilema! Even the torrid romantic life of Natasha in ‘War and Peace’ did not encounter this problem. On a side note I was frightfully disappointed by the way she ended up. She was stunningly beautiful and charming and catnip to men and yet she ended up with the most boring chap in the whole book and turned out frumpy, fat and a complete housewife. I was horrified! I saw the opera of the same book last year and thought it rather marvelous although in it for some ridiculous reason they missed the whole ending and Natasha actually didn’t end up with the bore which I found rather amusing!