January 2011
When you split up with someone, you should have a say in who your ex sleeps with next. Perhaps you’d choose someone that looks like you to confuse them.
This might lessen the blow. It might make you feel like you still have a say in the relationship. That you’re still making love to her, albeit by proxy.
They should be a guy whose very existence you can just about handle. Obviously there’s a danger this next guy would just be a better version of you who’d simply remind your ex of your shortcomings. But he’d prepare you for the next guy who’s going to come along and bang her. That’s the difficult one to handle. The next serious relationship. The guy who’ll fill in any gaps on the sexual positions cv. The guy who’ll perform the acts your ex never quite let you convince her to perform, perhaps for fear you might one day you might blog about it. The things you deserved to be around for after laying all the groundwork and setting her off on that journey of sexual adventure. He’ll be bigger than you, have a better walk, better posture, a car, a house. He’ll have a permanent job. He’ll be everything she said you weren’t. He’ll be Avram Grant to your Jose Mourinho, taking her to the Champions League Final of sex not long after your unexpected departure, reaping the benefits of what you helped build.
But that’s the horrible future. This forerunner, this interim fella, would perhaps be from an agency that specifically provide rebound shags. A decent, non-offensive guy, brought up in a decent family, working his way through his studying. The kind of guy who holds doors open for women and gives up his seat for women on tubes and buses. The kind of man you might go for a drink with one day. He’d sympathise with you, tell you, ‘you know she’s a decent girl. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you. You guys just got unlucky with that fire.’ You’d swap stories about her legendary temper and intensity.
And for a moment, that pain, that sense of loss, would be controlled. But just for a moment.