Relationships are very interesting aren’t they? No matter to what level they develop, that you choose to be intimate – to whatever level – with someone, is disarming. It makes you vulnerable to allow someone access to the inner-sanctum of your needs/wants/desires. You may give someone the ability to hurt you. You supply them with ammunition which can lay you low. And you trust them, at least to some extent, not to use what you give them against you.
On Saturday I was at work and I saw an ex. I’m going to call her Sarah because her name is Sarah. It makes more sense that way. Sarah came into my life at a time when I needed someone or something to occupy me. She was exactly what I needed; just what the doctor ordered. I saw her on Saturday night. She saw me. We didn’t speak. She was out with friends, drunk. I was at work, sober. Also, I really don’t know what I would have to say to her given the opportunity.
Sarah chased me for a period of time and I eventually acquiesced and we went out. She massaged my ego massively. She was an attractive girl thirteen years my junior. She was interested in this old fart. Difficult to say no, no?
We went out a few times and it didn’t take long for me to realise that the age gap was more a chasm. A yawning, gaping, all-consuming, unassailable chasm. A void of difference between us. In the end we went our separate ways. She said she wanted to be ‘just friends’ when I raised the issue of us not actually bothering to see much of each other. I consider myself to be a friendly person. I’m kind, generous, engaging, but there was nothing about her which made me want to keep in touch. That difference in age and experience and life was just too much for me to see her as anything other that someone to sleep with. I certainly couldn’t consider myself to be friends with her. No way.
So then when I saw her on Saturday night and when I glimpsed her kissing some random younger guy outside a pub – classy all the way – why did I feel a pang? Actually what did I feel a pang of? Jealousy? Yearning? Regret?
I’m not certain.
The facts are as follows.
I have – with one noticeable exception – always been in control of the beginning, middle, and end of my relationships. And with Sarah she played a part in the decision to call things off. We went our separate ways and she was as happy as I was to do so. I guess I’m used to a certain degree of resistance at the conclusion of my relationships. That never happened. Perhaps the pang was this: I realised this girl walked away from me as easily as I walked away from her. And, in the silliest and most irrelevant way. In the most trivial and redundant fashion, that hurt.
That was my pang… It was my pride.
