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The ex and I broke up in March 2000, almost six years after we first met. We were incompatible in a number of ways, not least because while I was in my early forties when we met, he was only 22. Though less mature than my physical age, I was in the middle of a career and had a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of my personality. He had trained as an actor, but as work proved scarce, his career path was uncertain and evolving, from temporary office assistant to highly paid computer training consultant. And while I had previously had several affairs, including two men with whom I had lived (at different times), I was his first serious relationship. As time passed, I saw the differences between us but was willing to ignore them. He saw them and was unwilling to compromise. He left. It took a couple of years for my anger and hurt to subside, but in the end it did so and in the past few months we have met fairly frequently, both in London and in Belfast, where his work has posted him for a couple of years. We're both single, although in the interim he has had two year-long relationships and I dated a someone for a couple of months. And, because we have no intention of getting back together, a genuine friendship has emerged. I was with him in Belfast at the weekend, one of a group who flew over from London to a Friday night party he was giving for his colleagues. It was a loud affair, with no more than three broken glasses and the occasional embarrassment fuelled by drink. I collapsed into bed shortly after three while some partied on until nearly six. Half-past nine found me in the living-room, flicking through channels on the tv. Restricted to the terrestrial five in London, I was as a happy as the legendary sandboy as I watched comedy, film and sci-fi. I had intended to be cultural - after all there was the City Hall to see, as well as the end of the Belfast Festival - but indolence prevailed. In the early afternoon four of us went out to lunch and windowshop, coming home at dusk for afternoon tea. After another meal out that night, while the ex and two of the London crew headed for the gay nightlife, those of us who were feeling our age headed back home and watched a DVD of Moulin Rouge. The following morning the ex roused himself from sleep to call for a taxi. I kissed him goodbye and headed for the airport. By half-past two I was home again and greeted disdainfully by the cat that I had inherited from our relationship. I came home a slightly different person than the one who left. Over the weekend my mind had drifted from the party and television screen and rows of clothes in shop after shop, to reveal in detail what I had only glanced at before - the many ways in which the ex and I differed. First, our homes. I live in a Victorian terraced house, with corniced ceilings, creaking staircase and walls out of true. The furniture is dark and heavy. The walls are lined with books, pictures and knick-knacks picked up in 25 years of travel. His flat is modern, the rooms cube-like, the décor light and modern. He reads, but the only book to be seen was my own. There is wide screen television and half a dozen speakers of an expensive sound system. The new flat he is about to rent in London, a yuppie affair overlooking the Thames, sounds similar. We first lived together in Los Angeles, where I had moved from London and he still lived with his family. We had little money to buy furniture and we did so in a rush from second-hand emporia. Only the bed was something we bought with enthusiasm - a gigantic metal four-poster that could comfortably sleep three and which I could now never part with. We moved from one apartment to the next, and then across the country to Brooklyn, accumulating furniture and trappings from other people's castoffs and IKEA. While we deferred to each other on individual items, never once did we stop to ask ourselves or each other what style we wanted or what for each of us truly made a home. And so our surroundings were a compromise, where neither of us was uncomfortable but neither, I believe was truly happy. Then we came to London. I had kept a house here while I was away and was returning home, but, apart from one previous visit, it was new to him. In various ways I tried to make the house equally his, but no matter what I did, it always felt to him like my home and not his and he could not explain to me what needed to be changed. The weekend party was another difference between us. I enjoy drinking and meeting people but by one o'clock it's time for everyone to go home. But one o'clock sees him at his peak; it's time to stop talking and have fun, get out the electronic dance mat and see who can best follow the movements on the screen. Or pile onto the bed for the group photograph. Or play practical jokes or whatever comes to mind. We see friendships differently as well. While he spends much of every weekend with the same group of friends, I prefer to see more people for less time and and am happy to spend time alone. My friendships also feel less aggressive than the ones I see him in, where affection is masked in constant swearing and insults. ("You've got it wrong," I can hear him say. Probably, but in such matters perception is as real as reality.) When we lived together we did not see these issues. It did not occur to us to question our friendships and social life, to see what could be shared and what was best lived apart. We talked, but not enough, and perhaps I talked too much and did not listen as well as I could. When we went through rough patches, it was never clear what was going wrong and whether we could salvage it. If we stayed together so long, it was because much else bound us. Sexual attraction, of course. Overlapping, rather than similar, tastes in humour, film and the theatre. A love for the open air and hiking. An ability, when all was going well, to relax in each other's company. The warmth of sleeping in each other's arms. Above all the fact that we were never less than honest with each other, that even when furthest apart physically and emotionally, each saw in the other someone he could always trust and love. As I said, we will not be getting back together again. Sharing a house as we have sometimes done over the last few months reminds each of us how irritating the other can be. We're both too set in our ways to change and each of us has only a few of the qualities that the other looks for in a partner . But that doesn't matter. The worst is over. We have the next fifty years to enjoy our friendship. |
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| 15 November 2002 |
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© Martin Foreman |