Harry and Sally

I am a relationship disaster area. I can take something beautiful, and wreck it like the Hesperus. My problem is very simple, really, and can be summed up in three words. I expect narrative.

In our world, we are bombarded with love stories. On the TV, in movies, in books, even adverts suggest a story (think of the Chanel advert with Nicole Kidman). So, I have come to expect narrative in all my relationships. I find myself delivering lines, setting up dramatic situations, and thinking that I know how it's all going to end because I've seen how it all SHOULD end a hundred times over.

For instance, we all know that when two people have an unconfortable encounter, then become best friends, then have a couple of big fights, then have a very comfortable encounter, they should end up together. Right? Throw in little scenes that demonstrate how well they know each other, how much they have in common, how they depend on each other, and it's a certainty. Isn't it?

Sadly, no it isn't. That big dramatic kissing scene in Trafalgar Square where in a movie 'The End' would roll out across the screen as the leads fade out into 'happy ever after' is not, in actual fact, the end. What happens is she calls him two days later, and finds out that he only kissed her because he felt sad and lonely about how the girl he actually likes doesn't like him. She tells him never to call her again, then calls a week later to forgive him because she misses him as her friend, but has decided she definitely doesn't want anything more to happen. He doesn't answer the phone. Then she blogs about it.

Once Upon a Time

About nine months after I got my publishing job and moved to London, I went to a party where I met a man who I thought was perfect. I tore my lovely new life to bits in order to be with him, as there were some quite severe obstacles in the way. I was deleriously happy (with him - the rest of my life was going haywire) for oooh...six months (I know, I know, not long). Then, out of the blue, he tells me I'm too difficult and grumpy and stressed for him to be with, and that it's over.

It's now five months after that and I'm living in a new flat with an old friend. It's Saturday morning, and I'm signing onto Facebook, and there it is. My ex (who we will be calling The Capitalist, given his penchant for accumulating things - stocks, shares, and very expensive bottles of wine) is going out with a girl who he claimed was 'just a colleague' when we were together. This would suggest that all the things he said about how difficult I'd become were just so much rubbish; really, I was being left for an easier option.

This morning, I felt like I could let out a breath I'd been holding for months. A weight had been lifted off my chest. Perhaps the greatest heartbreak I'd ever had (and I've had a fair few) had come and gone, and I'd survived. More than that, it wasn't my fault it happened. If I can get through that, then I can do anything. I'm kind of excited to find out what that's going to look like.