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The ex files: Case one

So it happened. I kind of assumed one day it would. Contrary to public belief, London really isn’t that big. It was bound to happen. The day I would bump into him, my ex.

Funnily enough, it wasn’t too bad an exchange. I suppose this was because we had broken up on relatively good terms. And by 'good terms', I mean I decided it wasn’t really working and he didn’t put up a fight or cause a major fuss.

This wasn’t the first time I had seen or heard from him in the two years since we had broken up. In the first few months after the break-up, we had both worked in the same area and so would bump into each other or at least see each other relatively frequently. I used to dread those occasions though because he tended to use them as an opportunity to try and convince me that I had been hasty in my decision to end it. This time however was somehow different. On this occasion I was almost happy to see him, he seemed happy, life was good he told me, and it was more like bumping into an old friend.

We chatted casually, giving updates on both of our lives, both single, both happy, both working in our chosen fields to some degree of success, both just trying to get by….  It all seemed so simple, until it's time to leave and he says “you still got the same number?”

Case 2

Social networking may be the work of pure evil. It is a tool specifically designed to accommodate nosiness, all within the guise of sharing and friendship. The search tab is especially demonic, being that it is laced with temptation, and is the gateway to discovery,  an element which can and often will land you in the kind of trouble you probably cannot handle.

Case 2 begins with Kaya*, she is the social networking queen. Face-pic, Face-book, Myspace, Hi-5... she’s done them all, made some great friends through it, acquired a few stalkers, done a  bit of stalking herself, but all within the safety of cyberspace.

Anyway, Face-book is equipped with a “people you may know” facility, which Kaya finds herself using one day. Turns out she and her ex have a mutual friend and her ex is also a user of Face-book, hence the alert to his presence on the site.  Curiosity leads her to click onto his page and since it's an “open to everyone” type of page, she has a good look around while she is there. She spends time wondering whether she should send him a friend request or a message or anything at all, and inevitably decides that a friend request is perfectly acceptable.

With request accepted, conversations commence, as does the reminiscing. Clear waters begin to get murky however, since after all this was her first love and as such she feels an entitlement to him. How dare he move on, be happy, have a new love, be in a new city….

The purpose of these cases is to question the following: should an ex always remain an ex?  If you can’t connect on one level, does that mean that you cannot still connect on another? Or is it just too dangerous to try?

In Kaya’s case, curiosity develops into an irrational possessive jealousy. Is this the likely outcome of all situations of this nature, and if so, does this mean that an ex-love is also an ex-friend?

Onyx Knight