thelesbianlifestyle.com

I’ve heard plenty about the intricacies of the lesbian web of exes though myself still haven’t been in enough relationships to experience that first-person. Yesterday though I had my own dose of ex-lover weirdness that came in the form of my ex-girlfriend’s most recent ex-boyfriend, the guy she went out with after we broke up. He gained this ex-status just 3 months ago, and from what I heard, it sounded like he hadn’t felt sane since then until just 4 days ago.

We have never had a conversation. We had met several times in passing, the first of which happened when I visited my ex’s home one last desperate time, and when he was there to pick her up for a date.

I’m not sure what gave him the courage to come to the other side of the cafe to say hi and talk to me. But he did. One of the first things he said to me was that he wanted to apologize for what happened. I didn’t know what to say, because I wasn’t really sure what he was apologizing for exactly. That society sucked and that she broke up with me because she couldn’t be going out with a girl? That he was the convenient excuse she gave me? That he wasn’t sensitive enough towards our falling-apart relationship? I just told him that he didn’t need to be sorry, and that he had nothing to apologize for, at least not to me.

What followed were the 2 most surreal hours of my life. I couldn’t believe that the person who for the longest time embodied my frustration and anger with the social intolerance of same-sex relationships was sitting in front of me, and suddenly I felt sorry for him and was hoping that maybe I was giving him some answers that he was still looking for. It was as if in his last efforts to make sense of what happened to his relationship with her, he thought that I had a role in finding some sort of closure.

He told me that he thought my ex and I should still be friends, that she really did admire me as much as she told me, that I had a better connection with her and that he believed that the only reason why she broke up with me was really just simply because she couldn’t be in a relationship with a girl.

It was the only reason she gave me, but it was enough I suppose. And in a way I guess I had it easier than he did. She attacked his personality, basically told him that he sucked and not with the intention of giving him a chance to change or fix it. It was a reason to break up. For me, it was simple. Painfully simple and real, but it was situational, not personal. My pain was divided up between losing her and having to battle with the world. Maybe it was true that if the world had been different, she would have stayed with me. But does it even matter? The pressures are real, the “gay life” isn’t easy to live. I wouldn’t ask anyone to live that just for me if she wasn’t prepared to.

I still don’t know why he said the things he did, and what he expected me to say. I don’t see how being friends with her would change anything for him, for her, or for me. It would be impossible for me to describe the whole story here, and that really isn’t the point. The conversation itself wasn’t bad, and in a way it was almost nice. It killed me to see that he was so destroyed, and it made me realize how far I’ve come. But something about it has left a bad taste in my mouth.

I guess I just didn’t need to hear that I really was special to her, and yet no matter how special I was, my flaw was being a girl.