X is Followed by Y

The highlight of a recent trip to Bangalore, aside from a wedding I had gone there for, was a two-way post-breakup bitching session with a close friend. We laughed at the pathetic fallacies of our ex-boyfriends, at the corny outpourings we had listened to while our skins crawled and we had to pretend to be touched...and a whole lot of other things which would sound quite nasty to the neutral reader, but would delight anyone else who can relate to post-breakup euphoria. And euphoria it certainly is - usually spurred on by relief and then a laughter-filled post-mortem.

An increasing number of my friends have recently turned single or are on the verge. And it always happens, that while conducting the aforesaid post-mortem or dissecting the relationship on its death-bed itself, we're stuck wondering why we entered it, why we stuck through it and what made us ever fight for it.

A woman I know told me about an ex who got married to someone else and then asked this woman why they could not pick up where they'd left off.

"Are you asking me to be your mistress?" she asked.

"Why do you have to call it that?" he asked, in distaste.

I know of several people whose exes have tried to stay "friends" and organise meetings between their current spouses/ partners and their exes. In fact, a former partner of mine tried to do the same thing.

"Whatever for?" I asked, and he shrugged.

What are you supposed to talk about during these meetings? 'Isn't s/he a great kisser?' 'Yeah, man, for sure...but I love the way s/he..' 'What, s/he did that with you? We haven't done that! S/he said s/he would never..'

Yeah...this is Dysfunctionality Central. Your train will terminate here.

A friend of mine was in a relationship with a guy who was never ready for it. He said he'd let her know when he was ready. Her reply was "Aamaam, ya, nee sollu. Naan vandhu koozhooththaren."

I was telling another friend, whose ex was getting married to someone else and had invited my friend to the wedding, that the ex had never been worth my friend's time. My friend said yes, that was true, and it's just unfair how we never realise while we are in a relationship that we could do so much better.


I was speaking to another friend recently about how I myself was in a relationship with this pathetic loser who actually came to visit with something like 300 rupees on him, and expected me to sponsor the entire trip!

"What kind of guy does that???" I said to him, "and why was I seeing someone like that?!"

"You know the funny thing? I was in a relationship with someone who was both a schizophrenic and a nymphomaniac, who made my life quite a nightmare, and I actually fought to save the relationship," he said, and then looked around the restaurant with a sigh, "the way I see it, there's this universal joke. You know how the letter 'Y' follows the letter 'X' in the English alphabet? And when a partner becomes an 'ex', it is always followed by 'whhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy????' Why was I in a relationship with that ex in the first place?"

That, I think should be the New Theory of Evolution.