NecRomancers

Two surprise blast from the past emails from two different exes a few years past their use-by-date certainly caused me to reflect this month. It's the 'heard your single' jingle.

Funnily enough, Belle de jour posted on this very subject and she articulates her thoughts on the subject much better than I could:

Oh, so it's that time of year again already, is it? The ex-boyfriends making contact time. Must be the aftermath of June weddings or summat, for I can't figure it out.

There's more than just the whiff of desperation among this year's candidates. While last year was dominated by the I'm-Married-So-There contingent, this year my inbox is brimming with half-thought-out, wistful correspondences from the men who can't help but wonder, 'what if?'

Well, I'll tell you 'what if', darlings. If it was meant to be, it would be you and not someone else. If the timing was wrong then it isn't any better now, and though the passage of time may have many negative aspects - cringing at any photo taken of me circa 1985, for instance, when Bananarama was the word - there are some extremely positive ones, such as being grateful to not have been even more entangled with a man who does the email equivalent of drunk dialling every two years or so.

While I have seldom wished for the men in my life to be younger and less experienced, every time one of these notes drops through my electronic slot I find myself wishing for a return to the callowness of youth, when a goodbye meant exactly that. It is said that while women may hope for the revival of a romance, men know there is nothing so dead as a dead love. It plainly isn't true; I can only be polite and distant in a reply but wish someone would tell these buffoons they're attempting to resuscitate a pile of bones.

Love this image of The Night of the Living Dead Romance, but it seems the real thing for me is just as zombied, and certainly moving along in a shuffling 'eat your brains' manner, except it's on my side. While there is at least a few potentials out there, I still feel like there are tumbleweeds rolling in the place where my heart used to be.

Not going to go on about trying to revive the past because I know that is not the right path. I've seen Frankenstein. But in ters of romance there isn't much ahead of me either. Well, there is, but nothing that I want.

Actually I asked a guy out for a drink on a dare, and he said yes, so then I freaked out. But when we finally went out he casually said 'Is anyone else coming?' so he didn't realise that it was a date, or at least wanted to establish that it wasn't in his mind. And I felt relieved. I said No, and we had a few drinks together alone. Not sure whether he is flirting or not, but when you don't really care one way or the other where it's leading, you just come across a lot smoother and confident.