Boyfriend No. 5

Meet Boyfriend No. 5. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know him better as Adorable English Boyfriend or, in the more colloquial, the AEB. I'll likely switch back and forth between that and his real name, Ed, just to keep you on your toes.

Back in February of last year, the AEB had the misfortune of sitting down next to me at the birthday party of a mutual friend. Being fabulous and taken to themes, Pete had deemed this birthday bash to be a "Dead Celebrities" party; I had come as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and was drinking straight from a bottle of red wine like a good Catholic girl. When Ed arrived at the party and grabbed the empty spot on the couch next to me I think I was about halfway through the bottle and took to his cute little face like it was the first cute little face I had ever seen. Ever. Fast forward to the next morning and I'm doing the walk of shame through campus in high heels and pearls, my hair still (somehow) perfectly coifed.

In the end we were together for just about a year, and in fact only just really ended things in January. It's probably fair to say I'm not entirely over this one just yet. Obviously distance was a major factor in our break-up -- being so far away from each other and still pretending it was truly a relationship just didn't seem fair to anyone involved. But when we were on the same continent, things were good. And (in that aforementioned grand tradition of glossing over the bad bits) really, really happy.

In all of our transcontinental-ness, Ed made two trips to the states (his first EVER was to Memphis, Tennessee, if you can imagine that), both of us met each others' respective parental and family units AND he can count himself among the lucky ones to have met (and loved on) the late, great Biscuit dog. There was quite a time there where I fancied myself moving to England permanently and really digging my heels in to this relationship. And though I do now regret (almost daily) not staying in London longer, I think part of the reason I chose to come back to the states was my fear of another Boyfriend No. 4 debacle. I'm scared of making decisions based on other people, because I worry that I'll immediately want to be rid of them, and there I'll be. Stuck.

So I came home. Ed came to see me in New York and about a month later, we called it quits. His answers were undoubtedly the hardest for me to read, and in my mind, the most unexpected. Here's the AEB's exit interview.

1. Do you remember your first impression of me?
Yes. We 'met' at the performance of the Vagina Monologues you took part in at Brunel. After helping organise the show with Sarah I passed the whole thing on to Rob so I didn't have to be there, but went along to help set up on the show night anyway. I think I came over to you and Sarah to help you tape up the banner and you let me take over, then stood there chatting with Sarah while I tried to tape it up by myself. Not the best first impression, but at least I remembered it - when we next met you didn't realise we had before!

2. Describe our relationship in three words.
Fun but rough.

3. Did we have "a song"? What was it?
I don't think so, I mean there was never one song that defined us, but we shared a lot of music for the entire course of our relationship, like the Talking Heads, Bright Eyes and Iron & Wine.

4. Why do you think our relationship ended?
A combination of many things. Partly that you chose to leave the UK and the distance was too much, partly a lack of understanding of each other on both our parts, and partly me being a little bit on the fucking-nuts end of the scale.

5. What was the best thing about our relationship?
We laughed, we shared a lot of interests, we both have the same lack of boundaries when it comes to personal issues and privacy, so it was always very easy being intimate or relaxed together. I only once felt embarrassed in front of you, and never changed my personality to fit with some ideal I imagined you have - possibly to the detriment of our relationship in the end. We both have faults that became apparent during our relationship but certainly before you first went back to the states they never affected how we were together.

6. What was the most annoying thing I did within the context of our relationship?
Your constant need to be right, and your anger at everything that went wrong that was out of your control. I've never been a high-stress person, thing just roll off me, but you are the opposite. Temperature, the wind, silly things I never noticed annoyed you, and because I never noticed them in the first place it annoyed me when you got wound up by them.

7. Did I hurt you?
Yes. I'd never been in a relationship where my own failings were made so obvious to me, or where things I did wrong were such a big deal. It hurt that you managed to pin point specific areas where I had fucked up when we broke up, and finding out someone I loved could be like that was a shock to me.

8. Do you think I waited the appropriate amount of time to burp and/or fart in front of you?
Ummm, really? You burped within the first 20 minutes of us meeting the second time and pretty much every bodily function you can imagine became open territory pretty quickly, but that didn't really phase me. As I've already said - one of the best things was that we share the same philosophy on that sort of thing. You never once grossed me out and with only a few possible exceptions I never grossed you out. It made it easy to get along.

9. Did you ever entertain the idea of marrying me?
I've never been a person that plays the short game - I always look into the long term and if I can't see someone fitting into that I won't waste my time on a relationship with them. So sure, I toyed with the idea, in fact I took it quite seriously, but only because I believe heavily in self fulfilling prophecies and wanted to take our relationship in a way that might have made it last.

10. What did you learn from our relationship? How did the things you took with you influence your dating philosophy, if at all?
I learned to look after my own self interests more. I spent a lot of time worrying about you that turns out to have been wasted time. Since we broke up I've tried to be more interested in me, the result of which is that even though I won't go out of my way to do something nice for me instead of someone else, I will actually think about what will be best for me. My dating philosophy is unchanged - girlfriends should be a good thing, if they just hurt you or make you unhappy then it's a waste of time, but I'm more prepared to live by it now.