I am as emotionally mature as a fruit fly. I have lost friends, alienated people, slept with those I shouldn’t, and yet there is one relationship of which I am very proud; I am still friends with my ex-boyfriend.
In fact, to call him my friend barely scratches the surface. I think it would be fair to say that in many ways, my ex-boyfriend is my best friend. The man with whom I spent my twenties, moved to London and then broke up with during what I call the panic years, is still the one I turn to for advice, company, protection and comfort. A few months after we broke up, he was the one who drove 30 miles to sit with me in hospital as my grandmother died. Three years after we separated, he was the one I would visit in the middle of the day, deranged with sleep deprivation, when I needed someone else to hold my infant son. And now, nearly a decade since we decided not to be together anymore, he was the maid of honour at my wedding. Actually, there is no official title for an ex-boyfriend at a wedding. Strangely. So instead of maid of honour, I went for “lad of honour”.
I didn’t go to his wedding, a few years prior, but only because he got married in New York, with no guests; he lined up at City Hall with just his wonderful, beautiful, talented fiancé and did it the old-fashioned way. That’s the thing about my ex; he is cool. They had planned to have a party back here in the UK, at which, no doubt, I would have danced like a lunatic and told everyone how proud I was – but then the pandemic hit and my dancing shoes stayed under the stairs. Talking of dancing, it was my ex-boyfriend who DJed at my wedding. During the day, he played a long mix of Fela Kuti, as guests sweated beside the river in 35 degree heat. During the speeches, he made sure everyone could hear the microphones. And as the sun went down, and I changed into my handmade nudie suit – decorated with hearts, flowers and my husband’s initials – the first boyfriend I ever lived with played banger after banger after banger.
“I spent large parts of the event worrying I was going to play a song that made you cry,” he admits, when I ask him about what it was like to be so involved in his ex’s wedding. But I didn’t. And he didn’t. And nor, as far as I know, did anybody else – apart from the babies, who cried just the perfect amount. What actually happened was that I had a man, who had watched me slide and thump around dance floors from Leeds to London for 10 years, play some of the songs that could rip through me like a time machine and return me to some of the happiest times of my life. That’s the thing about having your ex in your life – just like a partner, sibling or a childhood friend – they are a repository for your past. They keep burning the fire of who you once were and act like a huge, spectacle-wearing hard drive for all the important moments that might otherwise slide out of reach.
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Nell with her ex-boyfriend – now one of her closest friends.
He will remember the route by which we first cycled from Hackney to Southend; he will recall what I ate the day I got my degree results; he will know the name of our old landlord and how long it took me to make a Little Nell Halloween costume and what we listened to on the drive down to Cornwall for our first holiday. A decade on from breaking up, he is now, essentially, an extra member of my family; he knows the names of all my cousins, where my mum grew up, what time we eat dinner and how I feel about Christmas. Finally, he is, to a greater or lesser extent, an instruction manual for my contentment. When I have argued with my husband or am feeling hopeless with work or worrying about my friendships, he is there to remind me of what I’m like, when this has happened before, what helped the last time.
It should be said, of course, that most of the success of our post-break-up relationship is thanks to him. I don’t have this harmony with everyone I have been involved with. He is a rare person – thoughtful, practical, funny and as direct as he is kind. I adore his wife – who, amazingly, painted us a landscape for our wedding present. My mum adores his wife. My sister and father and son all love spending time with them as a couple, and she is also, to a huge extent, to thank for helping me and her husband stay friends. My husband, too, has been supportive of our friendship. In fact, the two of them have their own friendship, separate to me. They’ve even been to watch football podcasts get recorded together. When we broke up, I didn’t look back at the years we spent together as a waste of time or a failure of judgment; it didn’t make me doubt my impression of him. It was just a change in our relationship.
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