Relationships with an ex It’s complicated!

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Relationships with an ex It’s complicated!
March 18, 2010 |15:59 | Love Relationship By : Team X


If you are having one of those days when everything in the world seems to be against you, and things just keep getting worse, then read this. You are not alone. Last weekend I had one of those awful weekends, that just got worse. It started with Friday night. I had dinner with my ex. Brought back so many memories of our times together, and we got on really well…The chemistry was still there too. Got home and the people below my flat were holding an all-night party.

There is an annoying young guy who has moved in to the rented apartment, who clearly has little money to go out, so his social life consists of throwing parties in his house. What he doesn’t realise is that my flat is directly above his party parlour. So, I got home, from a most enjoyable night out laden avec chemistry, to music blasting and thumping through my floor and about 20 loud voices and shouting…

I could hear word for word what they were saying: they all sounded stoned, as most of what they were saying was rubbish (yet they found it fascinating, were obsessed with mundane subjects and kept repeating themselves.) This continued until 4.30am. I only slept for three hours. The following day at work was pretty bad as I had had no sleep…

I was planning on leaving early and sleeping, but my editor called a meeting out of the blue…In it he told me I had to interview Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra about their new nightclub in Mumbai. I had been trying to get this story all week, to no avail and then we discovered the club was opening that night. I realised there was no option but to go to the club to meet them. I was so tired and sleep deprived….but had no choice..So I put on a black sequin dress, evening bag and heels.

It was the first time I had met Shilpa and Raj in person – weird given my last memory of Shilpa was watching her on Big Brother in the UK. She looked stunning (one of the film stars that is actually beautiful in real life - not all are) and Raj looked cool and casual…(They were so friendly – and they personally showed me proudly around their club, which was amazing. I chatted to Karan Johar and Kabir Bedi as wellJ) Anyway Sunday I had to work as the story on Royalty opening was our cover in HT…I had little sleep on Saturay night.By Sunday night I had a splitting headache…Lying on my bed I was so tired, I was unable to sleep…The phone rang. It wasn’t a hot Indian man. It was my Dad. “What day is it?” he asked. “Sunday” I said. “You’ve forgotten” he said. I had forgotten Mother’s Day… …It was too late to arrange flowers. I spoke to my mum and apologised…My tiredness was so bad I had to take sleeping tablets.

Monday morning I woke up groggy, got to work only to be shouted out by one of my bosses …I felt exhausted all day and fed up. Wondered whether I should give up journalism. My head spun and spun. That night I couldn’t face the gym, my cats weren’t really going to give me the company I needed, so I figured a chick flick was the only solution. I checked the websites and the choices were Karthik Calling Karthik (what is it about?), My Name is Khan (Asperger’s illness? Not too interesting) and 3 Idiots (comedy?) oh and Right Yaa Wrong (courtroom drama?Umm, not going to give me the self-indulgence I require )None of them fulfilled my needs. Then I spotted It’s Complicated. Director Jag Mundhra had recommended it in Masters Choice in HT Café at the weekend and it sounded perfect. Why doesn’t Bollywood have chick flicks like this?… It’s Complicated did not disappoint. If you want to feel better about life, watch it. It’s about an ageing divorced woman who has a barren love and sex life who’s husband has remarried a younger woman… (so already most woman will feel better. There is one thing that will always make you feel better when you feel down, that is someone who’s having a worse breakup/marriage/divorce/life/boss than you…I love telling people about some awful experience I’ve been through, for them to say “Oh that’s nothing..I ..can give some even more horrific example of an ex boyfriend’s behaviour, or whatever. Nothing more annoying than someone that says sweetly “Oh that’s never happened to me”..)…Anyway so I had a chocolate Yule cake (they have a Xmas menu for some reason at Costa) and cappuccino , then bought a frappe and went inside the cinema and sat next to an Indian family spread over eight seats. I already felt great.

In the film the character, played by Meryl Streep, has a bitter relationship with her ex. But then 10 years after the diovorce a series of events lead to her becoming a goddess in his eyes (!) and they end up having an affair (even though they are divorced.) What they discover is that the sex is better between them now they are not stuck in the routine of marriage…and the chemistry is back and their relationship rocks.

The man also realizes he is really into her for her cooking, her maturity and admits he is unhappy with the young bimbo he has married …I just love this concept of a divorced couple having an affair with each other 10 years later!..The film explores the familiarity they have, they reminisce over the good times they once spent together, and it’s just awesome watching their romance click again.

They have secret rendezvous in hotels…. (I know it’s adultery, so it’s morally wrong…Or is it? Technically only he is committing adultery, she isn’t, but then she was his first wife….so is it adultery? The film shows how human relationships are more complex than we realise… )

What’s sweet about the film is how much the man realises he misses his first wife and how unhappy he is in his new set up with a young wife and a young screaming kid and how the new wife is even forcing him to clinically produce sperm in a bottle as he has to undergo IVF. It also has some really funny lines. Priceless ones. Do Bollywood films get this funny? I can’t judge, as my Hindi isn’t good enough to compare.

The message of the film was that sometimes you never really get over an ex and the feelings always remain, even if you pretend you are over them. That was the exact message of the play Some Girls, directed by Nadir Khan, that I saw at the Prithvi Theatre.

In that a man delves back into his little black book and meets a load of women he once dated and discover they all still harbour feelings for him and remember the tiniest of episodes. I guess if you did have genuine feelings for your ex, then you will still have them after a split up, but if you never did, then you won’t..And there is nothing wrong with getting back together..After all, staying with someone can become routine.

Sometimes a break or a split is all that is needed to inject romance back into a relationship. Why slog away in a dying relationship?. Some people cut themselves off from their ex’s once a relationship is over, pretending they don’t exist, but this film proved that is a bad move…Why cut people out of your life that have played such important roles in it?….

If you knew you had a week to live, would you still keep that person out of your life or would you ring them and make up with them? Take my advice! If you are having problems in a relationship, or just want some great girlie escapism like I did, go watch this film.