‘What do you mean, your ex-ex-boyfriend is still living with his ex-girlfriend?’ said my friend Sarah, pulling a disgusted face. To summarise the many questions that followed, this bosom buddy of mine dared to ask me to explain why I was now referring to The Builder as my ‘ex-ex-boyfriend’, and why said ex-ex-boyfriend was still living with the girlfriend he was going out with before he met me. Talk about impertinent.
Sometimes my married friends give me absolutely no leeway for how complicated modern romance is. They have no idea what singletons have to cope with in this godless age. The last time they were single, women used to be ‘courted’ or go on ‘dates’, or get ‘marriage proposals’.
Nowadays, romance is a jungle, a war zone, a no-man’s-land strewn with moral boundaries and broken-hearted people panting from the effort of crossing lines they swore they never would.
Naturally, as any other singleton will understand, I don’t want to call someone with whom I have rekindled a defunct relationship ‘my boyfriend’ because that would be humiliating.
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