The Ex-factor

If you ever want to be reminded of why you broke up with someone simply talk to them for 5 minutes and the reasons become painfully familiar. For some reason I spent most of the day thinking about my dreaded ex in a positive light. Ok, full disclosure the reason I've been thinking fondly of him is because he texted me out of the blue on Saturday to give me his new cell phone number. The nostalgic part of me believed that he did this because he still cares about me and wants to stay in touch with me. Thinking this way actually made me smile. The realistic part of me knows that he did it because he wants to stay in touch with me in case he wants something from me.

After getting this magical text, I decided to ask him a work related question. I had to get some information about some free resources for the public to use in a town he used to live in as we have potential applicants there. I thought this would be the gateway to a real meaningful conversation but alas it was not. I asked him the question and he gave me two responses one of them a possible good lead and the other was so completely ridiculous I honestly thought he was joking. Unfortuantely he was not. He truly believed he was being helpful. He went on to offer another vague suggestion and I was more than ready to end our brief electronic reunion. I said ok to his first response but I didn't even acknowledge his second one.

How could I have forgotten that he usually is not helpful at all? I can always count on him to do the bare minimum. It reminded me of a time when I asked him a health realted question that I thought he would know the answer to since he was so obessed with physical fitness. All he did was put it into an online search engine and told me what it said. Wow, like I didn't think of doing that myself. He is the self-proclaimed master of everything but he gets 5% of his knowledge from life experience and 95% of his information from google. This means that he is wrong 95% of the time. The other 5% I think ends up being a lucky guess or information from reliable gossip contacts.

Not to fret my friends I am now seeing him clearly and celebrating the fact that I no longer speak to him on a regular basis. The problem is, there is still a chance that I will fall into bad place down the road even briefly when I will again feel like maybe we could work something out. I will agree to go to dinner with him and then before we have even finished our appetizers I will be reminded of why we are not meant to be and then have to decide if I have the strength to put down some money and leave early or stay and end up doing something I'll regret just so I won't be lonely for the night. This is what I like to call the ex-factor....well myself and Lauyrn Hill. He'll want to be with me for the night but be frightened in the morning because it will feel too much like committment but then a few days later he may want a listening ear to vent his frustrations to so he'll call his faithful standby.....me. At least I have my freedom and the sense to know that I will likely always be much smarter than him. Don't judge me every small victory counts!