He's the perfect catch, but he's my ex

“I can’t believe what he’s done!” Jennifer fumes so loudly into my cell phone that I have to hold it a few inches away.
“Who? What?”
“My ex! He took his new girlfriend away for a week to Cinqe Terra, the place I’d been after him for years to take me to. I’m so mad!”
“Isn’t that just like him,” I say in empathy. “So spiteful.”
“And he just hosted a huge dinner party that he actually catered! He never did that with me. And they ate at the French Laundry! I can’t stand that he’s having so much fun!”
Then, after a tearful pause, “I just didn’t think he’d be partnered before me.”
Jennifer is facing the cold reality that eventually every divorcee faces. I call it Ex Envy.
He’s got a new girlfriend who’s younger, shapelier and blonder than you; he’s finally lost the 15 pounds you never complained about but secretly wished he’d shed; he’s given up channel surfing for actual surfing ... as well as tennis and salsa classes; he’s reading things other than TV Guide and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; he’s going to see theater other than your children’s school play; and he’s traded in the baggy, crack-revealing Levi’s for $200 Rock & Republic jeans.
In other words, he’s become a catch.
Just like our children — after all those years of us helping them, guiding them, shaping them, at some point, it’s payoff time. Except with the ex, some other woman is reaping all the spoils.
Really, is this fair?
“If he’d only done those things when we were married, I wouldn’t have divorced him!” sniffs Anna, whose former hubby never seemed to find a decent job while they were married but is now wildly successful and earning big bucks.
Why is it that the ex becomes (almost) everything you wish he’d been when you were married after you’ve split? And it’s not that you want to be back with him; it’s just that you didn’t really expect him to enjoy life so much without you.
Like Rob, my former hubby of 15 years. He’s been seeing Tina (a nice gal but, you know, six years older than I am) for almost three years. His career’s taken off, he’s taken up tennis and ballroom dancing, he weekends in Tahoe and the Wine Country and even drives into San Francisco to dine at fancy restaurants — things I could never get him to do.
Of course, there are two ways to look at this. The one I prefer is that he realizes the many mistakes he made with me and finally understands that he’ll have to be a more active, engaging and exciting partner if he wants to keep an active, engaging and exciting woman.
The other way of looking at it is just too horrible to acknowledge: That he’s always wanted to do those things, it’s just that he didn’t want to do them with me.
“Do you think Rob will marry Tina?” Jennifer asks me as we sip our cappuccinos at a cozy corner table at Caffe Trieste, eyeing the tight spandex butts of the bicyclists hanging around.
“Are you kidding?” I say, feeling pretty smug. “He’s getting sex whenever he wants it, he only has the kid every other week and he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants to. Why in the world would he want to mess that up by getting married? He’s finally gotten what he’s always wanted — freedom.”
“What if he did? Would you be jealous?”
“No way. I never think about him in that way.”
But as I answer, I thought of friends whose former hubbies had recently gotten engaged or married. Even through they can’t even imagine being back with their exes (some can’t even imagine being in the same room), they confessed that it was hard not to be emotional, no matter how conflicted their relationships with them were. Mostly because they compared his life with theirs. He found love, she didn’t, and what was up with that?
I like to see myself as a “good” ex — not jealous, revengeful or bitter — but I wondered: Would I feel the same?
I needed empirical evidence, so I tested myself on www.blogthings.com/whattypeofexareyouquiz. My results: “You’re so over your ex, you hardly even remember you have an ex. You prefer to leave all of the baggage behind you — far, far behind. As they say, indifference is the opposite of love!”
Excuse me while I gloat.
Actually, I really am happy for Rob, and as long as Tina is nice to our son Trent, all’s fine. I admit it took me some time to get used to the idea that he could be so happy without me. Sometimes, when I’m veering dangerously close to a “woe-is-me” mode — Trent’s in full-on teenage hormonal angst and sassing back, the paycheck’s not enough to cover any extras and the credit card’s maxed, the dating thing is just not happening — I look at how things have turned out and think, “This is not my beautiful life.”
I know Rob’s life isn’t perfect either, and yet he has, at the very least, a relationship that appears loving.
But I never once want to go back to Rob or the life we had.
Because it isn’t just ballroom dancing, Wine Country jaunts and fine San Francisco dining that make a relationship, just as surely as the channel-surfing, extra pounds and ill-fitting clothes didn’t tear it apart.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards, Benjamin Franklin advised, to which I’d add: “And, after divorce, focus on something else — like yourself and your kids — and never look back.”