The ex-factor
As Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan vow ‘nothing has changed about how much we love one another,’ Caroline O’donoghue asks, can exes really be that close?
I HAVE A FRIEND who is best friends with her exboyfriend. And I mean best friends. He’s not someone she keeps pencilled in for a biannual pick-meup, to keep on her ego’s back-burner for compliments when required. They see each other every week, support one another warmly, and only occasionally reference their year-long relationship.
‘ What’s wrong with you?’ I screech. But she trots out the line about how she’s always loved his company and couldn’t bear the thought of losing such a good mate. ‘But he’s been inside you!’ I protest. ‘ You forget about all that,’ she insists. I wouldn’t. I know the approximate location of everyone I have ever slept with and, if they come within two miles of me, a cage falls on them and they’re shipped to Indonesia. At least, that’s a service I’d happily Kickstarter into existence. It’s nothing personal. Some of my exes are lovely men. Some of them are total aresholes, but, if we were to take a group average, they’re fine. I wish them well, but, simultaneously, I wish them to be well on a different planet to me.
Which is why I (and the internet) was flabbergasted when Step Up dream team Channing and Jenna Tatum became the latest Hollywood couple to split and declare themselves still ‘ best friends’. Their coordinated, pastel-hued, emoji-laden Insta statement vowed that ‘nothing has changed’. Except, it has: you’ve split up.
Meanwhile, the original conscious uncouplers, Gwyneth Paltrow and the ‘ brother’ she thanks for giving her children, Chris Martin, were out together again, forcing us all to consider how skin-crawling it must be to hang out with your ex and your current partner at the same time. Then there was Mandy and Stuart, ex-husband and wife, appearing on Channel 4’s First Dates together, telling their blind dates how well they still get on.
I don’t buy it. How are you supposed to carry on your first date when someone you shared a bath with is at the next table? Someone who once lost a condom inside you, and had to use his thumb and forefinger to get it out? You can’t be ‘ best friends’ with someone who – Christ alive – knows that you once threw a poo out the window, when it wouldn’t flush on the third, all-important, dinnerat-his-house date?
That’s the thing about being friends with exes. It’s not about the fights you had or the love you shared: it’s that they have seen the mangy, flea-bitten underside of your personality. When things are going well, you’re two stray dogs, nuzzling through life and navigating the world imperfectly, but together. When you’ve broken up, your flaws are cast in a new light: you’re the mongrel who chewed the curtains and pissed indoors. And it’s not cute to hang out with someone who remembers.