Another one bites the dust

Alas, The Artist and I have split up.

Trying to keep the flame alive for the past 3 or 4 months solely by e-mail and telephone had been a frustrating, failing effort - and when we finally met face to face again, well, it didn't take us long to realise that our 'compatibility' was much less than we had fondly been trying to persuade ourselves it was.

Unspeakably bad timing, of course, that I should have to fly to the UK just as she was finally about to rejoin me in The Unnameable Country. Bad timing too that we should be trying to cement the relationship when I am so preoccupied with family problems, so overwhelmed by grief.

Even so, it was something of a shock that things should fall apart within the space of a single weekend. Even in my abysmal 'dating history', that has to be a new low.

Of course, one expects a certain amount of studied eccentricity in creative types, and a broad streak of egocentricity also. I've gone out with enough writers, actresses, musicians to know this only too well. Hell, it is a large part of what attracts me to them. I often find the former quite charming; and can usually at least tolerate the latter. However, I had been hoping - had somehow convinced myself - that The Artist was more down-to-earth, less complicated, less bloody 'challenging' than all of those past romantic interests; less likely to tie my heart in knots than the two Great Loves of my life, The Poet and The Evil One. But it seems I was WRONG. She suddenly revealed this previously unsuspected propensity to downright oddness, which - at least in my current state of emotional exhaustion - I found it quite impossible to cope with. Sigh.

When I whinged to a confidante the other day that I had been surprised and disappointed to discover that The Artist was "95% absolutely lovely but about 5% flaming neurotic", I received the withering response: "It's called being a woman." And before any (either?) of my readers berate me for the possible misogyny of that remark, I hasten to point out that it was my sister-in-law who said this (with a winning combination of mockery and sympathy that very few people can pull off). Am I really too impatient of that little vein of madness that we are all striped with? Perhaps I am, perhaps I am....

Anyway, I think we're both relieved to have wriggled out of the relationship before we got too emotionally invested in it. I hope we can remain friends. (We'd better be able to - since my home, The Unnameable City, is a very small world at times: especially in expat circles, and especially in 'young, free, and single' expat circles!) She is a fascinating and talented woman, and I am very glad to have known her.

Heavens, though, it would be nice, one day, to achieve a cosy and settled relationship with someone. Or at least to find someone capable of doling out sympathetic hugs at the right moment. It doesn't seem like so very much to ask.