The Lunch Report: The X Lunch

Today I lunched with my romantic past. Yup, I lunched with an ex-boyfriend (“X”), and not even one who had been particularly kind (there’s a reason I nicknamed him the “Evil Englishman”). Feminists across NYC are sighing in disappointment.

The most daring aspect is that I chose to lunch with him when I was not only NOT on top of my game , but well below it (no prospects sniffing around AND I had a bad hair cut last week). I have seen several issues of Cosmopolitan magazine warning against such reckless behavior, but curiosity got the better of me.*

By way of prologue, X and I dated 14 years ago and not for very long (yet still too long). We weren’t very good at the whole moving on thing. So, for at least 10 years, we teased, tortured, and gently manipulated each other when it suited our lonely, malicious, and ambivalent instincts. We acted out anger, projected fantasies and deliberately created discomfort in each other. All in all, it was far more effective than 10 years with any NYC psychiatrist could have been, and it cost less.

During that decade, I limped through various stages of romantic withdrawal and recovery, including fantasizing about his untimely death, daydreaming about our eventual reunion, declaring stoically, if not melodramatically, my acceptance of our inability to ever communicate again, and imagining the award-winning prose that all of the foregoing would inspire. In retrospect, there wasn’t sufficient material for a made-for-TV program.

It has been three years since X and I last lunched. Since then I've “lateraled” to a new firm (particularly apt here, as the change feels more like random sidewise motion than the upward career movement I’d intended) and the Crisis has thwarted his determined ascent to the pinnacle of the Morgan Stanley management hierarchy.*

Would he show up with a ring on his finger? Would he make a pass at me? Would I want him to? As it turns out, no, no and another no.

When organizing lunch, I’d anticipated a cataclysmic encounter—a lunch that would immediately illuminate for me what a dysfunctional person I’d grown to be, galvanize me from my underachieving stupor and prompt me to make something of myself. Or a lunch that would remind me with brutally fresh evidence what a malevolent ne'er do well he had always been.

I must have ordered the wrong thing on the menu, either today or 14 years ago, because I got none of that. I had a pleasant lunch with an agreeable Englishman. I basked slightly in X’s compliments, but there was no drama, not even an inkling of dramatic tension.

With mild irony I realized that X, the same quietly ambitious guy who lectured me 14 years ago that a man defines himself exclusively through his career achievements, was now telling me that he was not where he wanted to be professionally, this was okay, and one should never assess oneself solely from the narrow perspective of career success. By his account, X is in a good relationship, which has either matured his perspective or dulled his ambition (I used to think the two were the same).

After his conversational effort—a marked improvement from the grunts of 14 years ago (with the British accent, the grunts sounded melodic back then)—I obediently chattered about myself. We debated whether I should pour all my energy into furthering my career/ financial provider status and whether I could ever have borne a full time schedule of "domestic shit" (his sarcastic parlance for being a wife and mother). Apparently he didn’t see many other life possibilities.

We agreed I could never have done the domestic shit full time, nor could I have been fulfilled squeezing my entire identity into a provider role. Based on various hopelessly tangible criteria (current job, past schooling, golf handicap and weight) he insisted my life was great. I protested. There had to be something much more than the tasks and interactions that defined my current life. He agreed. We decided we would have drinks again in 10 years (no compelling need, from my perspective, to meet any sooner).

I pray by then I have found much more, and that by then my portfolio of ex- (or current) boyfriends reflects a bit more imagination and insight.

Cost: $0. When learning I earned approximately one fifth of what X earns in a year, X could not bear making the working poor contribute a dime. What a great guy.

Notes
*I also ignored the myriad websites offering guidance on what to wear when seeing an ex-boyfriend. See, eg, What to Wear to See Your Ex-Boyfriend, http://www.marieclaire.com/fashion/tips/what-to-wear/fashion-ex

*Although senior managing director for a decade hardly suggests a stalled career, it’s not enough if you are eyeing John Mack’s job. Like X, Mack (president and CEO at various points in MS’s history) started as a bond trader.