By James Morgan

 

One of things that inevitably happens during a relationship is the sharing of stuff. Typically this

includes clothes (mostly my jumpers I’ve found), money, music, food and a bunch of other bits and

pieces. In general I’d say this is a good thing as it creates a unity between the two parts; suddenly

you are a team with shared possessions as well as goals and dreams, not just two people having sex.

Of course there is the issue of what to do when the relationship ends, but this isn’t always that

troublesome and can frequently be solved by a brief and uncomfortable meeting in a coffee shop,

with a few bags getting passed over a cheap espresso and the odd dry muffin.

 

However, there are times when it can be much more complicated.

 

I spent the majority of my time at university in a relationship with a girl I was truly in love with, and

naturally we spent a large amount of time together. As well as doing half of the same degree as each

other, we had a lot of shared interests and as a result a huge number of mutual friends and people

that we had met at the same time, so it became slightly convoluted as to who was whose friend, and

who “belonged” to the other. At the time this was perfect, as it meant the standard issues of whose

crowd do we go out with tonight, or which friends do we need to spend more time with simply

didn’t exist. Sure, on top of all this, she ended up hoarding about five or six of my big hoodies and

cardigans, but that was hardly a problem (they always came back smelling super great!)

When things inevitably ended, it was incredibly messy and a pretty horrible period of both of our

lives, and after an elongated returning of stuff, the more complicated issue arose – who gets the kids

in the divorce?

 

Having studied the same degree, most of our course friends were entirely mutual, as well as a bunch

of others who we knew as a couple, so it wasn’t overly clear what to do. I’m not entirely sure how it

happened, but we kind of just split them down the middle in a way, and that was that. Some people

who I had shared hundreds of experiences with through my late teenage years were gone from my

life like a snap. Aas neither me nor my ex could be in the same room as each other, and with the

never ending bitching coming from both sides, no one could bare to spend time with both of us. It

perhaps wasn’t the only option we had, but with things as they were, and all the other poison in our

lives at the time, it’s simply how it was, and that was that.

 

This morning I found myself nipping into Oxford Street to get some last minute supplies before

coming back to the studio tomorrow, and decided to look through my phone book and see if anyone

was in the area or wanted a coffee. I came across a name I haven’t thought about in around four or

five years, a guy that was one of my closest friends in the first two years of university, but for the last

term I was essentially “not allowed to talk to”. We hadn’t spoken since.

 

Perhaps I was hurt that he had taken the side of the woman who had cheated all over me, or

perhaps it was simply I didn’t want to be reminded of the period of my life where I am genuinely

ashamed of how I behaved. It’s hard to say.

 

However I thought about the fact that I have recently been in lose communication with my devil

woman (every man has one, trust me) and things are pretty civil between us now and decided to

brush off my prior feelings and gave him a call.

 

We’re getting coffee next week.