Enough.

Posted by Lucy Robinson at 01:06 on 23 Jan 2010

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Interesting responses this week my friends, interesting responses.

I wasn't ever going to send the email - I wrote it more for my amusement - but just for a moment, your endorsements made me actually toy with the idea. You've got a point; it would have been funny to imagine him reading and then re-reading with a growing fury.  

But I didn't, of course. The man is mad as a box of frogs and it would only have triggered a further storm. (The storm is quite bad enough, thank you.)

I did email back, briefly, to officially ask him to stop contacting me. I thought that if this ever turned into a proper David Walliams-style stalking episode then I wanted it to go on record that I did formally request that he leave me alone. (I love how in my head this has already got to court.) His interpretation of my request, needless to say, was to step up his stalking effort. Several times in the last few days I have woken up in the middle of the night to the sound of the nokia tune and it's bloody horrible! I think, just to make these unwelcome intrusions a little less scary, I'm going to have to download a Barry White ringtone to loosen things up.   

I must say, I do think women get a bit of a rum deal when it comes to breakups. It's generally accepted that we are completely insane and that our default behaviour is to call our ex after a bottle of rhubarb schnapps (or whatever's at the back of our cupboard) and beg him to take us back.

But I think that most men are just as bad.

For example, when I was 24 I split up with a nice chap called Neil. His response was to get a taxi to Old Street and smoke a crack pipe in a telephone box. I can assure you that Neil was not the type to smoke crack. In a telephone box, in a crack den, even in the comfort of his own home.

Then there's my friend Sarah whose ex, D1, has been trying to get her back for nearly two years. His favourite trick is to track her down, stand with his face really close to hers and arrange his features into a look of pantomimic wretchedness. Stroking her hair tragically he will then murmur things like "I don't understand this new boyfriend of yours. Why are you doing this? I think we should have a baby. Stop playing around, let's get pregnant."

Or there's my friend Katherine, who dumped Mal because he had cheated on her throughout their relationship. Mal had even gone to the exceptional lengths of getting the other girl pregnant.  So Katherine gritted her teeth, dumped him, and promptly moved to Manchester to start a new life. Mal found her new address and spent several thousand pounds having flowers delivered every day for weeks. She stood firm: he had cheated on her incessantly. And so his next tack was to sell his house, give his dogs and cats away, quit his job and MOVE TO MANCHESTER. Where he didn't know anyone other than Katherine, who was not even talking to him. If she ever got tricked into speaking to him, he dropped his voice dramatically and told her that he thought he was dying. I don't know why I've written that in past tense; he's still at it.

And of course there's my friend Cass, who was involved with a banker  - of decidedly average aesthetic appeal -  until recently. She dumped him because a) he was boring and b) he kept spanking her. His response to this was to tell her that men like him who are attractive and well-off  have no trouble finding women. But for single girls in their 30s it's REALLY HARD to find someone. She would deeply regret this decision, he told her. Cass just laughed and told him to leave; he then called and texted her incessantly just to let her know that he didn't want to see her again.

Shall I carry on...?! 

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