By Mrs Moneypenny
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Breaking up is never much fun, even though these days there are lots of different ways to do it. Take Cost Centre #1, for instance. A few weeks ago he finished with his girlfriend. He did at least do this by telephone, rather than by e-mail or (worse still) text message. But having put down the telephone, he went straight on to the internet, and altered her official status on his Facebook page.
Apparently this relayed the news automatically to everyone linked to his page as a “friend” – some 300 people.
I have to say it makes me glad my teenage dating took place in the pre-internet years. It is bad enough to be handed your P45, but far worse to have 300 people notified of the fact within 30 minutes.
Anyway, CC#1 is now single, or, as his Facebook page says, “not currently in a relationship”.
The Lovely Lucinda is also not currently in a relationship. This is not because she is working so hard for me, what with having to pay my congestion charge and recover my laptop from taxis. It is not even because she is spending so many evenings on her course in bridal flower arranging. In fact I am not sure why LL is single, since she is very beautiful, gracious and kind, and delightful company. While she has been working for me, she has had at least two reasonably serious relationships, but neither of them has come to much.
Like many, if not most, of my single girlfriends, she has also tried internet dating with mixed success. Recently, irritated with her lack of progress in finding someone to marry, she took a week off work and registered with a very upmarket dating agency. Did it need a week? LL tells me that it was a very long and detailed process, with lots of form-filling and an extensive interview.
To me that sounds more like a VAT inspection than a process likely to end in matrimony, but what do I know?
I married a man I met through being randomly seated next to him on a flight – which is as close to computer dating as I was likely to get.
LL also had to write a thumping great cheque to the dating agency. This, I was told, represented a serious investment. Sacrifices would have to be made.
But then LL hit on a novel way of paying for the dating agency. A few weeks earlier, she had bumped into her first husband at some party or other. Yes, LL had a starter marriage. I have never inquired into the causes of its demise but it seems to have been reasonably amicable, although she had not seen the chap for five years. He, though, clearly remains very fond of LL, asking after her wellbeing and wondering whether there was anything he could do for her.
Put on the spot, she couldn't think of anything. (That's the difference between us. Should any ex-boyfriend ask me that question, I would think instantly of a list of things starting with a grouse moor and ending with a Hermes scarf.) But after thinking about it for a few days, LL rang her old flame and told him that, yes, there was something he could do. Would he please pay the bill for the dating agency?
This doesn't seem unreasonable to me. As her first husband isn't going to be the person to father LL's children and take care of her for the next 40 years or so, he could at least help to find someone else to do the job. Indeed, such a practice could even become a new kind of outplacement. Every divorcée should be offered this service – along with anyone in a long-term relationship when it comes to an end.
I can see great potential in this. LL inadvertently may have hit on a very practical solution to (a) the guilt of the departing party and (b) the problem of being put on the secondary market and having to find someone new.
Incidentally, her former husband agreed to her request immediately, took her out to dinner last week and handed over the cash. I shall keep you posted.
So perhaps CC#1 should have offered to pay for his girlfriend to join an internet dating service by way of helping her with her outplacement? Maybe. Though telling 300 Facebook friends that he has broken up with her amounts to pretty much the same thing.
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