The Off Switch

A friend of mine was recently broken up with. They'd been together five years, and had been long-distance for six months when he phoned her one evening and called the whole thing off. Needless to say, she was devastated, but the thing that hurt the most was that when he returned home, he simply didn't want to see her. She didn't want him back, she just wanted closure, but it didn't matter--he wouldn't meet up with her. As she put it, "We spent our childhood together and it's like he came back and just didn't care about me at all."

We analysed it to pieces, as girls do, and came to the conclusion that a) he was afraid she would yell/cry/blame or b) he thought that she still wanted him back. But there was an option c. That he just didn't care about her at all.

It seems that men have an 'off' switch that just doesn't exist for women. They are able to break up and break away simultaneously, apparently unaffected by the guilt/fear/doubt that assails every woman I know post break-up. It seems inexplicable to us that we could simply stop caring about him simply because our intimate relationship is over. Yet men see the issue as black and white. "We're not dating, and I don't need any more friends," is how one male friend put it after he broke up with his girlfriend.

My last boyfriend was an old friend. We dated for a long time, and shared a common life--people, pubs, restaurants and memories. I tried for months afterwards to be friends only to be thwarted at every step by him. For me, it was crazy that here was a person whom I had once loved, who had loved me back, with whom I had planned to have children, who had been inside me, and yet, suddenly we simply stopped existing for one another?! The thought that one day, in the far distant future, we would meet by accident on a street and be complete strangers seemed unimaginable. And yet, this future wasn't nearly as horrific for him as it was for me.

This inability to switch off is also why women are so poor at casual sex. In Sex and the City, Samantha plays a vamp who has a different lover every episode, and yet, no woman I know identifies with her or wants to be her. This isn't because she's a slut--it's a show about sex and all four girls get around a fair bit--it's because she's so unemotional about her sexual encounters. It isn't plausible. I know plenty of girlfriends who've had one-night-stands and periods of casual sex, but both take their emotional toll, and neither are a way of life. And yet, men can carry this on for ages.

My theory is that as women, we have to be prepared to love the biggest ingrates of all--our children. We have to love them even if they're ugly, stupid, rude or simply adolescent. We have to love them. Men are our training ground. We have to be able to stay 'on' because if we switch off, then chances are, every teenager around will become mother-less.

I don't mean to suggest that men are cold-hearted, or lack the ability to love. I know plenty of excellent fathers, and yes, excellent boyfriends and husbands too. But that doesn't mean they don't have that 'off' button. They just choose to keep it on.