Deja vu all over again

I'm back from Perth - I had such a good time! Unfortunately the same dreary feeling descended upon my return; I felt like this when I came back from interstate last time as well. It seems that the further removed from the wretched "situation" I am, the better I am. So Thailand should be a perfect tonic based on that theory, right?

A and C (the friends I stayed with in Perth) were so great. They'd actually talked between themselves quite a bit about me and my problems, and they are a bit older and wiser which always seems to help. A and I chatted about it for quite a while today before I left. She thinks that at least a very significant proportion of the breakup was due to what she calls "Exam Psychosis"; she and C both did their exams last year and she says that at times she really didn't think that they'd make it, and perhaps in hindsight one thing that helped save them was that "divorce is so messy"! This is hard to believe, looking at them now - they are such a balanced, healthy, functional couple and it's difficult to see them ever having such difficult times.

But their experience - and that of their friends, and of mine - is that it really is that bad, and that it does destroy people and their relationships. In the end it still doesn't matter, because it doesn't change where I am right now. For what it's worth, A thinks that when the whole exam thing is over, and after the post-exam traumatic stress, he will think about this and he will realise one day that it was Exam Psychosis that led to the split - and that by then it will be too late. This is probably true, if he ever does have that epiphany, which I actually don't think he will. He is so good at pushing things he doesn't want to think about to the back of his mind - as I found out so recently - that I don't think he'll ever get to the stage of processing it to that degree. Plus, he will probably start his next relationship before the exams are even over - "just pragmatically", of course! - so there's some more processing killed.

And in any case, as I have known all along - even if he did come to see that he made the wrong choice, I don't see how it could work ever again, even if I really wanted it to. I can't see how any amount of counselling, any amount of talking and discussing and confiding, could possibly make me believe that anything had really changed. When I have those down evenings, I want the old future back, not a new one in which all of this has happened. Even if he came back and said, "I was wrong", what would I do? I think I'd probably say, "Prove it". And how can someone do that?

Anyway, his last email was just recycling the same old shit that he was spouting back in the first week after the relationship, so to imagine he will ever think it through to the extent that I have seems just a tad unrealistic.