I have had enough

Down the pub with Vic and Wilma. Everything's fine. Back home Trina asks me if she was flirting with Vic. "Yes, you were." "What, obviously?" "Well, it doesn't matter. It's nice to be fancied." Then, somehow, the conversation leads me into saying that it wouldn't bother me if they went to bed together. She got all tearful, saying that I am heartless and don't care about her and so on, then stood up, went outside and got into her car, and at the back end of a bottle-and-a-half of wine, drove herself home.

I've seen all this so many times before I simply ignore her. This evening, three concilatory emails arrive. But I've had enough now.

I'm not sure .... I think we've tried this before and it always ends up the same way. I absolutely abhor and detest from the bottom of my soul, stomach and mind -- I cannot tell you how much -- all this endless drama, and it's bound to happen again. I really am way beyond the far, outermost limits of the amount of crisis and crying and teenagerisms that I can stand. I want an easygoing, carefree life and that's not going to happen with you I'm afraid, due to the irreconcilable imbalance in feeling. I'm acutely aware of my own mortality and to waste what little time I've got left on things that aren't enjoyable isn't attractive to me. I am very happy to be shallow and that's how I intend to run the rest of my life.

I can't be with anyone with whom I have to watch what I am saying. Women bang on about honesty then don't like it when they get it. This is why men sometimes think it's just easier, just to get a quiet life, to lie. You have also said some very unkind things to me over the past couple of years and whilst I am more than happy to be criticised, yours is not a helpful criticism that I can learn from. I am not interested in defending myself in the lunatic asylum that is your head, but I would just say, as a statement of fact, that I am anything but cold and heartless. Of all the things you've said to me, that's the one that comes closest to hurting me.

I am also tired of your relentless paranoia -- my "dirty little secrets" as you called it this morning. I have tried absolutely every trick I have to try to talk you out of this -- up to and including roping Chris in to make fake phone calls in order to make you see the funny side of it, but nothing works, and I'm out of ideas now.

So I think we should call it a day. I don't think you're ready for someone like me. I know how big-headed that sounds and it's not meant like that. I just mean we're at different stages of life. I feel like the older one sometimes. I know this will make you bridle but you need someone more conservative and staid who won't keep upsetting you, as I seem to do by dint of me being me.

You are a very kind, generous and funny girl and I've had some lovely times with you which I will remember fondly. But I am tired to the point of exhaustion with all this fucking discussion and meta-analysis of a life, rather than just enjoying it.

So --- moving on to practical things -- I'm definitely going to the do in St Annes on Saturday and if I see you there that would be fine. Given that I thought you weren't coming I've asked Italian Looking Woman and Wendy along. Wendy almost certainly won't be able to get a passport off her husband by then, and Italian Looking Woman's on a date with a new fella on Friday so won't be able to tell me till Saturday -- I think she's hoping it might turn into 48 hours in bed -- so if you'd like to go you take the hotel room, and whatever happens I'll find my own way back or Italian Looking Woman will drive.

Just now though, your cruel, heartless, unfeeling, and cold friend is off to bury some more of his dirty little secrets.