Reasons Not To Love You

Let’s start with our monthly trip to the cinema. There we are, the second Tuesday of every month, standing outside the Odeon trying to decide what film to watch. After several minutes we come down to two choices. Something involving space-ships or something involving flowers. And I hate space-ships and you hate flowers. So we bicker for a couple more minutes till one of use concedes. That’s why I don’t love you, because you don’t like flowers.

There are other reasons too. Going for a meal is almost as problematic as going to the cinema. Once I looked up the number of restaurants in our town. Fifty-Seven. That’s just in the town centre, taking the town as a whole there are more than one hundred. You would think that with so many we could find one between us we liked but no. I have my favourites and you have yours and now we are forced to travel to new towns in a forlorn attempt to find somewhere we both may agree on.

Two hundred and seventy-one take-aways, I looked that up too, yet a night in for us involves having to go to two different take-aways because I can’t abide the prawn toast from ‘The Oriental’ and you dislike the crispy duck from ‘The Cultural Revolution’. A fifteen mile round journey just to get something to eat. That’s another reason not to love you – our relationship increases global warming.

The dress you bought on holiday last year? I think it’s awful; but every time you wear it I have to say how pretty you look. That’s reason number three - you make me have to lie.

Reason number four involves a confession. That statue I bought your mother for her birthday? I always knew she would hate it but I gave it to her just so it would have to be on display every time we visited The sight of the tearful, glass, clown juggling balls on her mantelpiece looking so miserable and out of place always made me smile inside. There it is then. Reason number four. I hate myself for playing tricks on your mother.

Is there a fifth reason? Of course.

Sometimes you have a bad day and I listen you, and support you, and put my arms around you. I do these things because you do the same for me, because the bond between us is so close only we can do this for each other.

It shouldn’t be like that. You shouldn’t rely on someone as insensitive and uncaring as me. You need to be with someone who likes the same films, the same food, and everything else. Somebody with who you don’t have to compromise. Which leads me onto the fifth reason. I don’t love you because I’m lazy, because I just want to lead a simple life without the heights when you whisper gently in my ear and without the lows when I bring you the crispy duck from ‘The Cultural Revolution’ by mistake.

There are my reasons not to love you. I have another list, a secret list, which details the reason why I should love you. A catalogue that contains ‘we like different things’, ‘you’re nothing like your mother’, and ‘the feeling I get when I help you glide out of your dress’.

Maybe I should keep both lists. Add to them as time goes on. But I can’t continue like this, torn between the numbness of separation and the sharpness of our relationship. I can’t take any more cuts. I don’t want to force you to make more concessions.

The list I’m keeping is the reasons not to love you. In years to come I will check it, remind myself of the decision I made, convince myself it was the right thing to do. I suggest you do the same.