History is not over

Hello, remember me? Single mother. Obsessive. Spends inordinate amounts of time online. Used to have a husband, now has an ex-husband and a boyfriend. Nice to see you again.

I was prompted into action by anonymous who asked, perfectly reasonably, whether this blog had ended. Mainly, I suspect, because I haven't written anything for nearly 6 weeks. I'm hoping the answer to that question is no, because I am immensely fond of this blog and like showing off. There are many reasons why I haven't written much recently: I have been busy with an actual human being on many evenings when otherwise I would be home alone loafing about the net, I have had a promotion at work and have been doing actual work, I had the dreaded school inspectors in a couple of weeks ago and I got an iPhone. Now that I have my iPhone I have very little reason to ever fire up my laptop as I can satiate my net addiction with virtually no effort and that gorgeous slidy interface makes typing seem, well, clunky.

But I think there's another reason that I haven't been blogging. And it's that I have something precious with my boyfriend that I worry about analysing. I don't really want him to see our relationship held up to the internet's light and checked for holes and stains. I enjoy the sense of being a new person with him and try not to allow to much of my previous life to sully that. I learnt the hard way with my ex about the dangers of being too upfront about one's past. I think the 'more than Princess Diana, fewer than Madonna' answer is the way to go. Forever my ex was haunted by the spectres of other men who, in his perception, I compared him to. I didn't. Well, not much. Ok, not every day. All right, I did.

And I do compare my new boyfriend to my ex. There are some similarities: I think people have a type, even if it's unconscious. For example, the first time we woke up together I had a jolt when I looked across and saw my ex-husband's tattoo - they both have the same football club tattooed in the same way on the same shoulder. There are differences: my boyfriend is taller than me and, whilst I didn't acknowledge it, I was self-conscious about being taller than my ex-husband. My boyfriend is part of a huge group of friends and my ex wasn't (this should have been a warning sign...) My boyfriend and I are about the same level of personal attractiveness and according to psychologists this is an important factor in human attraction. Finally, this time I've met someone secure and well-balanced and uncomplicated. And when you've got that you don't want to complicate matters by bleating on about it online.

Whoops, too late.