Forbidden Fruits

To date or not to date? That is the question...

Okay so Shakespeare may not have had that exact scenario in mind at the time but Romeo and Juliet and Othello certainly proved the bard himself knew plenty on the topic of forbidden love. So has anything changed? Is it really still a taboo to hit on or be hit on by your ex-partners’ best friend, brother, sister, work mate, postman or personal trainer? Should there really be an unspoken law that states anyone associated with you or your partner is out of bounds after you are broken up?

Well, for the betterment of human knowledge and our mild amusement, we dragged the RHP science boffins out of the closet to conduct another of our cutting edge surveys. Not to be outdone by issues of global warming we asked; ‘Have you ever had a partner run off with your best friend, sibling or work mate?’

To our surprise the results actually did shock us:

Survey: My partner hooked up with my:

57% Best friend
28% Brother/sister
33% Work mate

Of course whether your choice in partner is worse than your choice in friends is yet to be decided, but this month we wanted to broach both the pros and the cons of finding yourself or your ex falling for someone you both know well.

CONS

Well I don’t suppose there is too much argument that there are a plethora of cons that spring to mind almost instantly. Hanging out with your bestie at the movies while they play tonsil hockey with your ex may be a little distracting to say the least, although perhaps not as much as waking in the morning to find your ex sneaking out of your sister’s/brother’s bedroom with a sheepish grin on their face and their knickers/undies hanging out of their back pocket.

But how far do you go with the total exclusion zone? Friends of friends, hairdressers, next door neighbours?? And why do we have this need to stamp insecurities and issues on those around us?

Let’s face it, when you’re in a relationship you tend to spend a lot of time around a limited number of people. Some partners are extra protective and even insist on this, which of course means 12 months down the track the majority of the people you have had any meaningful interaction with at all are now mutual close acquaintances. But does this make it all right and whose prerogative is it anyway to enforce these unspoken ‘rules’?!

Surely you can’t blame your ex. Lets be honest the point of a break up is, after all, to ‘break up’. As much as it might suck at first and your ego may sulk and pout, ‘single means single’, your best friend, sibling or work mate are now just other people in the big wide pond of love. Ultimately these are other people who have their own perception, interactions, thoughts and opinions of your ex partner, devoid of the wonders of you.

PROS

So should we expect our friends and close acquaintances to take the high road and put lil’ ol’ us before their chance of finding a soul mate, true love, happy ever after or a quick mindless sympathy shag over a rather nice chesterfield lounge?

Putting it that way, the idea of excluding certain people from your ex after you break up seems not only incredibly silly but selfish. Sure there may or may not be plenty more fish in the sea but who died and made you bastion of their love lives!! Can you even call yourself a best friend at all if you are not prepared to give them every chance they get to find happiness? Just because you think your ex is a total bastard and deserves to spend eternity in Dante’s inferno does not mean that your best friend, sibling or work mate will come to the same conclusion.

It seems to me, many of the people we know, who now have the most connected and genuine relationships, met under the most unusual of circumstances. Love is a master not a slave and works in the most mysterious of ways. Simply put the more unlikely the situation the more likely you are to find love. Hence the wonderful opportunities the social melting pot of the internet dating site gives the gods of luck and love to work their magic on us mortals.

So let’s let love, lust and life flow where they will and let’s get on with the job of living our lives not someone else’s. If Romeo & Juliet were not warning enough not to meddle in other peoples love lives just remember, how you let others actions affect you is the one thing you DO have the right to control.