So, Yeah, She Was Better In Bed

by Nicholas Allen — July 19, 2007

I have a friend who always says, "Show me a beautiful woman and I'll show you a guy somewhere who's tired of being with her." It's the kind of thing women everywhere would do well to remember when, driven by whatever un-nameable insecurities that plague them, decide to go on fact-finding expeditions about their boyfriend's former girlfriends.

I'm sure there are people of both sexes who never tire of talking about their past romantic exploits, but I'm not one of them. Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say, although I can't claim my reticence to discuss old loves stems from either discretion or valor. I'm simply the kind of guy who likes to leave the past where it is and focus on the person I'm with now.

Besides which, answering candid questions about former lovers almost never makes a current girlfriend feel any better. They say you shouldn't ask a question if you don't really want to hear the answer, but that hasn't stopped any number of women I've been involved with from asking questions like, "Was she pretty? Prettier than me? What was she like in bed?" whenever the subject of an ex-girlfriend comes up. What is that they want to hear, exactly? When these kinds of discussions pop up out of nowhere, I usually end up feeling like a guy who went for a pleasant stroll on the beach and suddenly finds himself in a minefield, with no clear recollection as to how he ended up in this damn mess.

There's one ex-girlfriend who plagues me to this day, in that any time a woman I'm currently involved with comes across her photos in my old albums, there's no end to the questions I have to endure. She was a girl I met and dated for about a year while living in Sweden, and--as a purely physical specimen--was probably the most drop-dead gorgeous woman I've ever known. When I returned to New York, she came with me and we lived together here for a few months. I remember being a young entertainment reporter at the time, and one night I went backstage at an Iggy Pop concert to interview him. I brought Inga (the Swede) with me, and spent the next two months fending off round-the-clock calls at home from Iggy, who had become somewhat obsessed with Inga. The phone would ring at 6:00am, and when I answered the voice on the other end would say, "Hey, man, is Inga there?" At which point I'd roll over, hand her the phone, and say, "Inga, could you please tell Iggy Pop not to call so goddamn early?"

Inga was gorgeous, but also insane. I don't mean that as a humorous hyperbole--I mean it as literal truth. She was insane, and when she moved to New York with me she spent the next several months making me more miserable than I've ever been in my life. She also holds the distinction of being the only woman I've ever dated--in the midst of the fight that finally broke us up--to call me a "dirty Jew." Or, as she charmingly pronounced it with her Swedish accent, a "dirty Yew."

To say that I dread the inevitable day in any new, serious relationship when I have to answer questions about her is putting it mildly. The discussion inevitably progresses to questions like, "If she was so crazy, why were you with her for so long?" It seems to confirm some deeply rooted belief women have that we guys are stupid enough to date a hot woman, no matter how stupid or insane she is, for as long as possible simply because she's hot.

It's hard for any guy to articulate the reasons why you simply don't realize, as a younger man, that what you think are the normal and inexplicable idiosyncrasies of the fairer sex are actually evidence pointing to the fact that she's bat-shit crazy. And that, once you realize this, you leave. Hotness only goes so far, even with the dumbest and most superficial among us.

Which is the thing all you women out there should remember--you should worry more about the women who never achieved "ex" status, because we never got them in the first place, than the ones we've had and moved on from. The history of our exes may be new to you, but chances are we stopped thinking about them a looooong time ago.

Nicholas Allen is a writer and columnist based in Manhattan. To read all of his blogs, click here.