Goodbye, girlfriend

My girlfriend Jane is wise. Ex-girlfriend, actually.

Why? Yesterday afternoon, she terminated our relationship. It was very civilised and she is very brave. Men are not very good at making that decision we allow ourselves to think the woman won't be able to function without us. Women know better.

It's a nice thought for blokes but is actually quite bonkers. Jane and I had been together for a year and a half. Of course there is pain; but it helped that we had a practice run a few weeks ago and got back together again (it was simply too painful to part). Now it's for real.u00a0

She doesn't want me. Our lives are too different, and my worryu00a0 that with her having three children, I will amount to little more than her fourth has come true.

Her life is all about responsibility for three little people: dishes are never left 'till the next day and breakfast cereals and bowls are on the table ready for the children to attack in the morning.

Mine is about the daily needs of one big oaf. It's simpler, leaves a lot more room for navel-gazing and involves a higher number of kebabs than is healthy for one person (Jane is vegetarian and I think I overcompensated).u00a0

Spending time with her lovely children introduced me to an altogether different world. She has two boys Max and Carl, aged six and eight, and a girl, Becka, aged 11. Carl stopped speaking to me the day he refused to walk down the road and I picked him up and carried him.

Children are surprisingly portable but don't necessarily like to be plucked from where they are standing/ walking and placed in an elevated location like a lampshade. He wriggled away and ran back to where he had been standing and refused to move. I went back and picked him up again it reminds me of the piano scene in a Laurel and Hardy film: they were trying to negotiate its transit up some stairs it but it kept rolling back.

Then the other week, Max said: "I don't like you." This upset me a bit, especially as I'd taken him out with his fluffy teddy bear, 'Monty Dog'. He also liked me to 'fly' him like Superman, whizzing him about the house, almost crashing into things and then chucking him with force onto the sofa.

It took a while for him to refer to me by name. At first it was: "Can Someone fly me?" (I was 'Someone'.) When he started to call me 'Peyvand', I thought we'd bonded. But he said he didn't like me.

As far as I know, this has nothing to do with why Jane dumped me.

So now I am single. I resisted announcing it on Facebook. But I have to say, as I write, Day One does feel rather strange.

Amazingly, I have not called my therapist or even seen him for a few months. Jane was a fantastic therapist.

She works with mental patients three days a week, and with three children she had all bases covered when it came to me. I could do nothing to surprise the woman.

I was either a lunatic or a child. She wouldn't use words to tell me this but I could read her face. Before I met Jane, I was one of those people who'd freak out six weeks into a relationship and then abandon it.

We met on an online dating site. She was my fourth or fifth date and she was vegetarian but that was okay. I figured I didn't need a partner to gorge on dead animals with.

Girlfriends I have gorged on dead animals with in the past have had their merits but being with someone who has different dietary habits to yourself is quite refreshing.

My last six-week relationship was with a 40-year-old woman who wanted to get pregnant 'like yesterday' she was already on an IVF program with a sperm donor when I met her.

We both loved lamb and ate loads of it. But there was no way I wanted to have a child then and there and things came to a halt. It was when I heard the words "motorcycle courier" and "sperm" in one sentence that I bolted.

Within a few dates, Jane and I were a couple, and when I stayed in Goa in the summer she came with me and got a train to Hospet. Just as it was stopping, a young man jumped on board and said: "Hampi?" Fifteen minutes later, the young man was hurtling down the road with us in his rickshaw, and his brother next to him.
u00a0
They caught up with each other whilst Jane and I sat back, held hands and took in the sights.

They dropped us at a perfectly OK guesthouse where we spent the weekend. On the Monday morning at 5 am, the young man and his brother, who was wrapped in a blanket (evidently having slept on the street), drove us back and pointed us to a place that served coffee.

Back in Goa, exhausted, we went to Wildernest (the nature resort) for a bit of peace and quiet; bar the young Karnataka guys who drank and sang and played loud music into the night. (In the morning I asked another guest if he got any sleep and he said: "There was something of cacophony.")

How well I remember welcoming Jane to the luxurious Carlton Hotel in Colaba (Rs 1,400 per night) with its fantastic balcony, right behind the Taj.

Will I ever go back to India with Jane? It depends on how wise she is.