Nothing compares to you?

His name was (is) Robert. I met him in the most pedestrian way in a bar in a small town in the panhandle. It all started innocently enough: I asked about playing pool (a game that I think should only be played by sixty year olds while drinking stale beer) and he volunteered to show me how it was played. We played (he won, of course) and we kept talking.
That game lead to a roll on his living room floor and then his (water!) bed. We became inseparable for months. He even braved the ire of his born-again harpy of a landlady and I slept with him every night, doing my version of the walk of shame to go to my apartment and dress for class in the morning. Oh, yeah. We had sex that first night and it was awkward and fantastic. He seemed really caring, really warm and totally into me. First mistake.
It all got pretty serious then. After three months, I agreed to move in with him and his cat. Second mistake. We moved to an apartment building far away from downtown, where I had lived up to that moment and I needed to take the bus to go to class. He had the car. My social life cramped and all the company I had were the cicadas that that summer provided the soundtrack to my life and his cat.
As you can imagine, by winter, our relationship was as mess and I was a shadow of who I was. We had rows about most anything (using hot water to wash the dishes. Seriously) and his friends (a lady who lived in a small town and was closeted beyond belief) and his work (he was, are you sitting? A music director for several churches. I know). Before Spring even showed up, he was cheating on me with some guy he met during class or something. In the room next door to me. I could hear the water bed all night long. I was going crazy.
I looked for advice by talking to friends and tp one of my exes (that was mistake number three, an a totally different and frightening story, I'll go back to that stuff one day). Everybody said I needed to leave that apartment and start living again. It took me forever. Even though the sex was good (we flip-flopped and he had the most amazing fingers EVER) it had been discontinued because he did not find me attractive anymore and because he had to go back to his antidepressants because his relationship with me was rubbing him raw. He was conflicted because I was the first serious relationship he had with someone who was not beating him up or belittling him and he was totally torn because he could not get back into me. I discovered that I was attractive and unattainable at the beginning, when I was attractive to other men and had a brilliant social life. I imagine I was bitten by the househusband bug: a case of the un-glamour of the person who's constantly home. So I did move out, after asking everybody and their mother to keep my furniture and stuff for a few weeks while the people from the rental office remodeled the apartment I wanted.
I slept on friends' sofas for three weeks and looked a mess every day. After three weeks, I moved into the cutest one bedroom you can imagine (or at least it seemed to me at the time) and I started a new life. After the first week, he came back and we were 'friends'. He used to fall asleep on my lap on the sofa while we watched TV and we used to go out to the bar where we met. We used to spend weekends at his new place and I was happy. I was still in love with him. He was in a power trip.
I began getting counseling for the first time in my life and slowly realized I could not keep up with the emotional turmoil of being friends with an ex I still had feelings for and broke up with him. He did not take it well.
I just remember all this because a friend in Pennsylvania asked me if I knew anybody who could fix pianos and I remember Robert used to do that very well (he was a music major and played wonderfully). I googled his name and found him in a search where they blasted him for not fixing pianos well and being an overall ass.
I emailed him asking him if he was interested in fixing somebody's piano. I guess he never got over me stopping seeing him and never responded. 1
I think I have this tendency to stay in touch with some exes (hello, Facebook!), and it does not work well most times. The only one ex I still keep a decent relationship with is one who is thousands of miles away. Maybe he's the only one who really loved me and maybe still loves me. All the others have gotten a case of the bitchiness and after a few civilized conversations have become distant our snarky. I should stop doing that. Whatever is over, it's over and that's it. I promise.