Why an ex-spouse makes a perfect date

Give Me a BreakSources in Dublin 6 sometimes take it upon themselves to update me on the trends. For as we all know, as goes Ranelagh, so goes the nation. (Just look at the PDs and Greens in the last general election). If you want to find the latest in kitchen extensions, the epitome of soft furnishings, yummy mummy fashion, cutting-edge cafe food, marriage a la carte - this is where you look.

They're different from you and me, these Dublin 6ers, and not only because their red-brick terraced piles are worth more. So when the latest marriage trend came my way via the acute observations of Dublin 6ers in their local restaurants, I had to listen. Because if it's in Dublin 6 today, it's bound to be in Dún Laoghaire tomorrow and Maynooth shortly after that.

(A word to the wise: generally, you'll find that such bombshell developments have been going on Northside and even in Galway and west Cork for years, but that hardly counts because it hasn't happened until it's happened in Dublin 6.)

Here's the trend: previously married people have been seen having jolly little dinners together. People previously married to one another, that is.

You could sum it all up in one word - amicable - but if that adjective was enough, that would be the end of this particular column, when there's so much more to say.

For example, when you see ex-spouses dining sociably together like best college friends who've rediscovered everything that they have in common, lots of words come to mind before "amicable". Phrases such as "regret", "forgiveness", "mutual understanding" and "you big eejit, I could have told you he/she was wrong for you" spring to mind.

When used in reference to marital separation and divorce, the word "amicable" is plainly superficial - like using the word "manageable" in relation to incurable disease or rampant debt. There's a lot of emotional pain to get through before you're willing to compromise, see reality and get to the "amicable" stage. I reckon that the word amicable, which is from the French "ami" or "friend", is in Dublin 6 parlance a rough translation of "still friends despite having hurt each other so badly that we weren't speaking except through solicitors for a considerable period of time".

Communicating through the media can come into it as well, though it's not recommended.

Back to ex Mr and Mrs having dinner in Ranelagh - which is in some ways the same as communicating through the media when you consider the veracity of my sources, but never mind. What's actually going on in their heads? Why are they so carefree? So lithe in their emotional responses to one another when living together sent them round the twist?

In some ways, an ex-spouse of some years' duration is like an emotional pooper-scooper, so accustomed to your psychological waste that he or she doesn't even smell it any more. An ex-spouse, especially a first ex-spouse, has seen you head over heels in love, reeling with hate, picking your nose, knows how you like your eggs and your sex (even when it's with other people). An ex-spouse is pretty near impossible to shock.

Yet after all that, your ex-spouse is still willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. He or she still likes you. That in itself is pretty amazing. It's definitely worth the price of a dinner.

I read a psychological study a few years ago suggesting that people can only fall in love once - I mean, really, truly passionately in love. Married people, especially twice- or thrice-married people, have battle scars that heal over tougher with each rejection. You might think this makes becoming reacquainted with your first spouse like picking at a scab, painful but pleasant in a masochistic sort of way.

Partly true, but according to this study, people give more of themselves to, and are most naked emotionally with, their first loves. Forever after they keep seeking them, so that each subsequent love is a paler shadow of the one before.

It's a romantic concept. Like one of the best movies of all time, The Philadelphia Story, in which ex-hubbie Cary Grant scuppers the perfect wedding of Katherine Hepburn simply by turning up. It brings to mind Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, still friends even though she's apparently getting surgery to stay young enough for her decade-younger current husband. Or even Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, reunited for TV, anyway.

This illogical loyalty that first loves and first spouses have for one another is definitely dangerous for those who follow. Which is what the chattering D6ers are alluding to when they see their posh little cafes being turned into outposts of Spouses Reunited (there's no support group that I know of, internet or otherwise, but it's bound to happen).

What possible chance have spouses number two and three got? When your previously married current lover is so close to his ex-spouse that they can discuss your ovulation patterns, you may begin to wonder whether amicability is actually a good thing at all.