The night I broke up with Ronan Keating

There are the bistros, bars and cafés you can no longer frequent (we used to sit in the booth and always order salt & pepper calamari as entrée! SOB!).  The rituals in which you can no longer partake (Are you crazy? I can’t eat Thai on a Sunday night … it reminds me of Johnno). The friends you lose in the custody battle (you take Steve and Allison, I’ll take Penny and Jane).  The clothing.  The gifts. The TV shows.  And then there’s the music.

Songs that once brought a smile to your face now make you cringe or wail. Albums you adored and which provided the soundtrack to your romance now fill you with rage. Or happiness (but really that’s only when you’ve taken to his Chilli Peppers collection with a mallet).

That’s the thing in break-ups, you often have to break-up with what was once your favourite music.  If you’re not careful your entire iPod playlist gets sin-binned along with his tooth-brush and the spare jocks he left in your bedside table drawer.

Take me, a workplace fling which went pear-shaped saw me having to break-up with Ronan Keating. Actually not just Ronan’s When You Say Nothing At All but the entire Notting Hill soundtrack. Gone. Ruined. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.

Then there’s the Diana Krall album  which can never, ever, ever be listened to ever again because it was playing the night I suspected Dave* my misogynistic, craptastic boyfriend at the time was cheating on me.  I loved that CD. LOVED.   Alas, it is permanently filed along with Eclipse mints, a certain REM song, Fillet o’ Fish burgers and The Secret Life Of Us in the “EVIL THINGS ASSOCIATED WITH DAVE” drawer that lives in my head.

So what songs have you lost in a break-up? What bands or albums have been permanently tainted?  Do you have tips on reclaiming music that reminds you of an ex?

*Not his real name. His real name is Dan. Joking. Maybe …