How many curveballs can there be?

Just as you think that life can't get any more ridiculous, life hurls a new curveball in your direction. 

Having spent another day spending time with myself and trying to get myself back on track - planning some travelling during my "gardening leave" and trying to figure out what I actually want from life, and how I can be satisfied just being me - solo, at 6:30pm an email pops onto my blackberry from an ex that I had written out of my life two years ago.

Turns out that he is in London on business and would like to meet for a drink / dinner tomorrow night. Having firmly assigned him to the trash folder of my emotional inbox, I considered just deleting the mail. However, given what is going on in my life I thought maybe it would be a boost to my ego to meet him and feel empowered through the knowledge that I did not have feelings for him any longer; proof to myself in fact that it is possible to get through heartache no matter how bad it may seem at the time.

In the interests of my newfound philosophy of doing what is right for me and allowing other people to fit in with that if it suits them, I told him that I am having dinner and watching footballs with friends tomorrow eve but could perhaps meet him for a drink beforehand or afterwards if that suited. His response was, and I quote: "I hate your indifference". When I responded that I didn't know what he meant, he said: "You are indifferent and it makes me nuts". This got me thinking back to when we were together; I would have given anything (a) to have been able to cultivate something that even looked like indifference in relation to this man, and (b) for him to have admitted to being nuts about anything that I did. It is strange how men do seem to respond very positively to women playing hard to get - not that I was doing that (I have simply moved on at this stage and am genuinely not interested - my heart is somewhere else).

It did get me thinking, however, that even as I try to remember the feelings I had for this man, which seemed so so strong at the time, it was hard to summon the passion and extremes that I had thought I was feeling at the time, and indeed the depths of the pain that I know I experienced in the aftermath of that relationship. But yet here I was, totally indifferent to whether I saw him or not....while I know there was a time that I counted the days until he came to London again....

It begs the question of whether we, women, are forever stuck in this quandry? Is it only now that I don't really care that I can truly be indifferent and as a consequence he is therefore interested?

As a woman who gives 100% to a relationship, how can I ever seem indifferent if I am willing to give everything to a person? Or is that a problem in itself? Is this the mistake I have been making? Perhaps the secret to a successful relationship is to always keep a little bit of ourselves back so that we do not give ourselves wholly to another person? In that way, if it all falls apart, it is not so hard to put the pieces of ourselves back together and remember who we were before a particular relationship, and then we are never totally dependent on a relationship or another person?