A woman in a coffee shop in the Gooise village of Huizen speaks to Leontine Ruiters. “I always see you drinking coffee alone, I think that’s so sad.” But the ‘ex-wife of’ does not agree with that…
Every morning they are there, in every coffee shop in the country: people who just drink a cup of coffee. No one is surprised, unless you are a famous Dutch person. Then just drinking coffee suddenly becomes a statement, gossip or, in the worst case, a sign of social poverty. It happened to Leontine Ruiters, in her own hometown of Huizen.
Only coffee
Leontine drinks her morning coffee alone. She herself has no problem with it, but a fellow visitor does. It appealed to her. The intention was probably nice, but the effect is that Leontine is inside her LINDAcolumn feels compelled to explain that she is not pathetic.
Marco Borsato’s ex-wife, who calls herself an actress or presenter but who is somehow never spotted in office, writes: “In the morning I often drink a coffee in the village where I live. Recently a woman spoke to me: ‘I always see you drinking coffee alone and I find that so sad.’”
‘Don’t be pathetic!’
What nonsense, says Leontine. “We really need to get rid of that idea. Single women are not pathetic. I have certainly never felt that way. I am not lonely either, even when I had depression just after the divorce.”
It is what it is, she says. “I did not consciously choose to be a single woman. I consciously chose marriage at the time, with the idea: until death do us part. But love comes with ups and downs.”
Touches
What does Leontine miss as a single woman? “The intimacy: touches, skin to skin. For me, sex goes hand in hand with love and when there is no man in my life, there is no sex.”
But when that man is there, she is extremely accommodating. “Limitlessly flexible. I can bend like bamboo.”
Ah, at least her ex-husband Marco completely missed that. He was standing naked hanging with the chairman of his fan club.