It may feel like you're back to Square 1 - but I wonder if you are? You have grown so much over the past months / year...IMO you're only back there if you choose to be...
Your ex must be similarly confused...but in your case you have done so much to deal with life and your situation whereas, from what you report your ex is in a situation in which he is largely the passive participant...
From this reader's perspective you still have everything to play for...how about taking the initiative and texting him something along the lines of "Hi (ex), really enjoyed the other night! Must do it again sometime! LOL!" Inject some humour into it that he will recognise as "you" and which will tell him that you're prepared to be his friend - I agree to an extent with BFF - get in his face a bit, but engineer it in such a way as to not make him feel that another encounter / meeting would be fuelled so much with emotion. It sounds as if it was a massive step for him to offer the invitation in the first place and he couldn't have thought that it would result in anything other than an emotional meltdown...thing is, although you heard some stuff that didn't leave you swinging from the chandeliers, it sounds as if it was a truly honest exchange, even if it was driven by beer and vodka! He could have been much more brutal and final - fact was he wasn't. I can't imagine a man like your ex would have invited you along on a night out like that would have done it without any intention other than wanting to see you, to connect with you - perhaps wanting to "test the temperature" even - why else?
What other motivations could there have been? To say to you that it was all over, for definite? To prove that he was all ok and happy? To check out that you are ok and to absolve himself of guilt? None of these stack up in light of your evening...
Right at the moment it doesn't sound as if he has the drive or will to do anything about his situation without a reason - how can you give him that reason? Would it be right that your ex "falls" into situations and only when there is dissonance does he act..? .. like when he and Helen first got together - Cognitive dissonance again!... how can you make that work for you? He must be experiencing dissonance again right now...he'll have to have explained his evening to Helen... I've said somewhere before, your ex sounds as if he's a very moral person and also a "pleaser" so I suggest that will have been uncomfortable for him.
You asked him "are you in love with her?" and his response "no" - but also he said that 'she's good to him.' Could it be that he's caught? Trapped?
What are his options?
Can you make the option you're offering more attractive than the one he's chosen right at the moment?
Could it be that he's wary of the option you're offering? What do you think that option looks like for him? Commitment, settling down? Children?
Looks to me as if he were truly to get wind of "you" as you are now, he might feel much less threatened...
Sorry - that's been a pretty messy "free thought stream"...
