The name says it all: ex. A person you were involved with, but ultimately made the decision to remove from your life because he or she didn’t offer what you needed. And now you’re thinking about reconnecting with an ex and getting involved again? Not a good idea. Or at least it rarely is, and I’ve got ten reasons for you to explain why.
Or at least they don’t that often, and definitely not without something big happening to enact that change. When someone comes back into your life claiming they’ve gotten better, you should always be skeptical. It doesn’t mean you have to immediately write them off, but take time to test out whether or not what they say is true. Don’t let your time be wasted by someone you already know to be wrong for you pretending things are different. You’re just getting yourself involved in an unnecessary mess.
What I mean by this is that your needs haven’t changed. Whatever you were missing from him or her in the first place is something you still need and want in a partner. Don’t try to convince yourself that you don’t actually need that much time or attention or whatever broke y’all apart in the first place. You still do. Distance just makes things seem like they were less of a big deal, but whatever bothered you then is still gonna bother you now no matter how long ago and little it seems. You have needs and they gotta be recognized and taken care of. They’re not gonna just go away.
Break ups are super hard, so whatever drove you apart from this person in the first place must have been a big deal. Something told you that things weren’t right and that voice was strong enough that it drove you to make a huge decision and potentially hurt someone you cared about. The gravity of that decision hasn’t gone away, and you should trust that the more informed past you made the right call the first time.
When you’re lonely and/or have had a lot of distance from a relationship, it’s easy to forget how bad things were at the time. Reconnecting with an ex may make the relationship seem like it was better than it was or that the problems you had together were less substantial, but the last thing you wanna do is try and poorly rationalize your way back into a bad relationship. Keep a clear eye when looking back at those memories and don’t romanticize the past, even if the present is hard.
Even if all you’re doing is talking “as friends” with your ex in order to reconnect, you’re making things hard on yourself. I’m not really a believer in exes’ ability to stay friends. There’s so much in your past, and it’s such an easy, familiar thing to slip back into once you’ve started talking or hanging out again. No matter how much distance or closure you feel you both have, old feelings never fully go away, and they’re more easily brought back up than let go of.
People spend so much time and energy trying to get out of bad relationships they find themselves stuck in. It’s a hard decision to make and an even harder decision to enact and hold true to in your actual life. But if this person is an ex, that means you managed to actually do it once! Honor that decision and hard work. Don’t waste the effort by falling back into things, and don’t put yourself back in that same old situation only to wind up once again stuck.
It’s a cliche, yeah, but it’s true. Why spend your time with someone you know to be wrong for you, when there are so many other single guys and girls out there who could be amazing for you? All you have to do is stop wasting your time on bad people and go meet them. Reconnecting with an ex is only holding yourself back from finding someone who could match your true relationship potential.
You’re young. There’s no reason for you to be tying yourself down to someone who doesn’t make you 100% happy or fulfill all your needs. Yes, there will be pressure later in life to find someone and settle down and maybe you’ll feel like you have to sacrifice some in order to achieve that. But whether or not you buy into that pressure, it’s still super far away. Enjoy being single while you can.
They were valid at the time and they still are now, no matter what you try to convince yourself. Stop telling yourself your expectations were just too high at the time, just because he couldn’t meet them. If you feel a certain way or felt a certain way in the past, those feelings weren’t “wrong.” That’s not how feelings work. Feeling something is enough, and if you felt a certain way then there was probably good reason for that. Don’t let the possibility of reconnecting with an ex invalidate the realness of what you felt.
Everyone deserves someone right for them. Someone who is good to them. Who makes them happy. Someone who is willing to sacrifice for them. Someone who makes them laugh and treats them right. If you and your ex broke up, then he or she wasn’t doing that and you deserve someone better who will. That person is out there and they’re what you need as a partner. Don’t get bogged down in someone who isn’t, and stop lying to yourself saying that you’re just “reconnecting.”
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