You wake up Sunday morning, and your carefully applied mascara is smeared all over your cheeks. Your Lauren Conrad-inspired hairstyle now looks like you spent the night hanging out in a tornado. After you attempt to recollect where you are and how you got there, you decide to look at your phone for any clues of what the heck happened last night. Unfortunately, you instead find the 1-20 text messages you sent your ex-boyfriend last night (the text message amount is positively correlated to how drunk you got.) Oh no, not again.
Your heart races and your head spins as you read what you sent him.
“Hey! What are you doing tunieght?”
“Hellou?”
“Yyu there?”
“Okayr, fine ignore me.”
“Hey! Whatsup?”
“Okay sreriuusly youyr a jerk.”
“I loveuu you come bacjk tou mee!”
“Bahfby I missr youh.”
The list goes on … and on … and on … with no response. Great.
“How in the world did I think this was a good idea last night? What is my problem? Oh my god, he thinks I’m a crazy ex-girlfriend now. I kind of am the crazy ex-girlfriend now. Fantastic!”
Well, friends, we have all been there a countless number of times. And if you haven’t, then I’ve never met you. So let’s discuss how to avoid this situation in the future — and how to cope if you do slip and text your exes.
How to avoid it:
Step 1: Simply delete his number. If you are like me and freakishly good at remembering numbers when you are drunk, this step isn’t too helpful. But at least you won’t have the visual reminder of his name in your contacts.
Step 2: Give your friends your cell phone. Tell them not to give it back unless you need to call 911 for an emergency. (Sometimes when you’re drunk, you think that calling your ex-boyfriend is an emergency. If that’s the case, you have to take it one step further).
Step 3: Don’t even bring your phone with you. This could be dangerous, because what if you get lost, or something dire happens? What do I have to say to this? Who cares if you get lost or something dire?! As long as you don’t drunk-text your ex-boyfriend!
Step 4: Maybe, just maybe, don’t get that drunk in the first place. This is hard for the lightweights out there (especially if you’re like me and two beers makes you black out.) But seriously, getting way too drunk isn’t good for anyone anyway. So consider cutting back on the booze. Your ex-boyfriend, your sanity and your waistline will thank you!
But if you slipped, accidentally got all Mariah Carey on him and texted an essay about how you two “belong together,” don’t fret, my little grasshopper. In my past years of the psycho-and-drunk-ex-girlfriend experience, I have learned to cope with this humiliation by doing the following:
If you first glance at your phone and saw that you texted him, DON’T READ IT. The message was already sent. You can’t go back into cyber space and capture it, and chances are you can’t go to his phone and delete them all before he gets the chance to read them. So erase the messages on your phone before you go through the pain and humiliation of knowing what you sent.
You didn’t listen to my other advice, though, so let’s assume you do read those texts.
DO NOT send a sober morning-after apology text message. This will just make the situation worse by adding an extra layer of awkwardness. This also will show that you care. Remember, you don’t care! So don’t send anything after the damage is done.
I hope this helps in the future. If it makes you feel better, it’s a common college phenomenon. And if he thinks you are a crazy ex-girlfriend, then who gives two flying rat’s hineys? You just keep doing you, and try not to think about it too much. And maybe don’t send any more drunk texts.