Which is why, after a week or two of not talking to your former flame, the unexpected phone call or text feels like a lifeline being thrown to you while you are adrift in a sea of post-breakup anguish. You feel a surge of overwhelming joy. You feel a brief respite from the debilitating and foreign concept of singledom. You feel only moderately suspicious. You feel everything.
The aforementioned whirlwind of emotions that seeing his name in your inbox inspires, combined with a desperate longing for everything to return to the status quo, may lead you to immediately leap back into the welcoming arms of your past. Disclaimer: whether he asks you to coffee or invites himself over to claim rightful ownership of his favorite shirt, you will say yes. No hesitations, no thinking it through first. The answer is yes, come over. Yes, yes, yes. And if you’re sitting there thinking you would be able to resist, just cease reading now because obviously your iron will doesn’t require any further advice from me.
Before you make the hasty decision to meet up with your ex, try and keep your wits about you and consider what this could do to your new normal. As unpleasant as you may find your new single-life routine, you’re adjusting to it a little bit each day, whether or not it is evident to you. Compromising your path to recovery by agreeing to see your ex before you’re emotionally ready could derail any progress you’ve made thus far, even if that progress doesn’t seem significant.
First and foremost, recognize that you are both vulnerable just mere weeks after your split. Regardless of who initiated the demise of your relationship or how dysfunctional it became toward the end, the logistics of your breakup may not be so glaringly obvious when you spend the majority of your day pining for your once-significant other. Take a step back and remember that no matter how much you want to see him again, you two still have unresolved issues that haven’t magically disappeared simply because you’ve been apart.
Since I know you have ignored my advice and have succumbed to the unrelenting need to be near him, you may be feeling one of two things right now. You are either feeling incredibly disappointed or feeling even more like damaged goods than you did before seeing him (I know you didn’t think that was possible, but there you have it).
Based on these two feelings, it is safe to assume that one of two occurrences have happened to put you back at square one. Either your encounter went exactly the way you wanted it to, or it went the exact opposite of the way you wished it would. For those of you out there who are happily paired off and are basking in the idyllic state of your functioning relationship, you may be wondering how it is that you can get what you wanted and still wind up feeling horrible.
Here’s how it works: your ex comes to retrieve his favorite [insert personal item here]. You both stand awkwardly in the middle of the room after this five-second exchange has taken place, not knowing what to do next. He proposes lunch. “Lunch” suddenly turns into five beers and a shot of Southern Comfort in an effort to calm your nerves. You both drunkenly wax on about what you miss about the other. I think you see where this is going. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that make up sex may seem like the best solution at this point in time. I have to warn you though, when the passionate throes of your reconciliatory hook up have passed, you wake up to a situation that is even less understandable and unclear than the terms of the actual breakup were.
If you were wise enough to avoid the post-breakup hookup, congratulations, but chances are you probably aren’t feeling too great about your lunch date or quick cup of coffee. That may be because you had certain expectations going in to the reunion that were not realized. I know it is easy to trick yourself into thinking that because he was the one to contact you first, it must mean that he wants to get back together. When it becomes clear that he really did just want to get coffee or retrieve his iPod charger, the poignant disillusionment feels just as unbearable.
Whether you had your vision of him begging you to take him back shattered or you watched someone you once loved (love?) scurry out of your bed faster than a freshman walk of shame darts behind the Stetson dorms in the wee hours of the morning, the end result is that you end up feeling significantly shittier than you did before you met up or hooked up with your ex.
If you are both considering getting back together (and not just in the context of exes with benefits), take some time for yourself to figure out what it is that you need in order for this relationship to work in the future. Taking time apart gives you the opportunity to take inventory about the state of your relationship and may give you some clarity on what it is you really want. Don’t make a move until you know you’re getting back together for all of the right reasons (and no, familiarity is not a justifiable reason).
If your breakup has made both of you realize that there is something other than sex holding your connection together and you are both genuinely willing to work on the issues that made you cut ties in the first place, it is worth giving it another shot. There is something to be said for the power of forgiveness, after all.
If you find yourself hooking up with your ex simply to put a Band-Aid on your solitude, this arrangement is ultimately not what is best for you. Take a deep breath and rip off the bandage. Your new normal progressively becomes more tolerable. You may walk away from the breakup, and subsequent hookup, licking your wounds but ultimately you’ll come to the greater realization that your mistakes really do make you stronger and better prepared for the next relationship that comes your way.