Mustang- it was Garth Broks who sang "Unanswered Prayers" in the first place, and he is right about that one! coz I ain't going back either!
Here's an old chestnut from John Greenleaf Whittier, 19th Century US poet (from "Maud Muller"):
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Nah, I'm where I wanna be. And if she split -- still no. Nobody I'd go back to.
Now, if I could go back to the person I thought someone was rather than what they are in retrospect...
I don't consider going back. As a rule. The question is whether it may be referred to as love when the brain gets cooler and facts emerge from under the cover of over-enthusiasm for the other person and one's own previously believed pure or true feelings. But I suppose even a strong crush suffices for the general idea of this topic. So no, never. Not even once although this gave me a tough will training. The truth is that they always, with very few exceptions, try to come back when they realise they made a mistake dumping you, cheating on you, choosing someone other over you so that you're next on the queue and go in when the previous one proves unworthy or starts to get boring. If you, unless you include in the above example, do the same that's mostly due to hoping that next try will be better or that the person changes or have come to terms with his/her thoughts and the resolution is now strong. Nothing more mistaken. However you do need to have a strong will to resist as it takes much more time to be cured than to see that person try to come back.
Yes....but not really...My ex bf and I were together 7 years and we're still good friends. And staying in touch, as well as completely getting over him and moving on, has allowed me to see him through different eyes. If we had made a clean break w/no contact, I'm sure it would have allowed for all kinds of fantasies to sprout and grow....but a certain reality and grounding comes from staying in touch and allowing yourself to see someone for who they truly are, not that he's a bad guy, just not the guy for me. He's probably the one person I can be brutally honest with and not worry about any emotional backlash. There's something incredibly liberating in being able to say exactly what you feel to someone after years of trying to do everything you could to please them....
That's rather 'really' than 'not really' then... If you don't realise the person is not for you, you will never resist the temptation to come back to the relationship once the opportunity arises. If it's a clean break you'll have the time to think and the distance to think straightly. If you still see the person often and even talk to him/her you'll see more and from distance gradually growing. However we're not all the same, so ones may slightly tend towards one way or the other while some may have troubles with both. Personally I insist that strong connection with reality is what is important. Optimism is the source of bane here. Hopes, concessions, overlooking, lenience and other tiny adjustments in the early phase will ricochet later. Only with double strength.
I've never understood how you could remain friends with an ex-lover without becoming involved again, even if it's just on booty call. Well, I guess if one of you moved away and there was distance between you. Or you didn't see each other after the breakup and then later on became friends after seeing each other again. How did it work out so well for you and your ex Mej2000?
Hmmm, funny you should ask....we actually did break up after about a year and a half in the beginning...then the booty calls started back up a few weeks later! This lasted for a while and before you know it, we're a couple again. 5 years later, we realize things aren't really going anywhere, we had gotten to that point where it was time to start thinking about marriage, I was his first girlfriend, yada yada yada, and we decided to date other people. Which meant he dated other people and I sat at home waiting for him! We stayed on good terms b/c we were always great friends, we worked at the same job at the time, and we never had any problems in the relationship - it was just kinda there, you know? We had become very complacent - we probably should have broken up a lot sooner than we did. There was no real motivation to breakup or stay together for that matter.
Anyway, after 6 more months of on and off booty calls, I finally got the click that said, ok, I'm wasting my time, I need to move on. A few months after that I met a guy and knew on day 2 that he was "The One". Meanwhile, ex had moved on as well. I think it helps to solidify the breakup when both parties get new partners.
No, not to *rekindle the flame*, but yes, to find out what happened to someone who was really important to me at the time.
I recently contacted my first REAL love for this very reason. He was delighted to hear from me & it pleased me no end to hear from him again ... But to rekindle love? Nah, more about acknowledging the importance of the person, years later ..
there are reasons in my heart that I would want to, but in my brain, my reasonable, sensible, logical self that I see the the truth. Romance just seems a like a ride in an action park to me; stop and go, up and down, speed and a screeching halt you get to wake up to. It all seems like one of life's dirty tricks to me. I'd rather not go through that again; somewhere in my drawer is the lousy tee-shirt
Like msolga, I'd like to know what happened to two of my old romances. They were both wonderful men and I hope they have had good lives. I was too stupid to appreciate either one at the time, at least not enough to commit to marriage.
Two posters have said that the imagination is far better than reality and I couldn't agree more!
I've been married for more than half my lifetime but, like Jimmy Carter, I've "lusted in my heart."
I have a very vivid imagination but I'm also blessed with a healthy sense of reality. Besides, isn't 99% of sex in the mind? (OK, so that 1% is really good, but still...)
I'd rather stick with the great man I married.
Hmmmmmmm. I am older now and have had a complex and sometimes wonderful past, however simple my present may be. I have actually talked to an old lover recently when I called to find a colleague's address. That phone call rocked me on m'feet, the great things he said. Well, never mind. But he is a thousand miles away and remarried a few years ago; the phone call turned out to be more about acknowledging the past wonder, which he brought up and described to my surprise and pleasure and I am grateful for his remembering what I remember.. While neither of us would revisit,... we could have a very exciting lunch if I am ever in LA again, no, I mean really lunch, as he asked, a Thomas Crown lunch that instead leads nowhere. What can I say, we are both only more interesting people, however more gray. We didn't marry and shouldn't have, but sparks are still there.
It is hard to visualize a situation with my first love, both of us were in love and he wrote me poetry...... until he left me because I was Catholic, however falling. I smile at that now but it took me a long time. Decades later I had a helper on a project who mentioned her favorite professor in Utah (Utah? he was a jewish atheist) and it was him. Yes, I knew he was wise and smart. That is now as dry as reading Newsweek to remember... well, not quite, but any little remnants of attachment are just floating now.
I had another serious lover, love of my life really, who turned out...no, you won't believe this now, to be gay. It was 1971, and I had barely heard of gay, and besides he didn't seem to be! He just disappeared once in a while. He was everything I thought I wanted, wise and kind and sexy, he was perfect for me. When we broke up, I couldn't figure it out and mourned for a couple of years. A long time later I figured it out, and called a mutual friend who might know where he was and she said that she had recently talked to him and that he had come out as gay.
So I contacted him and we met in SF and we have been pals since. Strangely, he has a long time mate now who has some of my interests...landscape design, etc. Interests I didn't have when I knew him.
Obviously I don't fantasize reconnecting with him, but in a way I have, in the couple of times they have had me stay there on my travels and we talk and talk and talk.
These little stories cover a lot of time, thirty years. I skipped my husband in this, no fantasy of going back, friends that we are. Cold day in July.
I am realizing that people think with my screen name and my dog as avatar, that I am male, but no, no, I'm not.
I've been happily married now for 24 years. There's no one I know that I'd consider giving it all up for. But.... there is one ex from the before-days...... I do wonder if she found what she was looking for. I do hope she's happy.
...sniff > sniff > sniff ... these stories are all so freakin' sad! I didn't need this tonight, yah know?
Reading all your posts is like watching a sappy movie, you end up sobbing and it feels sooooooooooo good!
