The Ex’s Who Self-Resurrect

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

Tell me if this sounds familiar. A man or woman breaks up with you, or you break up with them. The sequence of actions leading up to the breakup don’t really matter. Maybe you go through the five stages of grief. Maybe you’re simply relieved. Maybe you have a nice chat and decide to part ways, or maybe the whole relationship goes up in flames. What matters is that you part ways, and if you’re like me, you plan on not hearing from them again. But then six, nine, twelve months pass and you get a call or text from them. Usually, it’s a “Hey, I was just thinking of you,” text. Sometimes they want to see you. Maybe they’re looking to reconnect, but I think that more often, they’re looking for validation. I’m not sure if the holidays are the reason all the ex’s resurrect, but it happened to me a lot in the weeks leading up to the new year. A guy I broke up with at the beginning of the pandemic recently reached out, expressing that he missed me. After chatting briefly, I wondered why I’d ever been attracted to him in the first place. A guy I broke up with this past summer sent me an Instagram message, then a letter, then an email. I ignored his advances before telling him to “please stop contacting me, what the hell is wrong with you?” The week before Christmas I got a text from an unsaved number that said, “I’m back in CA visiting my folks. Thought of…