Fact: Every boy who has ever dumped me has been hit by a car. No, I wasn’t driving the car, thank you very much. And don’t worry, they’re healed and healthy right now. But still — kind of a weird coincidence. So what does this mean to you? It means that if we ever end up dating, I’m either going to dump you or you will most likely be hit by a car. Hard not to be discouraged, huh?
Regardless of how breakups work in your life — whether you’re more often the dumper or more often the dumpee, whether or not your ex gets hit by a car, whether you and your ex remain friends or whether you end up wishing they would get hit by a car — breaking up is a realistic part of relationships. In fact, breaking up is one of the most common events in relationships. Any relationship that ends at all could almost be seen as a failure. Therefore, during the span of someone’s dating career, they are bound to have many, many more failures than successes. Kind of depressing. After so many failed relationships, it’s hard not to see current boyfriends as merely future-exes. When introducing new flames to my parents, I have the urge to say “Hey Mom, I’d like you to meet ... my future ex-boyfriend,” because unless we’re going to get married, that’s what he’s bound to be. As I continue to rack up the new boyfriends, I continue to rack up the ex-boyfriends.
I’ve been discovering recently that most exes go through a “High Fidelity” phase where they feel the need to get back in touch with all of their old flames. First, they’ll call you up just to “see how you’re doing” and then ask to get lunch later in the week. These phone calls always seem to come when the ex is going through some sort of existential crisis or when their newest girlfriend has left them ... and the phone calls inevitably happen around 2 a.m. I don’t know if the exes are trying to rekindle something, to remind themselves of why they left you or to convince themselves that they’ve moved on and are now doing much better than you. I don’t ever buy the “just wanted to see how you were doing” line. They didn’t feel the need to “see how I was doing” when they were in their last relationship. In the past, I would occasionally meet them for lunch but more lately, I feel like there’s no reason to do so. It ended for a reason and having an uncomfortable lunch won’t help either of us.
I always admire the ex-couples who remain good friends after a breakup. Not the ex-couples who break up, say they are just good friends and then continue hooking up. I mean the ex-couples who can move on and then talk to one another about new relationships, without any hard feelings. I think those are really hard to find. The majority of ex-couples I see are filled with anger, jealousy and mostly awkwardness. The worst kind are those who constantly seek revenge for being wronged. There’s a whole Web site I found (but haven’t used) devoted to this concept. This Web site has a list of ways to do just that: make your ex pay. It has tips about how to screw with everything from their e-mail (how to sign them up for an overwhelming amount of spam) to their clothes (how to sew anti-shoplifting tags into their shirts for the next time they walk in and out of a store) to their house (how to turn the thermostat on full blast and Super Glue it into place). It’s weird how a person can go from someone you would do anything for to someone you would do anything to. If you’re willing to hurt someone so badly, does it mean that you never really cared about that person in the first place? Does the way a relationship ends fundamentally change how you view the relationship while it was good? Is any relationship that ends really considered a failure? Or could it still be a success as long as it was good while it lasted?
Regardless of how relationships will end, worrying about the ending will just keep the present from being as good as it could be. So maybe I’ll stop thinking about my boyfriends as future exes and maybe I’ll also warn them to look both ways before crossing the street.
Jordan’s column runs biweekly Mondays. She can be reached at j.hart@cavalierdaily.com.
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