Why We Miss Our Exes Even When We Know We Shouldn’t Go Back
There is a particularly annoying stage after a relationship ends when you've already worked everything out in your head, explained it to your friends, handed yourself a fully reasoned judgment and even managed to live quite convincingly without him for a while, and then one evening you hear a familiar song, find an old photograph or see his name on your phone and suddenly realise that you miss him.
What makes it especially irritating is that you remember perfectly well why the relationship ended. You know every argument against going back and could probably give yourself a two-hour consultation on the subject, but your feelings, as usual, have failed to appear at the hearing and submitted no written objections.
We usually say, “I miss him,” although sometimes it is a little more complicated than that. Of course we can miss the actual person: his voice, his smell, his hands, the conversations and the reassuring knowledge that he exists somewhere close by. But inside that longing there is often another feeling. We miss the version of ourselves we were around him.
Not the woman who worried, argued and called a friend at midnight to announce that he had finally lost his mind. We are rarely desperate to get her back.
We miss the other one: the woman who laughed more, enjoyed getting ready to see him, felt attractive, could agree to dinner at ten at night and didn't spend the following morning conducting an internal investigation into her own irresponsibility.
And it is very easy to put that woman under a man's name by mistake.
We Become Different Versions of Ourselves Around Different People
There is nothing mystical about this. In relationships we are constantly responding to each other, which is why one person may make us anxious and controlling while another somehow allows us to relax so completely that we hardly recognise ourselves.
A woman can spend years running her life like the director of a small but exceptionally troublesome corporation, responsible for documents, bills, holidays, children, dogs, doctors, shopping and the mysterious disappearance of men's socks, and then wonder why by evening all she wants is silence rather than lingerie and romance. It is difficult to be both a lover and a twenty-four-hour logistics department.
Then someone appears beside her with whom she does not have to make every decision, and suddenly she discovers that inside this sensible woman there is still somebody who knows how to flirt, laugh too loudly, agree to spontaneous plans and have absolutely no idea where the car is parked because, for once, it is not her problem.
That state can feel almost addictive, especially after years of being sensible, strong and responsible. So when a relationship ends, it makes perfect sense that we may miss not only the person but also the feeling of lightness we had around him.
Memory Makes Relationships Look Better Than They Sometimes Were
Memory is a fairly shameless editor. After a while it begins quietly cutting anything that spoils the story.
You remember the way he looked at you across a table, how he made you laugh in the car and the night you drove somewhere for no particular reason. You are far less likely to remember the evening when you spent two hours arguing about something ridiculous, then sat in silence and spoke to each other in the tone of two tax inspectors discussing a difficult file.
That is why missing someone after a breakup proves very little.
It does not necessarily mean the relationship was wonderful or that it should be restored immediately. Sometimes it means only that there were moments in that story when you really liked your life and really liked the person you were inside it.
The hardest people to forget are often those around whom we unexpectedly came alive. Unfortunately, they are not always the most suitable partners, which would of course be much more convenient. As adults, we would prefer to fall in love exclusively with available, dependable, emotionally mature people with clear intentions and preferably a respectable credit history, but the mind appears not to read our requirements for applicants.
Sometimes nothing quite fits: character, circumstances, lifestyle, plans, family situation. And yet something inside us lights up anyway.
Sometimes We Miss Ourselves More Than We Miss Them
Perhaps you felt sexual again. Perhaps you stopped controlling everything. Perhaps you liked being looked at as a woman rather than as the person who knows the online banking password, the vet's phone number and the date of the next rent payment. If the most important discovery of a relationship was that around someone you finally allowed yourself to feel alive, the question gradually becomes larger than the relationship itself.
Why did another person have to be there before you could feel that way?
That may be a more useful question than endlessly asking yourself why you still miss him. Try remembering what exactly you liked about yourself when you were with him. Perhaps you laughed more. Perhaps you were braver. Perhaps you said yes to spontaneous things more often. Perhaps you simply liked remembering that life was not made entirely of responsibilities, bills and schedules.
And if that is what you miss, there is something important to remember: that part of your life never belonged to him.
You Can Miss Someone and Still Not Go Back
One of the more adult things we eventually learn about relationships is that a feeling is not an instruction. You can miss someone and still understand that living with him again would lead to exactly the same place. You can love someone and not want the relationship back. You can remember the good parts without using them as evidence that the bad parts did not exist.
Sometimes a person gives us something genuinely important even though they are not meant to remain in our lives forever. They may remind us that we can still fall in love, want, laugh, take risks, like ourselves and do something simply because we want to, rather than because it is sensible. But none of that belongs to them. If you felt beautiful around him, your beauty did not leave when he did. If you started wanting to travel again, he does not own your journeys. If you began wearing dresses, there is no need to put them back in the wardrobe after the breakup as though they were evidence from a closed case.
A man may awaken something in us, but the person who switched on the light never became the owner of the room. Some relationships end long after the final conversation. First you have to get used to the person's absence, then stop waiting for the message, then learn to remember the good without immediately wanting everything back. Only after that can a quieter thought arrive.
Perhaps what I was most afraid of losing was not him. Perhaps I was afraid of losing myself again. And she is the one thing I can keep.
The Life Between Staying and Leaving
FAQ
Because missing someone does not necessarily mean we want the relationship back. We may miss the person, particular moments or the version of ourselves we were around them.
No. You can remember the good parts of a relationship and still understand why it ended. Missing someone and wanting to live with them again are two different things.
Memory has a way of holding on to certain moments while the everyday frustrations and arguments become less vivid. With time, the relationship can look simpler and warmer in memory than it actually felt while you were living it.
Yes. Love does not automatically mean that a relationship works or should continue. It is possible to care about someone, miss them and still know that returning would bring you back to the same problems.
Books by Olga Sverchkova
