When you are hurting, your mind can play some truly awful tricks on you. It does its best to convince you that what you want is what you need, when the truth is so often the exact opposite. We often crave the things that are the worst for us. What we need is often so far from what we want that we do not always want to accept the truth as the truth.
We manage to convince ourselves that they still care. We manage to convince ourselves that we were the ones in the wrong. We are the ones who need to apologize. Maybe if we could have just one more conversation, just one more night together, we could finally find the closure that we are looking for. We could finally be at peace with the pain swirling inside of our chest. But the problem is that you don’t actually want any closure. No, you have been hiding behind this need for closure when what you really want is an excuse to talk to them.
You want to know what their life looks like now. You want to know if they are happy or in love. You want to know if they have replaced you or if they, too, spend their evenings wishing you were by their side. You want to reach out because you want to rekindle the spark you swore that you had. You dream of the day you run into them when you are grocery shopping or drinking coffee at what used to be your favorite spot together because you want so badly for them to see what they are missing. You want them to feel regret. You want them to jump back into your arms and say, “I’m sorry.” You want the relationship you were never able to actually have. You just want to fall in love again.
It doesn’t matter if it has been five days or five years since your relationship ended; you can still be craving their affection. If you truly loved someone, your memories with them are going to last a lifetime. Someone leaving you doesn’t mean that one day you just flip a switch and your life goes back to how it was before you met them. Breakups don’t work that way. They are messy. They are painful. They seem to simultaneously make us into the best and the worst versions of ourselves. You can’t just run in and out of someone’s life and expect to leave it unscathed. Whether or not we want to admit it to ourselves, the people we let into our lives change us. Sometimes these changes are not the best for us, so we are forced to rebuild ourselves again and again and again. Sometimes these changes leave us with so many unanswered questions.
You need to ask yourself, Would you really want the truth if they were willing to tell you? Would you really want that closure you have convinced yourself that you are after if it would only bring you more pain? Or is what you really want a fairy-tale ending? You want them to run after you in the rain and tell you that it was all just a mistake and that now they realize they could never live without you. The truth is that you will probably never get that fairy-tale ending with them. Relationships end for a reason, and continuously trying to rekindle something that was out long before either of you even realized it is nearly impossible.
If you reach out to them, you might get that closure that you have convinced yourself that you are seeking. However, this closure might not give you the life that you are dreaming of. If you just want to talk to them, pause and ask yourself, Why? Where is this desire to bring someone back into your life coming from? Are you lonely? Are you sad? Are you really missing them or is it just having someone that you miss?
Do not mistake your loneliness as an invitation to bring someone toxic back into your life. Sure, sometimes we lose people, and we are meant to get them back. But other times, we lose people because we need to. Talking to your ex won’t magically improve any of the difficult situations you might be facing in your life. Attention can be a wonderful thing, but attention from someone you have already chosen to walk away from might only end up hurting you.
Seeking comfort in the familiar is a very human tendency that all of us are guilty of doing at one point or another. Please do not fool yourself into thinking that all you are after is closure the next time you are tempted to send that text. If you want to talk to them, just be certain that you are ready to have that conversation, no matter how good or bad it might get.
