Who here lost a partner (either you broke it off, or they did) only to get back together with them. At the time. did you think it would happen? How long did it take?
Been thinking about an ex. Saw her on Facebook. Damn, she is beautiful!
raises hand It’s too long to type out all the details on iPhone but we broke up for a while tried to stay friends but weren’t in contact a lot. Then we started hanging out again going to movies, then yada yada yada, stuff happened and we went from bed buddies to officially dating again.
Kinda sorta.
I broke up with my boyfriend and we were in the process of starting to deal with how to split things up (we lived together and had joint accounts). He had been living with his parents for a couple of weeks.
We went climbing indoors with a big group of people (we were trying to remain on good terms with each other) and he fell, breaking his arm. The worst part of it all was that he had just quit his very lucrative job on Friday and was going in to training for the fire department Monday. Being in between jobs (for a weekend) he had no disability coverage. The worst part was that he had to postpone entering the FD for a minimum of six months while he healed.
I took him to the hospital and as he lay on the hospital bed, I saw in his tearful eyes the fear of losing his dream of being a fire fighter just as he was about to attain it, and the fear of being out of a job and not able to collect disability. It was right then that I realized how much I loved him. I committed to sticking by him and working through our problems.
We’ve been married for just over two months.
Yup. Been there, done that.
Back in university, my First Love broke up with me after two and a half years of dating. I’d been away for a summer, and it turns out he had a bit of an out-of-sight-out-of-mind issue… in that as soon as I was out of sight, he set his mind on someone else.
We got back together a few months later when a) the other girl dumped him for her ex, and b) he realised he wasn’t as cool with me dating other people as he was with him dating other people. I made him beg for a month before I gave him another chance, though, because I wanted to make sure he meant it and wasn’t just scared of being single for a while.
We broke up eighteen months later, after he went away for a summer. Seems he hadn’t fixed that whole out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem of his.
Since then, I’ve had a strict no-returns policy on breakups. Once it’s over, it’s OVER… no matter how hot/rich/smart/sober/honest they seem to have become.
Yup. Was engaged, and I broke off the engagement. About six months later, we got back together and married within the year. Then we divorced after almost 5 years of marriage.
It probably all depends on the reason you broke up in the first place. Some wrongs can be righted and some maturity can compensate for past mistakes, but basic conflicts of values and styles of communication stay conflicts, generally speaking.
My wife left after 12 years or so of marriage. Then tried to make me feel guilty about it (the kids and all) so we got back together for a year. Short answer, didn’t work out at all and she left again. I guess I’m glad I tried to work it out (Kids and all) but I think perhaps it just made it worse for everyone.
My grandparents did. My grandfather and my grandmother’s brother were friends in medical school, and my grandfather came over to borrow a book and ran into my grandmother. They started dating shortly thereafter, but my grandmother found out that (although casually dating and not explicitly stating their exlusivity) my grandfather was dating other women as well, and gave them all the same Valentine’s day gift. My grandmother told him he was garbage, and kicked him to the curb.
A few months later he came back, and told her quite plainly that he wanted her to be the mother of his children, and that she was the only woman for him. My grandfather later admitted that he knew he wanted to marry her almost immediately, but thought he was too young/immature for her, and wanted to still have fun. Obviously, he tired of the “fun” quickly.
One of the happiest (and not in a passive way, either) and truly successful couples ever.
Yup. My girlfriend and I split up after a year, took a year off, then got back together again. We’ve been together a total of 6 1/2 years, and have been cohabitating for 2 1/2.
A friend of mine’s mother and father divorced in 1979 after 18 years together. Both remarried. Her dad eventually got divorced from his second wife. Her mom’s second husband passed away a few years ago. They hooked back up shortly after the second husband’s death and have been living in sin for a couple of years now after being apart for 28 years or so.
My girlfriend and I dated for about 3 years then broke up, and we each honestly believed that we never wanted to speak to the other for the rest of our lives.
Years passed. We matured. We found ourselves at a party thrown by a mutual friend. We talked. We kept in touch. We began traveling to see each other, then going away together. We fell in love again.
We’re in our 12th year of marriage and every day is better than the one before.
Twice.
Guy #1 I knew in high school and dated our senior year. Then I went to college and he into the military, and we went our separate ways…
Guy #2 I met & started dating freshman year of college. Over the next 9 years we dated with a few lengthy break-ups where we eventually got back together. Finally that relationship ended for good.
Back to #1: 11 years after we broke up, we reconnected and started dating again. We did have one breakup of a couple of months, but that took place more than a year ago, and we seem to be going strong (been dating 4.5 years total now).
I always considered #1 to be my “true love” and always hoped and dreamed that we would have a chance to be together again, and I was really lucky that we did get that chance, although logically know that us finding each other again, when we were both available, and falling in love again after 11 years was a real long shot.
Wow, great story.
Been there, done that. I dated a girl from another school long-distance for much of the end of my freshman year and the first half of sophomore year. I had a mental health crisis, and she and I broke up because of what it did to our communication (I basically dropped off the face of the earth).
Somehow managed to reconnect with her two years later, and she came up for a visit to renew our friendship that promptly turned into us dating again. Moved in with her that summer because I had an internship in her hometown, realized that I didn’t really think we were good for each other due to our respective mental issues feeding off of each other, and in a play nominated for the Dick Move Lifetime Achievement award, I didn’t bother telling her this or talking about it because the sex was great, I just dumped her right after moving back to college.
She married someone else and has three kids and seems happy these days. I’m glad for that.
We were in a long-distance relationship that we left open to the possibility of dating other people. He started dating another person and they decided to make it exclusive. He called me and broke it off. I felt kind of… well, whatever. It had been kind of a rocky long-distance relationship, anyway. I was only 19 and not really ready for a major commitment. We went our separate ways.
He and Ms. Exclusive Relationship broke it off after several months when she turned out to be crazy. He wanted to know if he could come visit me again. I allowed as how that might be OK.
We’ve been together for 10 years, married for 8.
My story is that as a student I had a sort of one-sided relationship with another student, where she loved me rather more than I did her. This went on for a few years, and basically ended when I strted a relationship with another. That ended, I started living with a third woman, and that relationship ended too, and I had a short relationship with a fourth. That fourth one I had been in a one-sided relationship several years earlier, where I was the one in love, and she only wanted to be a friend.
The first mentioned woman worked a few years as a teacher, then moved to England for a year or so, then moved back to Australia. I’d pretty well lost contact with her, but I heard from friends that she was back, but I didn’t know where she was. I got in contact with her through her mother (who was, of course, still living where she had for many years), and a little over a year later we were married. And we are still married after more than 30 years.
Fell in love with him when I was 15. Crazy flirtations for a few years. Had a relationship when I was 19. Bad stuff happened. He broke my heart (and his own too, as he tells it now). He disappeared.
Twenty years passed, and he’s sitting on the sofa watching some stupid movie asking “Whatcha doin’, Baby?” And he’s right here, next to me.
And it was worth the wait.
I did. My high-school sweetheart dumped me my Freshman year of college. We got back together in my sophomore year.
At the time I thought it would last forever. It didn’t. She broke my heart…again. Badly. This time it left scars.
If I could change one single thing about my life, it would be this.
A good friend and I started dating when I was 18 but after a while I broke it off because of his emotional state… it sounds cold, but he was suffering from depression and not dealing with it. It was affecting my state of mind and I became depressed from being around him all the time. The relationship became unhealthy because we were miserable, unhealthy people. So, I told him it was over and moved on, pulling myself out of the funk and eventually ending up in another relationship. He met someone else too. I never forgot about him though, and I always felt regret over “abandoning” him in his time of need.
Eventually there came a time where we were both single again and we got back together. He was in a better place emotionally this time around and we had a lot of fun together, but we were fundamentally incompatible and eventually ended it again, this time for good. We’ve remained friendly, but we’d never go back for round three; we just don’t work. He’s engaged now and his fiancee is a wonderful person who brings out the best in him.