OK, a little background for those who don’t know me that well:
My girlfriend of seven months broke up with me Sunday night. I’m very sad and angry about this, but this post isn’t really about that so I’ll just say I think she kinda lied in the reasons she told me and has other reasons for breaking up that I’m bitter about. But enough about that, to the real topic of today’s discussion:
My ex-GF from freshman year just this week also broke up with her boyfriend. Now, I have been wishing I could get back to gether with her since the second we broke up in December of 2000. Except for the seven months I was dating my last GF, I have wanted nothing more than to be with her. Now I have a chance, and before you say,
“Don’t do it man, that’s crazy!”, I need to say a few things:
We already have a kinda-sorta-not really but almost date:
My fraternity is having a fall formal, before I even knew she had ended her relationship, I asked her to go as friends, since she likes hanging out at the fraternity and loves everyone in it. She’s been to our past formals and I knew she wanted to go, so I said I would take her as friends. (Seeing as we have been friends since a few months after the breakup, it really wouln’t be that weird.) She accepted. Granted, I did say as friends, but that’s only because I thought she still had a boyfriend at the time.
Since about January we have become a lot closer than before. We talk a lot more, and relate our problems to one another. She never used ot do this before, even when we were going out. And recently she’s had problems with her family that she has discussed with very few people, just myself and a couple other close friends…I didn’t actually consider myself that close to her, but she was very open about it and I got a weird feeling about that, I’m sure it’s just me being weird though.
So there it stands. I realize it would probably be insane to try and start up a relationship with her again, but never have I claimed to be sane. I think that at the very least it couldn’t hurt to, at sometime in the near future, just talk about these things with her.
Anyways, I just thought I would get the advice from the Dopers out there. See how many of you have gotten back together with an ex and had it work out in the end, and just to get some advice in general. Oh, and thanks for listening.
I don’t have any experience on getting back together with exes, but I say go for it. You don’t mention why you broke up in the first place, but you’re both two years older and more mature now. Why not give it a shot and see how things progress? The alternative is always wondering what would have happened.
Well, since fizgig as good as asked, I guess I’ll tell you, to the best of my ability, why she broke up with me. At the time, I wasn’t doing well in my classes, and I wasn’t enjoying my college career. I had casually mentioned at one point to her that I thought of myself as a loser, and she asked me to ellaborate. I did…and basically cried to her all of my problems at the time. Wellm a couple of weeks later, she ended it. She didn’t give a reason then. Later, we talked, and she said she kind of felt liek she was “mothering” me. She was alwyas trying to cheer me up, and tell me everything was going to be OK and that I wasn’t a loser. Ther emay have been more (i.e., I suspect it was that she really wanted to date this other guy who she dated right after we broke up, who was the same guy she just broke up with.) I can’t confirm that part, but either way, the reason she gave then really doesn’t apply now. So I guess in that sense it is worth a shot, assuming there are no other reasons.
How about “Hey, I know I was a bit screwed up a few years ago, but you were one of the better things in my life and when we were together life was pretty good. What do you say we make this formal an official date, and see where things go from there?”
I personally like knowing where I stand. Whenever you think things will work themselves out, they don’t, and you’ll spend the whole evening trying to figure them out. Be sincere but not overbearing…you don’t want to scare her if she’s not that interested.
The whole talking with each other about issues and problems is very important and may well have been why the 1st time around didn’t work.
By that I mean that I get the impression that you waited until things were going pretty badly for you school wise before you said anything and then you unloaded everything on to her. If you had talked with her earlier, she might not have had the same response.
Communication is probably the 2nd iggest thing that makes a relationship work, after compromise. (Well, maybe sex sneaks in there occasionally.)
Having said the above, I would still go fairly slowly.
OK, so the consesus seems to be go for it, but not to get my hopes up. I’m cool with that. I think that most of me being unsure about trying again is the reason she gave. If she flat out said she didn’t enjoy being my girlfriend, and that she felt a close relationship was wrong, I wouldn’t have thoughts like this. But seeing as the reason she gave was conditional to the time that it happened, then I do think it might be worth giving a shot.
