This woman actually did it.
What I learned when I called up all my old boyfriends.
Any male or female dopers gone back well after the fact and done “exit interviews” with their ex’s?
High Fidelity called. It wants its plot back, and you can’t have the Bruce Springsteen cameo, either.
It was also the plot of the movie Seven Girlfriends starring Tim Daly…not that anyone else has actually seen it besides me, but it WAS released a year before High Fidelity…
So her big epiphany is:
?
Gee, I feel so enlightened by that deep introspection.
Nope, I left them so there really would be no point.
They all have restraining orders against me.
The “exit interviews” I’ve done have only existed in my head.
I admire the courage of the woman who’s linked in the OP…but OTOH, who really needs to hear why they weren’t The One? Chances are good you already know why it didn’t work out. Dwelling on it is unhealthy at best and self-flaggelating at worst.
I forget who said it first but regret is the most wasted emotion on the human spectrum. Learn from your mistakes and go from there.
I’ve screwed up big-time but in the long run it made me worthy of where I’m at right now.
“Gary. Hi… It’s Beth.”
“Beth?..”
“Yeah that Beth. We dated 6 years ago. How’re you doing?”
“Oh. I’m Fine.”
…
“Okay, great! Um, this might sound weird, but I’ve got a favor to ask.”
“…uh…oh-kay? … I guess…”
“I’ve kind of been wondering why you dumped me. I mean, there must have been some reason right? Was it the hair, was it that sex stuff I was into,… at the time… Was it the way I smacked my lips when I ate? Were we THAT unsuitable??
You know, why couldn’t we have just BEEN together. Forever Gary? Huh?! CAN YOU ANSWER THAT, GARY?”
“Um, I’m sorry Beth, it was totally my fault, not yours. Wait a minute, is this call coming from… inside the house???”
click…beeeeeeeep
I’ve never understood why people are so down on wanting to know exactly why things ended. If you read the comments in the link, one woman was “devastated” to find out every single one of her exes brought up a single aspect of her personality/behavior, where all along she had thought they were the problem! She was able to evaluate herself, learn and grow from finding out something she had been blind to before. For her, learning the truth helped. It is possible for people to change, if they are motivated, and finding out that some aspect of your behavior is the reason all your relationships end can be very motivating.
I was also intrigued by the comment from the woman who agreed about being compassionate towards the students at her school, but shutting that off in her own relationships. It was strange to hear her describe that compassion as an “act” that she didn’t want to take the effort to maintain at home, and as a result she’d rather be alone than have to care about someone else’s feelings. That is a very good thing to know about yourself before you try to be in a relationship with someone you consider emotionally immature for wanting to be cared about, don’t you think?
I actually had a positive experience in this matter. I finally got onto Facebook because of my high school 20th anniversary. Because of that, I got in contact with my first GF. We met up while I was back home and talked about things. I discovered interesting things such as:
-In HS, I was “adorable.”
-I was the target of a seduction. This girl even befriended someone she barely knew just because that girl had the locker next to mine. It worked, obviously. It would be called stalking nowdays, but back then I guess it wasn’t considered creepy inasmuch as obsessive.
-She dumped me a little while after prom. But for the whole next school year she would drive by my place, even though she knew I was away at college. (OK, that part is a little creepy).
Overall, it was a pleasant, enlightening experience. I was able to tell her that I was never mad about being dumped. And that apparently really made her day.
High Fidelity is based on a book of the same name by Nick Hornby (set in London, but with the same essential plot details) which was released in 1995.
So there. 
And, just for the sake of completion, there was a short-lived musical version on the Broad Way a few years back.
Anybody remember the episode of Northern Expsoure when Maggie goes off into the wilderness, on a solo camping trip, then hallucinates that all of her (dead*) ex-boyfriends are stuck with her?
*All of Maggie’s boyfriends somehow die tragically, eg./ hit by falling satellite.
I think people want to know so they can learn from their mistakes. Maybe they’re doing something that they really didn’t consider important but others did. It’s hard for us to see exactly how we are through other people’s eyes.
At the same time you’d have to be prepared for answers that seem outlandish, petty, or just plain stupid from your point of view.
Similar to Hypno-Toad, I didn’t go out of my way to do this. In general, I’m on pretty good terms with all of the ex’s I still run into, so it’s not something I worry about.
Late in high school, then again during a half of a year I was in college, I dated one of the cutest, sexiest, sweetest girls I’ve ever known.
And I treated her like absolute crap. I couldn’t tell you why, immaturity I guess. I took for granted she’d drop what she was doing to hang out with me, I’d not call her for a couple days at a time, then get her running to me. The second time around, when I was in college - she was a senior at high school that year - she’d come down to spend weekends, and I would literally hop out of bed with someone else to get her at the train station, spend the weekend with her and head back where I was.
I eventually told her I had slept with someone else, and we had the bittersweet break up where she sent me the letter that said she understands, and thank you for the honesty…
The thing is, I was nuts about her and literally spent the next couple years banging my head on the wall, but KNOWING she had to hate me, I never sought her out.
FF to about 3 months ago. Classmates.com, I saw her name and said ah, what the hell. The note I sent was long the lines of “hey, I’m sorry, I was an ass, if you still want me to crawl into a hole, I understand, I treated you like shit…”
Nope. She really did get it back then. She said she knew I just wasn’t ready to be “adored the way I adored you”. She has never ever had anything but great memories of our time together, which is not the same as going back, because she’s happily married now to a great 2nd husband.
In short, I heard that I was a wonderful, sweet, hunky awesome guy that she always remembers treated her like a princess and she loved me beyond belief. I said, but what about…? Naming all the crap I put her through.
She just asked what memories, aside from my being an ass, I had of her. I told her honestly that I don’t have a single bad one and about how I beat myself up for a long time over letting her get away. She said, well there you go - you loved me too, I know that but it was just the wrong time.
And now we keep in touch, e-mail most days, even though she lives and works about 20 minutes from me, we’ve never even spoken on the phone.
And Matthew McConnaughey’s new movie “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”.
“Why did you dump me?”
"Because I thought: ‘Meh.’ "
What a pointless stupid little article. If people get paid for stuff like that, I definitely need to start writing.
I have, on occasion, asked people why they turned me down when I hit on them.
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