I am generally of the opinion that once you break up, that is it. You should not get back together. I know a few people who seem to break up get back together all the time. My best friend was dating this guy "on and off" for over two years, probably almost three. They broke up three times. She wanted to get back together again after the last time (and she was sure they would too) but this time I think it's finally over.
The thing is, if you broke up, clearly there was something (or many things) wrong with the relationship. And so, if you're going to get back together, you have to work a lot harder to try to fix those things. I'm all for that, except no one ever does it. Everyone I've seen get back together with an ex seems to just end up exactly where they left off and try to simply pretend that the problems didn't/don't exist. My twin just got back together with her ex who doesn't treat her very
well. I'm really upset about that. She had told him originally that if
he wanted to get back together, he had to work really hard for it. She
made a great analogy: relationships are like the stock market. If you
sell your stock, you no longer get to reap earnings from it. And if you
want it back, you're going to have to pay a higher price. But it doesn't sound to me like she actually made him work for it at all. So we'll see what happens.
I understand the desire to get back together from the dumpee's perspective. Chances are the dumpee still has feelings for the dumper. But the dumpee is exactly the person who should prevent getting back together because they usually just end up getting dumped again. And I'm a firm believer that if you get back together with someone who has broken up with you, that sends a message to them that they can drop you and pick you back up whenever they want, so what is to prevent them from doing it again?
The only time I've seen it be successful is when a significant amount of time has passed because then people have changed and they are at different places in their lives, so the problems may actually be workable or even non-existent.
What do you think? Is it ok to get back together with an ex?
Comments (6)
plain and simple. don't get back together. your only asking for trouble. like u said one person just won't work on it. and then your back to square one
I dumped a guy and then took him back only once. It didn't take long for me to realize my mistake, but because I felt so bad about dumping him the first time, I held on until I couldn't stand it anymore--which happened to be a few weeks before Valentine's Day. But I was going crazy with it. I would never again get back together with someone after I'd broken up with them...or vice versa. Hopefully, I'll never have to face that situation again, though...
-Katie
I think it depends on why you broke up in the first place.
For instance, me and George were technically not together for a summer after we first started dating, but only because he wouldn't be available to see or talk to me. Once that problem got resolved, we started dating again.
So, if it's distance issues, yeah, you can get back together when they're resolved. Extreme things like cheating, no way. The middle is kind of a gray area, and I think it does depend on time elapsed.
I answered a question like this one once. It is the irrational fear that you may not be good enough for someone else and despite everything that has gone wrong in the relationship, you still hope it'll work out. So you take him back, not once or twice but as many as you think you need. I don't know. I think in simplest terms, if one person doesn't like themselves while in this relationship(IE, they're always crying, fighting, depressed when around the other person) then they should attempt to not be together again. It's like I said to an ex, "I don't like the person I am when I'm with you, so I really think at least for right now, the time apart will be good. Until I learn to love who I am, I can't love you."
I think that it depends on the circumstances of the break up in the first place. I've only seen two instances in which getting back together has actually worked.
My best girl friend and her boyfriend had a long distance relationship and they both broke up for a year before getting back together again. I think they both needed the time apart to discover who they were as individuals and to figure how how they wanted to spend the rest of their lives. In the end, they realized that they could not be without each other and my friend relocated to be with her boyfriend. (Practically fiance as they've been in a relationship so long, they might as well/will be married.)
The other instance was my boyfriend and I. Long story short, we had a rough patch at one point and we decided to take some time off from each other. I guess you can't really consider that a complete break up as we still saw each other almost every other day and there was almost an unspoken rule that we would not date others. It was the most horrible time of our lives. Glad to say that we got back together and that's the way it should be. haha
If it's just minor fighting that causes people to break up over and over again then obviously there's no seriousness in the relationship to keep going back over and over again. But then there's some of those couples that understand the concept of breaking up and taking the meaning that this is not working and maybe we should not be together. I think it works well only when both people are at a mature level of understanding and wanting of a real relationship for them to really make the statement of breaking up to be real, and to not return to each other.