When getting back together with your ex is scarier than any Halloween horror flick
Mayumi Izumi // Contributor
Valeriya Kim // Illustrator
Jennifer Lopez, aka J-Lo, has recently gotten back together with her ex—actor, director, and Academy Award winner Ben Affleck. Jenny from the block is not the only person to give their ex another shot—we have seen it over and over again with couples like Angelina Jolie and Johnny Lee Miller, and Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott. For all of us that are old enough to remember the early 2000s, Bennifer getting back together is the most unexpected.
The couple met in 2002 and began a whirlwind romance. They were in Vancouver filming the movie Gigli, when he cheated on her with a stripper from the notorious No. 5 Orange exotic entertainment showroom and pub. Lopez subsequently ended their engagement in 2004.
Affleck bought Lopez a beautiful pink 6.10 carat diamond ring that cost a whopping $1.2 million—that she allegedly kept. The silver lining to keeping the engagement ring is that maybe it’s tucked in a safety deposit box somewhere and Affleck won’t have to spend another million. But just because these icons got back together, does that mean we regular folks should be doing the same?
I’ll be the first to admit, I am guilty of getting back together with a few of my exes and friends would often ask me why I always give second chances to these people. It’s hard to say no to the constant calls, texts, and flirting that would start after a while of them being alone. I liked the attention and the feeling of being chased again. At the end of the day, I am a sucker for love. Or is it lust?
I wanted to rekindle the romance because I was still attracted to them. There was a spark that was still burning, a sexual chemistry that didn’t die with the relationship. However, my on-again off-again relationships never lasted. There was a good reason why I broke up with them—they were emotionally unavailable. Unfortunately, this became a repeated pattern in my love life as I seem to be most attracted to the unattainable male.
Attractive male approaches me, pursues me and captures my attention. We begin to date, and we have sex. I become enamoured with them and in my passion, I start to pursue them back. This seems to scare them off and they become emotionally and physically distant and often they’re suddenly unreachable by phone or text. I used to think there was something wrong with me.
It took a lot of reflection and healing, but I eventually realized it wasn’t me, it was them. Not only should I not have gotten back together with them, but I also should never have dated them in the first place. It took a while to get out of this cycle, but I am now in a healthy place in my life and happily single.
Recently, my growth was tested by an ex from high school. We had dated for a week and I broke up with him because he was never around, he was too busy skateboarding. Didn’t Avril Lavigne write a song about this? I said see you later boy! But he never got over me. Twenty years passed, and he called me out of the blue after his wife moved out. We began to date, and the cycle of on-again, off-again began because he would get cold feet.
He told me that he was falling in love with me, but I didn’t say the same to him because of his non-committal behaviour towards our relationship. We broke up a final time, but he recently tried to get back together. I had enough of this unhealthy habit and told him to forget it; I was off the market—which wasn’t exactly true but it was just the easiest way to get him off my back.
From my years of repeating the pattern of dating my exes, I know now that I will never date them again. For anyone that is thinking about sparking up a romance with your ex—save yourself the trouble and don’t do it! Remember all the reasons you two split, evaluate what you need from a partner that you know they can’t provide and that should stop you from repeating the past. Take it from a former serial ex-dater: it’s better to invest in a plant.