My ex-girlfriend and I broke up two years ago. At first it was messy, but she moved many states away, which limited the mess. That all blew over and we’ve been exchanging phone calls and emails ever since. I’d like to think we’re pretty good friends.
Almost too good. We’ve admitted that we’re the first people we think of to call when we feel blue, and we’ve been talking more and more in the last few months. We’ve always talked about visiting each other, but it’s always been more of a joke because of the impracticality imposed by our distance. But a few weeks ago she suggested coming to visit me for real, and since then we’ve been talking a lot more and maybe even flirting just a little, in our way.
I’d love to see her, but I can also see where this is all headed. It seems obvious that it would be a huge mistake for our visit to be anything more than a friendly, chaste kind of thing. We can’t be together in the long run for geographical reasons. And maybe emotional ones; our primarily foul-weather friendship is a bad sign. But I can’t figure out what I want or what I should do. It would be nice to play couple for a few days, but it would also be shallow, mean, and ultimately destructive. Am I overthinking this? Am I being too hasty to dismiss what could be a perfectly lovely couple of days? I’ve been burned by ex-sex before…
There’s only three ways that you can have sex with an ex and survive: 1) You are Dr. House from the hit TV show House (ps, if you are Dr. House, please marry me). 2) You are both robots. 3) You are both unicorns. What I’m trying to say here, is that you can’t have casual sex with an ex and have it not mean anything. Not possible. Unless you are Dr. House, in which case, ‘ello.
I’m not saying though, that you cannot be friends with your ex. If the friendship is important to you, by all means have her come out and visit. But be clear with her, no hanky-panky unless you attempt honest-to-goodness getting back together. Otherwise, it is the definition of damaging. I don’t want to admit this, so I won’t really, but let’s say that I hypothetically have an ex-boyfriend that I call when things aren’t going well. He’s my foul-weather friend. And in the years since we’ve broken up, all that’s done is make him hate me and not get over me at the same time. I hypothetically hate myself for doing this to him. It would probably be better if I hypothetically never called him again. But I can’t promise that I hypothetically won’t. Although, it’s been a while since I’ve hypothetically done this. Maybe I’m turning into a unicorn, and suddenly learning how to deal outside the grim confines of reality.
What I’m saying is be careful. You run the danger of hurting yourself or her. And that’s not worth it. For your own sake. I wish I could take my own advice somedays, but I guess it’s easier to look in, isn’t it, Mr. Roboto?
