“Do you even know how to be on your own?” I asked my blonde-haired friend sitting next to me on the couch as she texted an ex-boyfriend she had dumped two years earlier.
She was rebounding from a fresh breakup the day before – a yearlong relationship – and while she texted her ex from two years ago, she was worried the boy she had just broken up with hours earlier was on his way to the party we were attending, most likely to see her.
“You just got out of a relationship, and you’re already trying to move on,” I continued. “I do know how to be on my own. I’m independent, you know this.”
She replied, quickly cutting the conversation off. I sighed and remained quiet. I knew she was lying – putting up a façade of confidence and independence when we both knew she wasn’t being truthful. Situations like this made me start to wonder, why do people continuously return to those who have hurt them time and time again?
In fact, there’s more to these types of situations than the gifts that were received during the relationship, the night you met their family, or the late nights spent staying out on dates, sitting in each other’s company feeling deeply and truthfully in love.
My friend’s yearning is a common social consequence of falling in love, according to Subhasweta Banik, a psychological anthropologist and program coordinator at YesMindy, a site developed by psychiatry experts to promote healthy lifestyles.
“Missing someone is a natural response to the connections we form with others and the emotional impact they have on our lives,” Banik said.
Emotional impact … there it is: emotions.
Emotions, especially as raging hormonal teenagers, seem to control a relationship more than anything. But I was always told, “Girls mature faster than boys.” “Boy will be bugs, don’t let them break your heart.”
Is this why it’s so easy for boys to move on after breakups or arguments? Is this why it’s harder for girls to move on and forget? Reminiscing terribly late at night and accepting that same guy back into their life, time and time again, even after completely shattering her heart?
Most friends I’ve known who broke up with a boyfriend usually run back to them when they start wanting them again. However, it just never seems true. It always seems like their boyfriend wants something, and when he gets it, he leaves, and the cycle repeats.
Are their souls so intertwined that they physically just can’t stay away from each other?
Or maybe it’s a lesson that both parties just refuse to learn, the universe pushing them together and pulling them back apart to let them know they just aren’t the ones for each other.
It seems to be more than just missing someone. It’s missing everything about them, to the way they hug you, down to their favorite phrases and gestures. It’s missing everything you’re already familiar with, and venturing out for new love is probably scary, because you have to get to know a whole new person when you already knew someone for so long, every part and detail about them.
“I’m glad she’s going far away for college, so she won’t have to see him, and hopefully that ends things between them for good.” I gossiped about my friend at the party. “But who knows, she still talks to her other ex’s as well, I don’t think she’ll ever learn.”
Maybe what she needs to learn is that going back is for comfort, maybe out of insecurity or a feeling of vulnerability. Maybe it means learning to find peace being alone and comfort and security in being independent. Otherwise, romance is sinister, emotional cat-and-mouse game that everyone loses.