No, He Doesn't Want to Get Back Together
A couple of years back, mere weeks out from a breakup, I found a stack of old postcards my ex had purchased the previous summer at a dusty antique store in Upstate, NY. We’d taken to going on weekend adventures to neighboring towns, poking our heads into old watering holes in the form of bookstores and bars (granted, often with an Americano from the new Brooklyn-esque coffee shop that had descended upon the town in hand). It was wonderful.
I took finding these cards as an auspicious omen. I tucked them inside my notebook and began writing about them. Or, rather, writing short vignettes about our relationship with the cards nestled beside me, running my fingers over the worn edges in between passages. As if the cards were a bit of him, I wrote each night—me, him, and a glass of wine. I held visions of sending the passages to him—a fellow writer—one day, imagining how they'd simultaneously win him over and win him back.
I took that discovery and spun a web that he was thinking of me. That there was potential to get back together, that underneath it all, he was a kind, sweet soul, that the harsh words he slung or the shell of a person I became in his presence were simply the product of some greater trauma he’d yet to unpack for himself. The poor soul.
I’d spot his make of car and think, “Ah, yes, a sign.” I’d catch his favorite candy bar at the checkout and think, “He’s thinking of me,” or at my worst, “One day….”
The thing is, outside of these heartbroken-fueled mental gymnastics of which I was both the creator and only participant, I *do* believe in those cosmic signs. I do believe there is a force, an energy greater than us, that both runs the ship and binds us all together in some way we cannot see. When observed from a place of objectivity versus false hope, it's beautiful.
But all too often, like this post-breakup state I was in, I see clients spin their own webs that they carry for years. Exes will be in new relationships, have moved continents, in some cases, even no longer be with us, and yet…the story prevails. The story prevails and keeps them stuck in a saga that has nothing to do with the actual reality of their life.
The saga is comfortable and cozy, and deeply familiar. They also maintain all control. They set the scenes and their meaning. They come to me and say things like:
“I just can’t meet anyone I connect with.”
“I just can’t with the apps.”
“I’m just not sure I’ll ever connect with someone in that way.”
It wasn’t until I finally decided to reach out to my ex, following one of those aforementioned candy bar viewings, that I snapped, sharply so, back to reality. He *wasn’t* thinking of me the same way. He *was* actually that cold. He by no means wanted to get back together.
I forwarded the message to an energy practitioner of mine, grasping for straws, figuring maybe someone else could draw some deeper meaning from this.
Her response was blunt and to the point:
“He doesn’t want to get back together, Clara.”
My heart shrank and snapped. Suddenly the web of lies I’d spun for myself, the world I’d caked myself in, appeared desperate and hollow. False. So utterly false. I cried for most of that day, a mix of compounded grief and disappointment in myself. I’d inadvertently woken myself up from the bullshit dream of my own creation and it felt awful.
It’s delicate work on my part to illuminate this pattern for a client. To show them how they, too, have spun their own web of false meaning and maniacal hope. And that in doing so, it's created both a sense of self and way of being that not only keeps them trapped but also leads them to believe that they'll never meet anyone. They'll never feel the same way about someone else. They'll never, never, never.
I look back on that girl, that shattered version of myself, with fondness and care. Still wanting to cradle her in my arms and say, "It's ok. It's ok. It's all that you knew to do." Because it really was. It really was, until it wasn't.