I Want My Ex Boyfriend Back

I was delighted last week when a long time friend called me on the phone. It had been nearly a year since we had last talked. We live in different states from each other, both have kids, jobs and other responsibilities that keep us from connecting as often as we would like, but we still remain close through Facebook and email. My happiness at hearing her voice quickly faded, however, when I asked her how she was doing.

“Dan cheated on me”, she blurted out with little enthusiasm or emotion.

I was stunned. She had been married longer than any of my friends. Their daughter is graduating high-school next year. They had literally been together for 19 years and were still a young couple. They seemed happy and content.

“What happened?”, I asked.

Over the course of the next 2 hours, my friend told me what happened. And she did it in such detail that I could tell she had been thinking about those past 19 years for a long time. She started at the event of finding out about her husband's infidelity and traveled backward through time, slowly at first, until we were both hurtling back to high-school and long lost memories. What struck me most about the conversation was the fact that this one instant of infidelity on the part of her husband had triggered a cascading effect of doubt for the entire 19 years they had been together!

My friend was rewriting the history of her life!

Every action and event from her life took on new meanings in light of the infidelity. The time her husband had gone on that trip to Vegas for work was now just an opportunity for him to cheat on her. Comments that he made that at one time seemed to be funny quips and jokes were now looked upon as veiled insults and admissions that he no longer loved her. Every part of her life had taken on a new meaning. She was realizing that the life she led with her husband wasn't the life she had really led at all.

Or at least she thought.

After my friend was done passionately laying out the case of lies and deceit that had been her life she paused to get a tissue and quickly apologized for rattling on. I told her I was happy to listen and let her know that she could have called me sooner.

“It sounds like you've been doing a lot of thinking”, I commented.

“It's all I've been doing for the past two months”, she responded.

Two months, I thought to myself. Two months?! That's a long time to sit inside your head and think about everything that is wrong in your life. It's a long time to rewrite the history of every good thing that happened in your life into something that was bad. It's a long time to go without another voice to balance out the feelings and emotions that are nearly uncontrollable during times of stress like after finding out your husband has been sleeping with another women. It's a long time for just about anything. But it's an especially long time to be alone with one's own thoughts.

I said goodnight to my friend at the end of our conversation, but I couldn't get her out of my head for the rest of the night. I couldn't help but shake the feeling that no matter how horrible the feeling of abandonment that comes from loosing a love one by divorce or breakup, it's nothing compared to the pain and sorrow that we can inflict on ourselves by living inside our own heads for the weeks that follow. Our minds can be a powerful force, bringing balance and peace to our lives, but they can also be destructive and counterproductive when stress and anxiety take hold. My friends husband may have initially hurt my friend by cheating on her, but my friend ultimately did the real damage herself.

The next day I followed up with my friend with a phone call back, expressing how sorry I was about all that had happened to her. I told her to please call me anytime she wanted to talk so she didn't have to stew in her head anymore. Before I hung up, I did one last thing. I suggested she read The Magic of Making Up.

“The Magic of Making Up?”, she said. “I don't want the bastard back!”

We both laughed a bit at her sudden outburst and then I explained to her that the Magic of Making Up is more than just a manual on how to get an ex back. In fact, I told her, the Magic of Making Up is really more about finding out how to live your life the way you want to live it. It's about how to reclaim your self in order to draw the people you enjoy to you. It's a book about getting what you want out of life, by living in a way that keeps you true to yourself. It's helped hundreds of people not only get their ex back easily, but it has also helped people stay out of their heads so they can get back out into the world.

She told me she would look into it and I hope she does. Not everyone's stories are the same when it comes to relationships gone bad, but the paths that lead back to happiness are all lined with the same individual spirit and ability to live for one's own desires. And that is what ultimately will allow us to surround ourselves with those we love and cherish.