BY Richard Blakeley
May 12, 2008
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In politics, it’s often said that the incumbent always has the advantage. The same can be said in relationships. According to Wikipedia, incumbents traditionally win their party’s nomination to run for office. Unseating an incumbent president, senator or other figure during a primary election is very difficult. Similiarly, if you’re up against someone’s ex boyfriend or girlfriend you’re most likely toast.

Let me explain. When you’re with someone, you’re not only with them at the moment — you’re with them in the future, too. You dream about where the relationship is going and what you’ll be doing in the future. You daydream and talk about where you’re going to spend your vacations together, where you’d like to live someday, how many dogs or children you will have together. Over the course of the time that you’re with this person, you develop really strong feelings about them and the fake future life you have created for the both of you.

When you break up that world is shattered and you’re left wondering what will replace it. At the time, it feels like a huge vast void of nothingness. Your entire future feels looks like a wasteland and you have to let it go and start once again living for yourself. It’s tough, it’s really tough. Though deep down you know you’ll eventually be alright and that time heals everything, it still hurts — and the horrible part is that there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t make time go by any faster so you just have to stick with the pain and wait it out.

Eventually, you begin dating someone new. But one day your ex calls you out of the blue to tell you that they feel like they made a huge mistake, they “miss you” and “feel like you two should be together again.” And no matter how much they may have hurt you the first time around, you’re more likely to want to get back together than pursue your new relationship.

I have no advice for how to go about handling being the one who has to choose to go back for the ex, nor do I have any advice on having to be the new person in the relationship. I’ll just leave you with a final thought.

Most of the time getting back together with an ex is a doomed scenario. After all, there was a very good reason why you broke up in the first place.