I recently heard a story that I am sure you’ve heard many times before. A typical itch in a marriage where one spouse has reconnected with an ex on Facebook, email, or some other communication forum and is now thinking, “maybe I would be happier if I were with my newly reconnected ex”. It’s a typical tale and one that rarely has a positive outcome. Let’s be honest, marriage/partnerships are hard! How lovely it is to escape to a thought of a house without arguments, where your partner always understands you, and where you always get your way. Your ex seems to be the mascot of this paradise, and you are certain that if you were to leave your current partner, it would be the last step needed to embark on your journey to a tropical heaven.
So, let’s backtrack a bit… do you remember when you first met your loved one? I always think that when you first meet, your loved one is a bit like that sinful warm five-nut brownie sundae at Houston’s Restaurant. (I am so sorry for those of you whose lives have not been charmed by this delicious heavenly creation!) You want to devour him/her to every last crumb, and you want to have as much of him/her as you can. You cannot eat anything else, you cannot sleep, and all you think of is this craving. However, after many years – perhaps marriage or a great partner relationship, your loved one changes from this lovely brownie sundae, to maybe a vanilla crème brulee. He/She is still decadent, but a bit easier to digest on a daily basis. Now, enters the ex who appears to be the brownie sundae you once loved. You feel the cravings begin again, and you feel the jitters that make you feel if you don’t feed this craving, you will not be able to live. However, I feel, pursuing this is not going to leave you with the satisfaction of the brownie sundae, but instead, it will be like those awful restaurants who take a beautiful crème brulee and drown it with liquor. You know the type, don’t you? They douse it with liquor to the point that you cannot even taste the crème brulee. You feel you have some sort of awful liquor soup, and then all you crave is to have your lovely vanilla crème brulee back.
The dangers of “the one who got away” is that we forget over the years that there is a reason they got away. If they broke up and no longer wanted us, we are better not being with someone who does not want us. If we broke up with them, well, usually the reason you have to break up with someone the first time ends up being the reason you break up with them a second time. So why is the person so appealing to you now? You know that if you weren’t married with children, living the single life, you would probably not give this person a chance. You would be a bit pickier, more assured of your value and what you want out of a partner. Chances are that if you made a pros/cons list of your ex and your current partner – you would probably see that your current partner is the one you would want. Your ex is an illusion at best. You probably have many thoughts, fantasies and one-sided conversations of how they can take you away from all your troubles and give you a lifetime of indulgence. But, really, who wants that warm five nut brownie sundae for every meal of every day? Eventually you would be really sick of brownies, your stomach would feel awful, and you would start craving something more nourishing. Plus, let’s face it, your hips and ass would house a different construction.
The Ex is Always Greener by Tracy Katzenberger is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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