Dealing with Post

There’s a glass-half-empty fact that most relationships end.  Unless he’s the one—and with sky-high divorce rates, there may well be a two or three—your relationship will expire.  Of course, you put this reality out of your mind during the genesis of any relationship. The crash-and-burn nature of dating is hardly start-up fodder unless you aim to be the cynic whose relationships collapse before they accelerate. So relationships end, and many brunches are spent with girlfriends analyzing the minutiae of the post-relationship. In some instances, there was a significant pre-relationship preceding the real deal. The last in the trilogy—the post-relationship—is also relevant to the series.   

In particular, fountains of ink are spilled on the topic of remaining friends with your ex.  Should we or should we not?  Rather than accepting finality, we contemplate mutation—from lover to pal, Saturday dinner to occasional coffee date.  Why not, right?   We draw firm conclusions from our experiences, then debate them with friends when, of course, the conclusions are individual, pulled from the wreckage of our own growing collections of post-relationships.  A weighty collection it becomes—heavier than stickers, stamps or Beanie Babies—perhaps better kept in mint condition than taken out to play.    

I initiated the end of my college relationship.  I was the plug-puller and, with the wisdom of a few more busted fuses, the smooth pull I planned was more akin to a harsh tug. Driven by the notion that our post-relationship would be beautifully marked by friendship, I broke up with him rather brutally and then insisted on regular communication.  I squeezed lemon juice into fresh wounds—his and mine—and made sharp pain more shooting.  He eventually told me to stop calling, the ironic result being that our post-relationship was instead marked by a sad year of almost no communication.  Probably smart, but it was inconceivable at the time that I could no longer speak to someone I’d loved—not when things were good and not when things were bad.  But, when you are the plug-puller, the rules of the post-relationship are not yours to make.  I could yap all I wanted with my friends about what to do, but he’d made up his mind. 

After that mess, I drew the firm conclusion that being friends with your ex is unnecessary and impossible.  I was quick to share my cliché thesis with friends as if it were hard fact. Like any English major worth her weight in gold, I felt my supporting details were more powerful than any of theirs.  Do not confuse your post-relationship for friendship; you’ll wind up rotting in purgatory.   

A guy I dated in Boston stayed with me in New York about a month ago.  Based on my slippery conclusion about post-relationship friendship, I viewed this as potentially disastrous. In stark contrast, the weekend was pleasantly platonic. Maybe because there was less emotion attached to this one, but the post-relationship hang-out went off without a hitch.  I’ve enjoyed dinners and baseball games with ex-whatevers—something I’d heretofore thought impossible—working under the assumption that there was some reason other than animal instinct we were kissing in the first place.  And so I’ve been made to rework prior notions.   

I removed a boy’s number from my phone earlier this year because my post-relationship antics were unhealthy and embarrassing.  I’m told this digital erasure is a helpful thing people do, and so I followed suit. With this particular post-relationship, the aforementioned “friend date” was out of the question; my temper had flared, and that ain’t pretty.  The best thing to do was tie my wrists behind my back and find someone else to kiss until he became more memory than flesh.          

I have mixed relationship with post-relationship, a bitter cocktail that results in a brutal hangover.  Once a relationship is over, it should really be over, but we’re addicted to recycling, reusing the familiar and then reusing it once more. Like my hometown, maybe it's time to consider composting.

Finality is hard to accept. There are myriad ways to handle the post-relationship, none of which is universally correct. No one rule is unanimously applicable.  Still, the idea that there may be some magic formula is comforting when thinking how to pull yourself up from a crash.  If it helps in the aftermath to trade stories and theories at brunches nationwide, bring on the bloody maries.