RELATIONSHIPS
Girl Trouble
I split up with my girlfriend five years ago, but I still can't get her out of my head
Dear Ray,
I split up with an ex-girlfriend in 2003, after a relationship with that person of five years. Our split was amicable to begin with - it was one of those awful splits where we both still loved each other, but realised our relationship was absolutely unworkable. Over the following few months, however, a lot of anger crept in on both sides, and rather than subject myself to the emotional trauma of that breakdown, I chose not to see her again and cut off all contact.
The trouble is that five years later, I still find myself struggling to get over that relationship. I have had two partners in this time, and am still with the second - with whom I have a very fulfilling, indeed much more fulfilling relationship with, and to all intents and purposes I am happy. But I still find myself thinking about my ex every day. She takes up a lot of my head space.
Recently this person moved back to Ireland after three years away, and I have bumped into her on the scene several times. We are perfectly friendly to each other, but there is an almost unbearable underlying tension between us. I still find her attractive physically, but can't imagine ever being with her sexually again, and know she would end up doing my head in if we even became friends.
I am very happy with my current girlfriend, who I want to stay with for the rest of my life. But now that my ex is back in town, more and more of my thoughts are being filled with her. It's getting me down, and it's something I feel I can't talk to my partner about, since it will be like an admission of having my ex on my mind throughout this current relationship.
What I would really like is closure. Although that seems like a foreign term in this situation, so used am I to thinking of my ex. And I don't think my ex would take too well to me approaching her for closure either.
So what do you think I should do?
Yours,
Annie
Dear Annie,
Friends has a lot to answer for in our popular culture: the proposal that friends are the new family, our relationship substitutes; that 'being on a break' allows you to be with someone else; and that this notion of 'closure' can be achieved at the end of a relationship which allows you to pass from the relationship content, wiser, understood. 'Closure' is the promised land, you know is out there, but you spend 40 years wandering around in an emotional desert trying to find it, or 10 years if you are Ross and Rachel. And that they never achieved it was the main drive of the series.
You are wandering around in this barren emotional desert that is the "trauma of that breakdown" searching for closure though you "have had two partners in this time", and are "still with the second". If your ex "takes up a lot of head space" it is only because you are giving her that head space: comparisons are still being made through your "indeed much more fulfilling relationship". But this is your head, your thoughts, your closure. What are you holding on to her for? What memory, what idea, what fantasy? And this is important to note, it is a fantasy, something not real, that you are holding on to. You say there is "an almost unbearable underlying tension between us" but are both of you experiencing it or do you only imagine or hope that she feels that too?
Everyone is attracted to impossible love, the one that got away, the great romance, because it is the impossibility that keeps the dream alive. This impossibility is what makes romance so powerful from Romeo and Juliet through to Ross and Rachel. Your wish for closure, is another wish for the impossible, a flirtation with another level of fantasy.
If you and your girlfriend are capable of the maturity, wisdom, love and understanding necessary to achieve closure, then you would be mature, wise, loving and understanding enough to be together. Holding out for closure is another way of holding out for the relationship to continue. And the only real question here for you are why do you want to keep this dream alive? What are you holding onto with your ex, what role does she play in your unconscious life? Bring this into your conscious awareness and that is where closure lies.
You know this, and that is why you don't want to speak to either your present girlfriend or your ex about it, because the closure is not theirs, it is only yours to find. So to close for once and for all, open it fully, consider it, see what needs to be learned from it, what part of the story you are attached to, and what you are secretly holding onto; for it is only when it is all out in the open that you will know whether you can, will, or want it closed.
Ray