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The Ex Factor

This is the post that I mentioned yesterday was in the works, here goes nothing. . .

I dated "the boy" who I met in college for about 3.5 years. A majority of that time was while I was in college, a smaller chunk of that time was during my first year in law school. Since I went straight from undergrad to law school, graduating from undergrad and starting law school represented a huge change in my life.

Gone were the lazy days of hanging out with friends at the campus Starbucks wasting hours and hours talking about nothing, gone was the easy going job in the student center, and gone were most of my undergrad friends, almost everyone I went to college with embarked on adventures of their own after graduation, leaving most of us scattered around the country to start the next chapters in our lives.

Naturally, as I started law school I met new people, made new friends, and got really really bad about keeping in touch with my college friends. Thanks to Facebook we've all been able to kind of keep track of what we are all up to these days, but meaningful emails and phone calls are few and far between.

Which brings me to the Ex factor.

When things ended between boy and I half way through my first year of law school I didn't broadcast the fact that we were over and done to the entire world. I removed my "relationship" status from Facebook, but I did not list myself as "single" (and over a year and a half later I still haven't), relationships and breakups can be dramatic, and they are private matters, so I don't feel like that stuff needs to be broadcast to all 178 people I am "friends" with on Facebook. Sure, my close friends and family knew that things were over and done. I will be forever indebted to my close girlfriends who were there to pick up the pieces, drag me out to girls night and force feed me cocktails until I finally smiled.

It took me a long long time to get over this one, in fact, there are days where it still hurts a bit. I have been single since the breakup almost two years ago and that has been just fine because I am at a point in my life where school and career and friends keep me plenty busy, and I'm truly just not ready to dive back into that scary world of dating again. But the point is, I have moved on, I have accepted what happened, and I'm for the most part pretty happy (and having a FANTASTICALLY fun time I might add).

But despite finally getting to a place where i have moved on, the world seems ready to yank me 10 steps backward.

Over the summer my boss from college emailed me, asking how life was and asking how [insert name of boy] was doing as well. Apparently the fact that all pictures of the two of us together had disappeared off of Facebook didn't tip her off that we might not be together anymore. When I wrote her back and casually broke the news that we were no longer together she wrote back, totally stunned/shocked/mortified and went on and on about how sorry she was and about how she guessed it was good that it ended before we got married and into a legal mess with all that even though she had always thought we'd get married.

I've had a few more similar incidents in the past couple of months with former friends/acquaintances/etc getting in touch and being totally dismayed that boy and I were no longer together. I love hearing these comments: "but you two were best friends!", "but you were so perfect for each other", "but you always looked so happy" blah blah blah. Then yesterday a former professor of mine, who also knew boy in college, contacted me out of the blue on that annoying chat feature on Facebook. After doing the obligatory "how are you/how's life" stuff he went straight to "hey have you heard from [insert name of boy] lately?"

That's it, I've had it, how much longer will the ex continue to be factor?? No wonder Charlotte's breakup rule seems to make sense. Sure breaking up is hard and getting over a breakup is worse, but having to relive a painful breakup every time you run into someone you haven't seen since prior to said breakup is just down right brutal.

But how else are you supposed to handle the situation? Is it really best to just shout it from the rooftops when you breakup with someone so that everyone will know? Should that handy little Facebook status really be utilized even though it's really no one's business? And if you don't announce the breakup to the whole world are you forever doomed to having to deal with the ex factor?

Full post as published by [ Useless Dicta ] on November 09, 2008 (boomark / email).