Your Ex Was Meh Until Somebody Else Wanted Him

Your ex can spend six perfectly ordinary weeks being your ex—peacefully existing somewhere beyond the edge of your daily life—until you hear that somebody else may be interested in him.

And suddenly he looks rather different.

Excuse me? She likes him?

The same man you recently described to your friend as exhausting? The man whose habit of disappearing mid-conversation once made you consider throwing your phone into a decorative fountain?

Apparently.

And just like that, something very strange happens to his value.

Five minutes ago, he was simply your ex—familiar, mildly exhausting and, if we are being completely fair, a little meh. Now somebody has raised a paddle, and your mind has turned into an auction house.

Do I Hear Another Bid?

You had already looked over the merchandise.

Quite thoroughly, actually.

You knew about the lovely qualities. You also knew about the delayed replies, the peculiar moods and the fact that getting him to make a plan sometimes felt like trying to organize dinner with a migrating bird.

You already knew exactly what he was like.

Then another bidder appears, and suddenly you remember that he was funny. Very funny, actually. And now that you think about it, he was rather handsome too. He did have lovely shoulders, and that blue sweater looked unusually good on him. Was he always this appealing?

Wait a minute.

Was that a rare French antique?

This is where the mind becomes wonderfully unreliable. Nothing about the man has changed. He has not gone away for restoration and returned with a certificate from Paris. Somebody else simply looked at him with interest, and now you are mentally polishing the merchandise.

Soon you are wondering whether perhaps you were too hard on him. Maybe the disappearing was not really disappearing but a charming need for solitude, and those maddening conversations were actually evidence of depth.

No.

They were maddening conversations.

But the auction has begun, and your good sense has quietly slipped out through the side door.

Suddenly He Is Looking Rather Collectible

The funniest part is that you may not even want him back.

Before hearing about the other person, you were doing quite well. You had stopped checking what he was doing. His name could come up without your afternoon needing medical attention. You had even reached that luxurious stage where one of his old habits crossed your mind and you thought, Oh yes. That.

Then somebody else wants him, and your ex is suddenly displayed rather attractively in the auction room with an imaginary card beside him:

ONE PREVIOUS OWNER. INTERESTING PROVENANCE. SOME ISSUES WITH COMMUNICATION.

Suddenly your memory starts showing you the expensive version of the relationship: the lovely weekend away, the restaurant where you laughed for three hours and the way he kissed you outside your building. For some reason, the argument in the car has not been included in the catalog.

Nor has the Sunday when he behaved like a man personally offended by the existence of questions.

Those pieces are apparently in storage.

Meanwhile, the new bidder knows none of this. She is standing somewhere across the imaginary auction room seeing exactly what you once saw at the beginning: the charming smile, the good stories, the shoulders.

And because she wants him, an extremely inconvenient little thought pops up:

Should I?

It is an extraordinary question considering you already did.

You had him.

You dated the antique.

You know what happened when the antique was left in your living room for several months.

Nobody Stole What You Had Already Put Down

Then you look at the whole auction for a second and realize how ridiculous this has become.

Nobody has actually taken anything from you. He was already your ex, and you had already stopped bidding. Yet the moment another paddle went up, you found yourself wondering whether perhaps you had accidentally walked away from a masterpiece.

And yes, sometimes seeing an ex with somebody else really does make you reconsider things. Fine. But sometimes you do not want the man back nearly as much as you dislike discovering that he is no longer sitting exactly where you left him.

That is the tiny indignity nobody mentions.

You put something down, continue walking and then glance back to discover somebody else picking it up.

Oh.

We’re doing that?

And now, naturally, you would like one more look.

The auctioneer is waiting, the other bidder looks interested, and your ex is sitting there looking far more collectible than he did when you were arguing with him about why he had not answered a perfectly simple question for two days.

And then you remember.

The display is new.

The antique is not.

You already know this piece—the beautiful parts, the awkward parts, the tiny crack near the back and that baffling habit of becoming unavailable whenever anybody asked what was going on.

Another paddle in the air can make the whole room feel different. The antique itself has not changed at all.

And sometimes the funniest thing about seeing another paddle go up is realizing you were never actually planning to bid again.

Yes, he may still be a rare French antique.

You just happen to remember what it was like having him in your living room.