You Gave It Away. Now You Want It Back

Few things inspire confidence quite like deciding you are finished with a man you once thought you might keep forever.

Suddenly every flaw is obvious. The relationship has become the emotional equivalent of a closet you have been meaning to sort out for months, and now you are standing in front of it with tremendous purpose.

Too familiar.

Doesn’t excite me anymore.

Why am I still keeping this?

And into the bag it goes.

At the time, this can feel wonderfully sensible. You are not destroying anything. You are clearing space. Making room. Moving forward.

Very chic.

And none of it feels particularly absurd while you are doing it. When you have been unhappy for a while, leaving can feel less like losing something and more like finally admitting that the relationship no longer fits the life you want.

Then, several months later, you find yourself wondering who authorized the removal of the cashmere.

Into the Bag

Before something is gone, familiarity does it very few favors.

The reliable man who always calls when he says he will becomes “predictable.” The man who knows exactly when you are upset becomes “too comfortable.” The one who has heard your stories, met your moods, watched you become unreasonable over minor things and still brings home your favorite dessert can begin to look suspiciously ordinary.

This is the danger of owning the coat.

You see it constantly.

You know the tiny pull near the sleeve. You remember that one button annoys you. You have worn it so many times that the fact it fits beautifully has stopped being news.

Meanwhile, something new is hanging in the shop window looking extremely interesting.

So the great clear-out begins.

His habit of retelling the same story? Into the bag.

The way he leaves a glass beside the sink rather than in the sink? Frankly, unforgivable.

His tendency to ask “What’s wrong?” when you have already said “Nothing” in the very specific tone that means quite a lot, actually?

Exhausting.

Soon the relationship is being assessed with the efficiency of someone who has watched three organizing videos and suddenly cannot tolerate possessions.

And when it is over, the empty space can feel glorious.

Look at all this room! Nobody is leaving socks anywhere, nobody is asking what you want for dinner and then rejecting your first two suggestions. Peace has been restored.

Excuse Me, Was That Cashmere?

Regret does not usually rush in immediately. Regret has timing.

First it allows you to enjoy yourself:  you sleep diagonally, you make plans without checking anybody’s schedule,  you tell your friends how light you feel and may even say something magnificent like, “I should have done this ages ago.”

Then life waits until you are feeling particularly certain and quietly brings out the coat.

Maybe you have a terrible day and realize exactly who you want to tell.

Maybe you meet someone new who is thrilling in all the ways your ex was not and mysteriously lacking in one quality your ex possessed so consistently you had stopped counting it.

Maybe nobody laughs at that ridiculous thing in quite the same way...

The missing often begins quietly. It is not always some grand revelation that you have made a terrible mistake. Sometimes you simply notice, again and again, that a certain warmth or ease is no longer part of your ordinary day.

Hmm.

And suddenly memory begins behaving very generously. The story he told fourteen times? It was actually rather sweet.

The glass beside the sink? A glass. We were ending relationships over glass placement? Even the shirt you disliked starts looking unexpectedly handsome in retrospect.

This is when the historical revision becomes quite eye-opening. Nothing improves a man’s reputation quite like losing access to him.

The qualities that once seemed dull begin returning with excellent references. Reliability, previously accused of being boring, now looks strangely luxurious. Familiarity, once blamed for killing excitement, starts looking a lot like being deeply known.

And the man himself, who only recently appeared to contain several intolerable habits, begins to take on the soft glow of a discontinued item.

No longer available.

Of course.

Now we love it.

Funny What Becomes Valuable Once It Is Gone

This is where the whole thing becomes wonderfully inconvenient, because sometimes you are not merely missing the relationship. Sometimes you are reconsidering your original assessment.

Perhaps what felt boring was peaceful, perhaps what felt too familiar was intimacy and perhaps the thing you were craving was not a better man but the sensation of something new, which is very seductive until the new thing begins leaving glasses beside its own sink.

Long relationships are full of things that stop feeling remarkable simply because they are always there. Being understood, being considered, having someone know your rhythms—none of it feels particularly rare while it is happening every day.

Until it disappears.

Then suddenly you remember every lovely detail with suspicious accuracy.

Nobody wakes up every morning and thinks, How fortunate that this man understands my silences, remembers how I take my coffee and knows precisely which version of “I’m fine” means he should absolutely not leave the room.

That sort of value tends to become invisible through repeated exposure.

Naturally, not everything thrown out was secretly priceless. Some coats really were itchy, badly cut and responsible for several miserable winters.

But occasionally you look back at something you were very sure you had outgrown and experience one deeply inconvenient thought: wait, maybe it was not taking up too much room after all? Maybe you had simply forgotten what it was worth?

And now, naturally, you are wondering whether you gave away the one thing that fit you better than you realized.