Return to Sender: Your Ex Is Back. Again

An ex coming back once can feel meaningful. An ex coming back for the third time starts to feel as though someone at the post office has misunderstood a very simple instruction.

You said goodbye, he left, and there were feelings, conversations, possibly one final message edited fourteen times so you would sound calm while being anything but. Eventually life moved along, until one evening your phone lit up with a familiar little offering:

Hey. How have you been?

Well, look what has appeared on the doorstep.

Again.

You recognize this parcel immediately because you have opened it before, and the first time it came back, its return felt significant. Maybe losing you had finally made a few things sink in, maybe he understood now what he could not understand while you were together, or maybe the universe had taken him aside and had a quiet word.

Even the second return can still feel interesting, because twice is just unusual enough to make you wonder whether fate is becoming unusually persistent. By the third, destiny should really be required to provide tracking information.

RETURN TO SENDER Has Become More of a Suggestion

A recurring ex rarely returns in exactly the same wrapping. This time he misses you terribly; next time he has been thinking, and occasionally some innocent song or passing cloud has suddenly reminded him of you.

Mostly, though, he just wanted to see how you were doing, which is a wonderfully innocent sentence considering this man already knows exactly what happens when the two of you begin “seeing how you’re doing.”

And because curiosity has ruined many perfectly peaceful evenings, you answer.

One text becomes six, six become a phone call, and before long the phone call has wandered into, “Maybe we could grab a drink sometime.” Suddenly the parcel is open on the kitchen counter while everyone insists we are merely checking the contents.

By now, you could probably describe those contents without removing the tape.

Still, repeated returns have a peculiar way of making themselves look important. If something keeps finding its way back to you, surely all that returning must mean something.

Maybe. Or maybe he knows your address.

These are not quite the same thing.

The Third Delivery Is Usually Less Mysterious

After a while, even you begin to notice the rhythm, which is unfortunate because once you can predict the return, it becomes much harder to keep calling it fate.

He leaves, some time passes, and eventually he gets lonely, nostalgic, bored, disappointed elsewhere, or simply remembers that you once knew exactly how he took his coffee and laughed at the story about his cousin that nobody else finds quite as funny.

Then your phone lights up again. The first few times, his return gives you that little jolt of He came back. By now, you glance through the imaginary window, recognize the parcel, and think, Oh, that again, before wandering back into the kitchen.

What he says when he returns is hardly the interesting part anymore. You already know he can come back beautifully; the question is what happens once he is here, because some men are absolutely wonderful at coming back.

Staying seems to be where it all becomes complicated.

And so you can find yourself having almost the same reunion with the same man every few months, briefly wondering whether this is finally the version where everything goes differently. Your friends, meanwhile, have stopped sharing your suspense. You say, “Guess who texted me?” and someone guesses correctly before you finish the sentence.

Even the dog looks tired.

Eventually, You Stop Opening the Parcel

To be fair to the parcel, sometimes there really is something new inside. People can change, and every returning ex is not automatically carrying the same old contents with fresh tape around the box.

But after enough returns, simply seeing him come back stops being terribly interesting. He knows how to return. Excellent. What happens next?

“He came back” can sound wonderfully romantic when you leave the rest of the sentence off. He came back... and disappeared again. He came back... and wanted everything to feel close without actually changing anything. He came back... and three weeks later you were having the same conversation with a few words moved around.

Eventually, seeing his name on your phone feels less like destiny arriving and more like spotting a familiar parcel on the porch.

Oh. This one again.

That may be the moment something really shifts, not because he finally stops coming back, but because his return stops rearranging your whole evening. You do not have to turn him into a villain to leave the parcel where it is, either. He may have missed you every single time, and the parcel may be perfectly sincere.

It may also still be the same parcel.

Something returning again and again does not automatically mean it belongs in your house.

So eventually the knock comes, and this time you recognize it before you even reach the door. You already know what is waiting outside, so there is no need to rush over wondering what its arrival could possibly mean.

You already know.

The parcel came back.

That does not mean you have to open it.