There are right and wrong ways to catch up with an ex.

The right way is The Coffee Date. The Coffee Date is the one where you show up five minutes late so that you aren’t the first one there waiting and looking anxious to see the other person. You order wine instead of coffee because you know if you drink anything with caffeine this late in the day you will lie in bed with owl eyes at midnight because you’ve turned into one of those ridiculous people who sometimes gets up at 6 a.m. on the weekends because you “just can’t get back to sleep."  Besides you are on edge and want a little liquid calm. Your ex is smarter and less considerate than you though and shows up 15 minutes late and in the meantime you start feeling a little bit crazy sitting there in your best casual outfit that you want to look as if you just threw it on but suspect that everyone knows that you meticulously planned the off-handed look. After six minutes you are frantically checking your watch every 30 seconds wondering if you have the right place and the right time and thinking that you are pathetic for worrying if you are being stood up. Then you start getting retroactively pissed off because you remember your ex used to always be late and that it’s very symbolic of that irreverent and slightly prickish behavior of his that used to boil your placid surface calm and you feel a little jealous too because you can’t even fake that kind of nonchalance which is obvious from your fidgeting. You try to just sip on your wine because you don’t want to look like you’ve been waiting as long as you have and you don’t want to come off as the alcoholic that you might almost be but then you get a case of the nerves and start gulping. So then not only are you nervous that your hair looks a little too styled and your outfit looks a little too coordinated and your makeup is just a shade too done-up but you also have to contend with wine mouth because you have purple stains on your teeth and in the cracks of your otherwise perfectly glossed lips. You jump up and get in line, this time you are switching to white wine, and as you order you dig a compact out of your bag and start squeegeeing wine off your teeth and of course this is when your ex walks in.

You share an awkward embrace and he still smells like you remember and that’s both comforting and slightly repellent because his aroma is a mixture of laundry detergent and a strange odor resembling animal flea powder that pervaded his parents’ house from either their pets or their weird smelling detergent and you are confused as to why he still smells like that since he hasn’t lived with his parents in over a decade. He orders a cappuccino which you take as a personal affront, assuming that he is calling you a lush with his beverage choice and then you usher him to a different table from where you were originally sitting because your empty wine glass hasn’t been cleared. Both of you proceed to have self-conscious, pseudo-getting-to-know-you talk even though you’ve seen each other naked and still remember the other’s middle name and you silently gloat over the fact that he’s gained 15 pounds and you’ve only gained five. You politely tiptoe around the relationship you shared, only bringing up funny anecdotes and good-humored disagreements while completely avoiding the time that you made out with your best friend’s cousin while you were dating your ex and he found out or the time he went after the boyfriend you had after him with a shovel. Pretty soon your wine is gone and you contemplate buying another but then decide that you’ve gone through your arsenal of happy memories, well-wishes and friendly but superficial questions and should probably just call it good since you are only slightly attracted to him now and find that the qualities you liked best about him like his confidence and humor have morphed into boastfulness and affectation. You share another clumsy hug but it’s more genuine this time because you are both feeling more comfortable and assured in your knowledge that the other is alive, more or less happy and that you aren’t really missing anything because this person is not the one who got away. Repeat in 5-7 years.

The wrong way to catch up with an ex is the Relationship Redux via Email.  It’s wrong from the get-go because he is the one that got away, or so you thought. You haven’t spoken to him in nearly a decade or rather he hasn’t spoken to you because he started dating your friend when your relationship was in a “gray area” which was not cool with you and you made those feelings known but instead of being mature and cutting the relationship off completely you decided to try and stay friends which you found out later was cliché and impossible especially since your friend and your ex got together because they were roommates and in order to hang out with them you had to go to their love nest. So after several “friendly” get-togethers it became clear that you weren’t over him but he was way over you and totally in love with your friend who thought you were pathetic for not being over him but still felt jealous and so made it abundantly clear in a hundred little ways that you were yesterdays news while she maintained a thin façade of camaraderie. You finally said fuck it and stopped going to their house that you were convinced stank of sex every time you were over because they probably just finished doing it right before you showed up, the thought of which made your stomach twist and your heart clench and your eyes cry. You ignored her emails because if she really wanted to talk she’d have picked up a goddamn phone and all the while you continued to email him in the vain hope that he would remember why he loved you before he loved her but then you started to hate yourself for it and became convinced the reason he stopped caring about you is because you gained the Freshman Fifteen. He wasn’t responding anyway so you discontinued your attempts at contact but remained lovelorn for two more relationships which didn’t really matter because the new guys were schmucks or maybe you just thought that because you weren’t over your ex but you are positive at least one of them was an ass. You were convinced that you would never be happy without the one who got away.

Fast forward seven years and you have resigned yourself to the knowledge that you will never hear from the one who got away again and have even given up on pumping mutual acquaintances for information about him because he has apparently dropped completely off the map. Someone does tell you that they think he might have had a kid and you illogically hope with all your might that it wasn’t with your friend who he sort of but not really dumped you for even though it would somewhat legitimize their relationship and all of the pain you went through. Anyway you are married and happy and can’t believe there was a time when you thought all your hopes for happiness were dashed because you couldn’t have that one guy. When you find out through the grapevine that the ex and your friend actually broke up you can’t help but alternate between deep satisfaction that it didn’t work out just like you knew it wouldn’t and intense indignation that they put you through all of that emotional turmoil for nothing.

One day out of the blue you are checking your MySpace and you see a message in your inbox from your ex and are dumbstruck and curious and confused. So you write him back right away because the message has been sitting there for over a week since you don’t ever really check your MySpace anymore because you are more of a Facebook girl even though you think Facebook is pretentious but have decided that it’s still better than MySpace which is just creepy. Your email to him is full of polite curiosity and surprise and you lightly probe him for details about his life while only providing the bare minimum about yourself because you are still completely flabbergasted that he contacted you at all especially since you were sure he thought of you as “the crazy ex” and so you don’t want to cross any invisible boundaries by revealing too much. He writes back immediately and inundates you with the story of his own life over the past few years including that he has indeed had a baby who he hardly gets to see because his ex hates him and he hints at a deep torment at being separated from his kid and you feel a rush of sympathy when you read his message and overlook the fact that he has made several inappropriate references to times when the two of you had sex and sprinkles Bob Dylan lyrics throughout. You forgive him of all his faults and transgressions and convince yourself that you were too hard on him for dating your friend and that you really were crazy and he can do no wrong. Then over the progression of emails he makes it clear that he is lonely because he’s a single dad and that his ex is torturing him by robbing him of money and visitation with his kid and that he has to work long hours at a crappy job where he is squandering his potential because he had to drop out of school. Your replies are full of patience and understanding and as many words of comfort and wry wisdom that you can muster without sounding like some sort of wannabe sage know-it-all.

Throughout the email exchange you continue to ignore the fact that he has a bit of a problem with exposing too much information about himself as he tells you about all the gory details from his toxic relationship with his ex and that he doesn’t seem to understand that a lot of his stories make him sound like a misogynist asshole. He continues to make references to your long ago sexual relationship with him, brings up embarrassing stories that you’d rather forget and tells you outright that he still harbors resentment towards you for cheating on him one time at the beginning when your relationship was in another gray area and you had no idea because you dated for years after that and he never brought it up. Still you don’t mention the way he left you for your friend and ruined your heart for years until he brings it up first and even then you assume the bulk of the responsibility and lay no blame stating only that you had been hurt not that he had hurt you but that you had been hurt by the “situation.” He brushes it off saying that he doesn’t really remember what happened that well and that the whole thing made him uncomfortable and he just didn’t want to deal with it but he’s sorry if it hurt your feelings because he wasn’t trying to. Then he moves on to ranting about how love doesn’t exist and repeatedly says that women can’t be trusted even after you gently inform him that you understand why he may feel that way but that he is sounding a little bit cynical and sexist He responds that he is in no way a sexist but rather a guy who has never lied or cheated or hit a woman but continually gets betrayed by them or at least by three out of the three billion or so women there are and therefore feels justified in judging them all.  

Even though your correspondence was fun and interesting and warmed your heart at first, you start to dread his emails now because you know you will feel obligated to write back and you are sick of his negativity and offended that he takes no accountability for his own shitty actions in regards to your relationship which you never would have even brought up in the first place and he has wounded your sense of female solidarity. You realize that this person who you idealized as your long lost love is not who you thought he was especially when he sends you a picture of himself and he is wearing the same boyish t-shirt and ill-fitting jeans uniform that he wore as a teenager only now his receding hairline and paunchy midriff make him look like a middle aged man ten years older than himself who’s about to go mow a lawn. The fuzzy haired baby in the picture disarms you though and you persevere by telling him not to give up on love, offering new words of hope and optimism and apologizing, yet again, for damaging his fragile sense of trust in your sister women. He writes back to say he really is a hopeless cynic and doesn’t see any reason to change, that he’s never done any of the “slimy” things men are notorious for but that women have done to him and names you by name as one of the main reasons why he’s bitter towards women and love and relationships. He continues to use the forum to vent about his baby mama, all women and his life in general and you decide you are done because he has seriously damaged your chi and this person who you thought was an old soul is really a miser who has instituted a moratorium on life lessons.

You blast off an email that you preface with “no offense but” and tell him he has a narrow and skewed perspective and that even if he gets himself off the hook in his own mind on technicalities about cheating, that he hurt you and betrayed you worse than any old “it didn’t mean a thing” or “I was so drunk” cheater ever had and you should know because you’ve been through it all and here you are a pretty stable, fairly happy person who has learned from her mistakes and doesn’t cheat and doesn’t intend to be told that she’s responsible for ruining someone’s entire perception of love and view of women and that you aren’t interested in his martyrdom or his bad attitude. He doesn’t write back. Do not repeat.