I recently realized that I’m over my ex.
Just to make it clear, we broke up exactly 3 years ago (give or take a few days), which means that I’m about 2.5 years late on this pronouncement. Just consider me a late bloomer who didn’t discover the magical forces of young love until the age of 22 and consequently took the breakup to a whole new level, embarking on an Eat Pray Love mission that led me all the way to Paris. In any case, all is well that ends well, as I am over him in a way that circa 2011 me never would have deemed possible, showing that time does indeed heal some stupidity.
Here are some telltale signs.
1. You genuinely don’t care what he thinks. For example, I couldn’t care less if my ex reads this post, or any other post in which I admit to being a giant loser (in sum, this entire blog). His opinion, once vital, simply ceases to matter.
2. You stop living your life in a one-woman performance piece of yourself having fun without him, broadcasted via every existing social media channel – i.e. “this is me traveling to a faraway land cause I am now FREE”, “this is me hanging out with dudes, maybe as friends maybe as more”, “this is me being fabulous and looking fabulous and overall winning the breakup game”, etc.
3. You no longer spend hours daydreaming about the next time you are going to “accidentally” see him and what you’re going to be wearing and how you’re going to be 10 pounds skinnier and how you’re going to nonchalantly imply that you’re dating somebody. FYI all that planning usually backfires anyway – the first time I saw my ex 9 months after we broke up was during hurricane Sandy and I was wearing trash bags on my shoes.
4. Songs that used to make you want to burst into tears (ie “When will I see you again” by Adele, anything Billy Joel) make you squirm and want to punch post-breakup you in the face.
5. You stop plugging his name into every other sentence in an effort to trigger yet another infinite analysis of his actions. All behavior on his end becomes accredited to pure stupidity instead of being deciphered for hours like quantum theory.
6. On that note, your friends start liking you a whole lot more.
7. Everyone in the world stops looking like him. I used to be unable to walk down the streets of downtown NYC (and later, Paris) without thinking that every hipster in Nike sneakers and baseball hat was my ex. Now, they just look like the slacker bums that they are.
8. You stalk his social platforms out of pure boredom, not obsession. New hipster crushes girlfriend? Done. Blogger friends with a way cooler life than you? Done. Once you have exhausted your Instastalking list, you might click on his profile, only to discover the same nonsense as usual and shift your procrastination energy over to Mindy.
9. You don’t expect him to call or text when something good happens, or something bad happens. My ex, who generally likes to ignoreall current, didn’t as much as message me during Charlie Hebdo fiasco last week, a fact that I only realized today while writing this post.
10. You forget the sex. Once the pinnacle of lovemaking and the benchmark for every other poor shmuck after him, it is now but a distant, vague memory.
