- Make a Wish
For days and days now, I’ve been ruminating on a rather fun idea I’ve had about exes. Namely, I wonder if we all have some sort of wish about an ex (or many exes) that we’d change if we could. Imagine we could re-write our story with an ex in just one way, what would it be?
This could be something we wish we said, or didn’t say, something we wish we did or didn’t do, something we wish they said or didn’t say, or something they did or didn’t do…Just basically something after the relationship ended that we wish we could change in some way.
Our wish could be funny, serious, heartfelt, angry, personal, or anything you like really. That’s up to you.
Maybe you wish you told your ex off for hurting you, maybe you wish you could get back at them by sleeping with their best friend, maybe you did sleep with their best friend (or sister, brother, father, mother) and wish you didn’t.
Maybe you wish they’d pay you back for the money owed to you (or that you didn’t lend it in the first place).
Maybe wish you didn’t stay in the relationship as long as you did, or maybe you wish you’d left it alone after the first time you split instead of going back for more months of an on/off thing.
Maybe you wish you didn’t hurt your ex in some way. Maybe you ended it and wish you never did. Maybe you regret how you acted too clingy or too distant.
Maybe you wish you told your ex how you really felt about them.
Maybe you wish you didn’t dedicate a book to them only to have them dump you some months later…(oops! That’s mine!)
So call this a cosmic Do Over if you will.
For those of you who aren’t “over it” – maybe you can get some of this residual angst out of your system and truly start to move on. Who knows?
It’s my intention these are entertaining, universal, and most of all cathartic. Imagine I am your Fairy God Mother who can grant your wish, now all you have to do is tell me what it is…
NOTE: Do me a favor, please don’t use real names – initials or nicknames are ok though. Now let’s have some FUN! (As a reminder all comments will need to be approved and will only be edited if I think you’ll get me into legal trouble…) 
I wish my ex would accept that I am over him and move on…just like I finally have. He should also accept that yes he is the father of my child but that is all that he is now in my life
Thanks for the reply Lisa. Will work on making that Wish come true for you! Leave it with me
PS: Hope you’re happy, healthy and well! x
My ex? Can’t remember what she looked like… no idea where she lives and what she does… haven’t seen her for at least 10 years… past history, we all move on… no point looking back!
Agreed there M – most of us do move on,…eventually. People move on in different ways and at different speeds! If you have no wish then that’s cool! Then wish her the best!
Good blog Thea, always enjoy your posts and love the new animation stories.
I don’t have many exes..but there is one I wish I could go back and be nicer too. I wasn’t as bad to her as I’ve heard many other blokes are, but still fell short of how I’d like to be treated myself. And she was a very nice, good person. I was just a bit cold towards her, for no real reason. Anyway, she got the last laugh as I bumped into her a few months later. She was with a dishy French bloke and took great delight in making her affections for him very obvious, right in front of me. I don’t know where she is or what she’s up to but I hope things are all good and if I could, I’d say sorry.
Well kind sir. Imagine it, and it is so!
Put that thought out and it will be felt!
Anyway I am sure she forgives you for something that happened a long time ago, obviously. She was probably just faking it with Sir Francois or whatever anyway…if it was just a few months after you – she wasn’t likely over you! But yes let’s hope she’s happy, healthy and well wherever she is…
Thanks for the response!
I made my secret wish and blow me over it happened….
I don’t know what I’d wish for. I honestly don’t think it would change anything as my ex and I had several issues in several different categories. Don’t get me wrong, she was and is a good person, but events and people in her past really made it difficult for her to become attached to me. Maybe, it she ever got some therapy (or if I had more than one wish ;]), I’d be willing to sit down with her stubborn ass and possibly have a meaningful conversation.
I wish my ex would move the fuck on, find happiness, whatever – just get away from me. His behavior borders on stalking at times and it is unnerving to say the least – been three years since we split, I’m now married with a baby. I have no idea why he hangs about. Does he honestly think he’ll ever, ever EVER get me back? Just weird.
I wish I had packed his bags the first time he got angry in an unreasonable way and blamed me for making him so.Nooooo I waited till I had to hide out hoping he didnt find me and then having to face him in court for an AVO.
Really J that’s awesome. So wishes can and do come true? What was it? ‘)
There’s one. If I win the lottery tonight, I’ll buy her the contents of her Amazon wish list. So, she better update her details so they know where to deliver. I’m off to the shops, tonight is the night.
Well that’s rather sweet of you. Thanks for reminding me, gotta log on and buy myself a ticket too.
Good luck!
I wish I wrote her more. In the beginning of our relationship, I wrote her all the time. I’m a writer, it is sort of my forte.
After we dated/lived together for a year, I moved away for a job related opportunity. We did long distance for eight months before she ended it. In that time away from her, for whatever reason, I didn’t write her like I used to. Maybe it was laziness, maybe it was frustration over not being able to see her (and a lack of things to say because of that). In any event, I know the lack of those letters really got to her.
I tried to make correct my wrong after she dumped me, but it just made things worse (as always, it came off as clingy / unattractive). Isn’t it sort of a cruel joke that the things we do when love is returned are normal and welcome but once its not they are somehow pathetic?
Anyway, I’d give anything to go back to the period in which she loved me and write her again. When it would mean something to her. Anything.
I wish my ex the best. We broke up because we couldn’t be together because I’m Arab and she’s an Afghani. Two girls being together in the Arab culture is just not acceptable. She broke it off out of guilt. I understood the reason, but still couldn’t believe she didn’t choose for love. She didn’t want any contact, which was hard in the beginning considering she was also my best friend and I was used to talking to her and seeing her every day. I couldn’t believe that she could just stop talking to me like that and that she never wanted to be friends with me ever again.. It was hard. I bumped into her and she just ignored me. So, I decided not to keep begging her to be friends and just accept that sometimes people leave. I wish her the best. I know she’s had a rough time because of all that happened. I still hope someday we can be friends again though.
I wish we could be friends. We broke up over a decade ago; during our relationship I was really terrible to him. A couple of years ago I sent him an apology out of the blue, which he accepted with better grace than most people would. It was good for both of us.
This isn’t a romantic thing – we’re both in happy, stable marriages. I just think he’s a good and interesting person and wish I could know him now. But I burned that bridge a long time ago. It makes me sad.
That’s an understandable. 100%. The thing about life Emily is we never know where the path is taking us. Some day you may actually find that you will be able to be “friends” – even if that means sending the occasional email. I have that with the guy who “inspired” this site. He’s happily married (or so I’d assume) and we have the odd message now and again – usually about music. He was in my life exactly as long as he was supposed to be. Though even just a short period in my life he’s altered the course of it forever. What more can any of us ask for? Yours sound like he had an effect on yours? That’s a beautiful thing. Silently wish him well.
Who knows about this friendship thing – it ebbs and flows. Sometimes don’t you find that we’re not in touch with people for 5 years, 10 or 15 and they come back into our lives in some capacity? Let go of the sadness and focus on the gratitude. It’s a much better energy to hold on to x
I am sure you meant a lot to her and on some level you still do, Nick. Sure that she has some pretty fond memories of you. It’s amazing how time / distance can alter our perspective. Anger fades. Sadness fades. Nostalgia kicks in. It’s a pretty wonderful thing. Why not keep writing and put those feelings of regret or sadness into something that she may one day read. If she’s anything like me she’d probably really like to know that she meant something to someone else…regardless of how it ended. x
Robin so sorry to hear that. What a challenging situation – a break up, the cultural angle, the ignoring of friendship – it’s so tough. I feel for you. As I said to someone else on here today – friendships do ebb and flow. Maybe some time in the future you two will be able to be friends again – if not something more. Nothing is so black and white when it comes to human emotions. I wouldn’t take her IGNORING you to mean she doesn’t care about you. Probably the opposite. She’s probably shut down that side of herself because it gets too hard to deal with things sometimes. It really does. I am sure she still cares about you and thinks about you. Our minds are not switches that we can turn off with the push of a button, though many of us wish we could at times! We’re human. Even when we try to blot something out – it will invariable pop back up again. Suppression doesn’t work. It usually bites us in the @rse again eventually! So work through your feelings. Wish her well – from a far. And keep the faith. Take care x
I wish it would have ended 4 years ago. I wasted 5 years hoping he would want it to be permanent. It was never going to happen and I just could not see it.
Kristi I suspect you didn’t “waste” any time at all with the guy – even though it didn’t continue. It’s maybe more positive to say it lasted as long as it was meant to. I suspect also you had some good times in that five years – maybe good fun, meals, sex, trips, conversations, experiences? I think we learn from all our interactions – long / short ones alike. He’ll have taught yo something – even if it is to not stay in something that’s not seemingly like it’s going anywhere. You take care. x
Thea,
I guess I didn’t finish that story. I did put these things down in writing and sent them to her. And after my job opportunity fell through, I moved back (to the same area as her). She refused to see me, and was “furious” that I was moving back (I guess because I did after we broke up rather than while we were together). She refused to see me for a year. Now she is dating someone else. I really doubt any of this would mean anything to her.
And there is no comfort from anyone saying “oh, she is a bitch.” She, like any other dumper, just didn’t know how to deal with hurting my feelings. And I am left to live with my mistakes. Any guy that loses confidence in himself, goes through a depression, or is unsure of his direction in life (job related) will lose his girl. No girl wants to be with someone unsure of himself. Tis cruel, but it’s the way attraction works.
I just can’t forgive myself for being so stupid, for not realizing that would happen. I should have known I had to do more, to not take her for granted. I don’t know how to move on because there is no one to blame but myself.
Nick the way TO move on is to forgive yourself. It really won’t happen until you do. You are human. Your ex is human. I am human. I’ve hurt more people than I care to admit but very rarely was it ever intentional. We hurt people we don’t mean to, generally. It’s been a year and she’s seeing someone else – it actually doesn’t mean she’s over you. It doesn’t mean she’s “happier”. If you really do love her then you want to get to the point you’re wishing her well whoever she’s with. That’s the name of the game. If it’s real love, not this conditional bs-love that most people mistake for being “real love”. When it’s real you keep on loving the person whether you’re in each other’s lives or not. You want the best for them – even when that “best” isn’t you. This is just my personal opinion and how I live my life.
No one gets it right all the time Nick. Not anyone. We just got to do the best we can with the skills and tools we’ve been given or acquired. And when we screw up, we gotta take ownership for it and vow to try to better next time. How can you say all this isn’t for your absolute highest good and that this experience is not benefiting you in some major way? Be open to that possibility.
So repeat after me: I forgive myself for being human. and remove that other sentence you’ve been berating yourself with.
When you feel good about you again, you’ve forgiven yourself and wished her well – then you’ll start to see the shift.
If you want to experience mutual love again Nick, you will. I believe that. It’s that old Ford comment “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”.
It’s an axiom! Be well x
Thank you, Thea. I guess you’re right. Sent her a message a week ago to see how she’s doing. She ansewered that she was doing fine but that she doesn’t want any contact. That hurt, but I just have to accept it and move on. Maybe some day she’ll be ready to be friends.
I wish that my ex realizes that she made a mistake dumping me… we never cheated on or did anything bad to each other we respect and love each other, I was ready to propose her and got the money for the engagement ring, but she ended the relationship after 5 beautiful years, of course we made a lot of mistakes in this course of time, but we always loved each other or thats what I believed until she dumped me… a week before she told me she didn’t love me anymore, she told me that I was the love of her life and that she wanted to spent the rest of her life with me… anyways… after we broke up she started drinking so much, enough to get wasted every other day, she start partying a lot, going out with this friends that she has that they only go to clubs like little kids when they are on their late 20′s, and she seems rather relieve of dumping me instead of feeling sorry for it.. she is going out with the second guy already after we broke up 5 months ago… and the first one was all serious she even introduce him to her parents and now she is dating another dude… I don’t know… I still love her and wish her the best and even after all the mistakes she is making I still want her back… because she is the love of my life I can feel that… and she is the only girl after so many girls that I took home and introduce her to my parents and actually dreamt about getting married with before her I was so afraid of commitment but she changed me I guess… I wish that she will come to her senses and realizes that she is living a hollow life and that thats not the way to happiness and that she realizes that our love was forever… I guess Im just a wishful thinker… but I hope someday it will happen… sorry for extending myself so much
Well I am sorry for your pain hon. I know it’s hard to deal with this stuff but who’s to say she’s leading a hollow life. The only control you have over anything is the choices you make not her. Maybe they’re mistakes and maybe they’re not…in any event she and YOU are both right where you’re meant to be and who you’re meant to be with. In the future, well who knows where the path is taking you? You may love her forever but the chances are it will change, when time elapses and you’ll meet someone who is a better more long-lasting fit. It’s only been five months after five years so give yourself a break. Allow yourself to heal, to process and move on. I hope you’re friends again in the future. Just let it all unfold naturally. It usually does. Good luck!
I wish that I hadn’t been so needy and desperate for constant reassurance from my girlfriend. It made her feel overwhelmed and smothered as a result of which she broke up with me and has now asked for a period of total non-communication. This is so hard for me because (a) I feel guilty for making her feel that way and (b) We met online and have communicated via e-mail almost daily for the last 18 months. I feel completely lost now without my daily correspondence.
Sorry for this, hon. I know just what you mean…That is my least fave aspect of all these situations. The lack of contact when you’re so used to it – the phone calls, the texts, the emails. It sucks! But I am here to tell you, it does pass. Eventually you start to realise that you’ve gone an hour, then a day then a week without thinking about her (and checking your phone). Don’t berate yourself for being “clingy” we all are insecure and need reassurance at one time or another. I guess what to do now is 1) remain strong (don’t contact her unless you really really have to…a la an emergency). 2) work on feeling better about yourself so that you’re less needing validation externally (we all need to work on this practically). If it doesn’t work with this particular girl it will with the next one…you know? Learn from it. Grow from it. You’re gonna be ok! OK?