Getting back with an ex is like fishing your old toothbrush out of the trash and using it—while swaying to an Arijit Singh song. In harsher analogies, the toothbrush gets replaced with undergarments, or worse. Either way, it’s generally frowned upon. Yet, this has never stopped people from doing it time and again. Friends will roll their eyes, your therapist will take a deep breath, and you’ll tell yourself it’s a fresh start. Is it though?
Bollywood screwed us over by making us believe that a breakup is just the interval before the reconciliation scene—cue the violins, the fake rain, and a train station hug. Real life, unfortunately, is less DDLJ and more swiping through Hinge, hooking up with 10 or fewer matches, getting exhausted by the prospect of starting over with someone new. You have to remember favourite colours, decode texting styles, and pretend to care about their post-work rants. At some point, the devil you know starts looking like the easier option. Hopeless romantics call it pyaar ki jeet.
But how do you go back to the ex after assasinating their character all through the town—online and IRL—blocking them everywhere, and swearing on your mother that you are never, ever getting back together? Secretly, at first. In season 2 of Sex and the City, when Carrie Bradshaw slipped into the old routine of waiting by Mr Big’s door like a lonely dog, she didn’t tell any of her friends. She faked headaches, dentist appointments, and whatever it took to ditch her friends and meet him. It was an illicit little thrill, like breaking a law only you know exists. We aren’t much different.
We lie to our Samanthas and Mirandas because they’ve seen the blooper reel of our relationship: the 3 am crying selfies, the WhatsApp breakdowns, the voicenotes that sounded like war dispatches. They were there when we swore he was gaslighting and possibly also allergic to accountability.
Poor pals pulled us out of the self-pity hole, told us, “You dodged a bullet.” They let us ugly-cry at brunch, got us drunk on weekdays, and helped us make new dating app profiles. All that for what? For you to crawl back to the same loser? They have every right to whack you—repeatedly.
People who think they’re “just talking” to their ex are simply lying to themselves. The train from Delusion Central starts with quietly breaking no-contact, following each other back on every platform, and exchanging I’ve-missed-you-every-day-since texts. Then you pretend it’s a casual hookup with the person you once imagined growing old with. Before you know it, you’re cancelling weekend plans to stay cocooned with them—until the next crash.
In this pipeline, the last stop is usually the same as the first.
Also read: Lover girls are the tragic clowns of modern dating. They are keeping romance alive
Delusion market
My childhood bestie lied that her ex is her “emotional support soft toy”, nothing more, when I caught her talking to him. On Instagram, she was documenting the glow-up of a lifetime, collecting degrees, posing with hot guys, and sharing Reels about decentring men. In the background, she was spending days and nights marinating in nostalgia with the man who broke her heart. After two years, three or four casual flings on both sides, and a couple of secret trips together, they are now finally out as a repurposed couple. What’s new this time? She says he has changed and that she holds the power now. Well, well, well. If it isn’t the oldest comeback con of all time.
The idea of people ‘changing’ for the better is propaganda we all love to fall for. There’s enough evidence against it, but it feels easier to believe that we are the exception, not the rule. There are countless memes online roasting people who go back to their exes, but that one Reel about a couple reigniting their romance after a messy breakup is enough to negate all the truth in the universe. Everyone has a friend of a friend who ended up marrying their ex.
Celine Song’s latest romcom, Materialists, added another illogical caveat to the whole thing—if the old lover doesn’t change himself to make it work, you can. So what if the reason for ending the relationship was practical, sensible? True love is above everything, even capitalism. Trust movies to keep the delusion market afloat.
Another friend is living the on-again, off-again relationship cycle, as toxic as the Nitish Kumar-BJP alliance and similarly sustained by a shared fear of ending up alone in the political wilderness. As an undiagnosed alcoholic, her dear boyfriend pushes her to end things every few months. One time, he nearly totalled the car while she was in the passenger seat. Bruised emotionally and physically, she cried for weeks before taking him back because he was remorseful. After every break, he shows up with a grand gesture. The last one was a shagun from his mother. Now engaged for “life”, the parents are also unwilling extras to their breakup-patchup soap opera.
Couples therapy hasn’t quite caught up, so you watch a few YouTube videos by relationship “experts” and try to patch the same old kalesh with shinier vocabulary. Apparently, everything broken can be fixed by a drunk call—no matter how delayed or how slurred. And if an ex lives ten minutes away, the urge to fix things with him instead of hauling yourself to Noida for yet another first date is very, very strong. Call it relationship kintsugi—glueing the cracks together with a steamy make-out.
They say that doing something unprecedented makes the old lover weak in their knees, and crawl back to you. That’s what my emotionally unavailable ex tried when he showed up at my college unannounced after refusing to visit me for three years of our relationship. What did I do? I stopped an auto, paid him Rs 100 for a Rs 40 ride, and asked him to deliver my favourite drug back to his hostel. Don’t call me brave—I was just too scared of my friends.
This article is part of a series of columns on modern dating in India—the good, the bad and the cuddly.
Views are personal. The author tweets @ratanpriya4.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)