How Do I Turn Back Time?
Why not send former Kingston-resident Love Doctor your relationship queries? Use the form to submit your question(s).
Question:
I was dating a guy for almost two years, and a year ago he asked me to move in together. My immediate reaction was to run out of his life. I changed my cell number, closed my social media accounts and even moved jobs to escape the past.
I had just turned 40 at the time. Perhaps I was having a mid-life crisis, I don’t really know why I panicked and ran away.
I recently bumped into a friend of his and asked how my ex-boyfriend is. He said: “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
This chance meeting with his friend has got me thinking that I made a terrible mistake. I miss him and I miss my old job. How do I approach him to say I’m sorry, and try to get back with this great guy who told me that I was his favourite ever girlfriend?
Angel, Kingston
Love Doctor’s Answer:
You may well have been tackling a mid-life crisis as you had just hit a milestone birthday. Altering your job indicates that you were looking for something new, and it may have been coincidence that you decided to make a disappearing act from your beau at the time.
Being together for around two years is not an unreasonable time for him to have discussed your future together. Yet your extreme actions and unceremonious exit from his question appear to be highly inappropriate. They show no commitment from you.
Your ex-boyfriend will naturally have been left confused at the chaos you caused, especially as you showed controlling traits by making yourself totally unavailable to him by changing your cell phone number and deleting your social media. Surely you owe him an explanation and an apology.
Mutual respect and good communication are imperative for a romantic relationship to prove fruitful, both seemed to be absent from the scenario that you described.
It sounds like you were cruel towards him by bolting. You may well discover that this man wants nothing to do with you ever again because of your bad behaviour. You sound as though you are relying to win him back because he referred to you as his “favourite ever girlfriend”.
Your best bet to attempt to patch up the past is for you to reach out with an olive branch, and see if you can meet up with this ex-boyfriend. Do not be surprised if he fails to respond to you getting in touch.
He may be heartbroken, he might have bounced back, or he could have entered a new relationship. You need to be aware of his current situation before you go in like a bulldozer, because he won’t want any further havoc to be caused by you.
I suggest that you try to unearth which of the scenarios he is currently experiencing before you reach out. You need to be direct and tell him that you wish to meet up to apologise for what happened a year ago, otherwise he may well view you as selfish and mean-spirited.
It is best that you don’t discuss that you wish to win over his affection for a second time, just wait until you see how he reacts to you if you get to meet face-to-face.
If his emotions are in tatters you will need to take an extremely gentle approach and treat him with kids gloves. You will have to grovel for his forgiveness, and definitely not initially mention potentially getting back together. You can win him over if you can show that you are sorry for everything, as well as explain why he is so important to you plus what you can bring to the partnership.
He needs to be emotionally ready to enter any form of relationship, and the hurt he could be experiencing from you will not be a quick-fix. I suggest that you try to meet him for a coffee or after-work drink no more than once a week, and then you can evaluate whether you can reignite the relationship over a month.
If he got his life back on track then he has most likely distracted himself from your split, thrown himself in work and/or hobbies. This probably means that he considers your relationship to be history and, although he is likely to be perplexed by your sudden exit, is happy in life. This is salvageable for you to get back together, just you would need to prove your worth to him to stand any chance and explain to him why you are true soulmates.
The way we bounce back from adversaries shows our true character, and if he has a better life without you then you will have to really pull out the stops to convince him why you two should give the relationship a second shot.
Should you find out that he has entered a new romance, then initially you will be kicking yourself as you obviously hold a torch for him. This is the trickiest of the three possible scenarios you could encounter.
The only realistic way that you can repair your former relationship is if his current love interest is not a patch on you, in other words a serious downgrade, or whether he has entered a rebound romance.
You have to approach him with caution if he is romantically involved, as you don’t want to appear jealous, desperate or someone who can cause problems between couples.
If you can show him that you were soulmates, and are both willing to hit the reset button, there is no reason why you cannot rekindle the former meaningful relationship.
However, the sparks may not be there if you meet up. This could be down to a plethora of reasons, including resentment from him because of the rejection you displayed or that neither of you can get over the hurdle of finding someone else.
Yet there could be some positive tell-tale signs that there’s a magical connection, such as his presence exciting you, your heart rate increasing in his company and when he touches you get goosebumps,
You never mentioned whether you raced into another man’s arms after you vanished from your ex. Maybe you did, and soon realised that your ex-boyfriend was much better in every respect. If that was the case, then that accounts for why you have referred to your ex as “a great guy”.
You are the creator of your future, so you must utilise genuine smiles and display confident body language if you get to meet up with your ex. Have some aspirations and expectations to bring to your potentially future relationship. Don’t keep apologising for your wrong-doing, just say it once, and then ask him if you two can focus on the future.
No one likes rejection, and not everyone can cope with a fairly long-term relationship that crashes. You will have to prove that was a one-off blip, and put it down to being triggered by a mid-life crisis and work. At least you can tell him you changed jobs.
You certainly have a lot of work to do if you genuinely wish to try to repair your previous partnership, because you effectively blocked him out of your life for a year without a real reason.
You need to seriously consider what value you are to him, both now and in the future, if you stand any chance of convincing him that you can still be his “favourite ever girlfriend”.
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