Thanks for #63-100, Jerk.

Oh yeah. That one was about you.
The obvious follow-up to The Good Man List, is to talk about Ex's! I'm not talking simply ex-boyfriends, but an ex- of any kind. I wasn't what you'd call a big dater and I only have a handful of ex-boyfriends to dish about. But, unfortunately, I have plenty of ex-friends in my past. Some are just friends that drifted away after high school. Some are friends who became roommates (and then became enemies).

My question for you today is: Do you ever think about your Ex's?

I always think about ex's. I wonder "what went wrong" and what would happen if I saw them in public. With ex-boyfriends, I wonder are there any hard feelings? Are they dating? Are they married? Of course, all of these thoughts are based in some weird, morbid curiosity (not romantic curiosity at all!! Ew.) I think I only have one ex-boyfriend who I could grab a cup of coffee with and it wouldn't be weird. He's just one of those guys that it didn't work out with in high school but he's a great person and I don't think there are any hard feelings on either side. Now, the other ex-boyfriends are another story. That cup of coffee would start with, "I forgive you for being a -bag...How's it going?"

It's almost worse with friends. I've reconnected with a few friends, years after we parted ways, and it's never really been the same (but I guess there would be no reason to think it would be). Years after these friend-break-ups, I feel a huge desire/need to reconnect with people. Especially with the relationships that ended really badly. If I saw these people on the street, would they say hi? Would they ignore me? Are by-gones really by-gones, or would all those harsh words we exchanged years ago come right back up to the surface?

Probably the bigger question to pose to myself is why do I care? Why do I feel this need to reconnect? It's not necessarily to apologize. In most cases, I think what happened was doomed to happen eventually. If confronted by these situations again, we both could have made better choices, but it's too late to change our behavior now. What would reconnecting with these ex-friends bring me? Maybe a sense of closure. Maybe a part of me thinks that all we needed was four years to cool off and now we'll be great friends again. Yeah, probably not.

Again, I always wonder what became of them. Did they graduate college? Did they go on to achieve their dreams? Are they married? Do they have a family? Maybe one day I'll email them. But probably not. We'll probably both go on with our lives remembering that great friendship that died because we didn't have time for one another or because someone had to move away. I suppose that instead of grieving the end of the relationship, I should celebrate the friend that once was. Or just keep on Google-ing them...