Lockdown has prompted many people to reflect on past relationships that ended badly.
We forgive each other for the past and now might have a future
I was contacted in early May by my ex-girlfriend. A simple “Hi” on WhatsApp. She had taken a gamble that I hadn’t changed my number in the past eight years, and she was right.
My ex-girlfriend and I were together for a year in 2009 and then spent a couple of years in a complicated status. We had not parted on the best of terms.
I have had other relationships before and since, but she was always the one that got away, the one I would have settled down with, the one who made me feel things nobody else ever has.
That simple WhatsApp message started a conversation which, during the past six weeks has only paused for sleep. We have sent messages, shared video calls and even met up once (adhering to lockdown rules). Sometimes we’ve chatted long past sunrise.
It seems that everything that went wrong all those years ago has long since been forgiven on both sides. We are both a little bit older, more mature and able to admit our mistakes.
Things have certainly moved at quite a pace over the last couple of months. It’s too soon to predict the future but, for the moment at least, it seems that we actually have one.
It’s looking likely that we will get back together, but we’ve decided to wait and see how things go once we both go back to work full-time. The pandemic may have brought about untold suffering and misery, but somehow, it has brought two people back together who should never have been apart.
Michael, UK
I had to reach out to my ex after a lockdown dream
In 2009 I met a guy. It happened out the blue. I was walking to the shop across the road from where I live. He said, “Hi” and so did I, then when I got home I went straight back out again as I knew he liked me. I made it look like I’d forgotten something from the shop and we stopped and he asked for my number.
We fell in love with each other, but he said he was bisexual – although he later admitted he was gay, like me, but could never come out as he was scared of what his family and friends would say. Even though I had never met James before, I discovered that I knew his dad – he lives on my estate.
After meeting up in secret for years, all of a sudden he disappeared and I didn’t see him for over two years.
Then, out the blue, he got in touch. We met up and he confessed he had met a girl and was due to marry her.
Anyway, one thing led to another, and we kissed, had sex, and started seeing each other again – although he said his fiancée must not find out.
One day he was on his way round to see me and we were messaging each other saying how much we wanted each other and exchanging explicit messages. But he had left his Facebook logged on at his fiancée’s house and she saw our messages in real time.
They split up and we continued to see each other, but he went into denial about his sexuality. I ended it because he wasn’t prepared to come out and since then he’s back with her and had two kids.
Three weeks into lockdown I had a dream about him, even though I haven’t seen him in eight years. I discovered I still had all the messages from when she found out, and his old number.
I texted him and asked him how he was. Two days later I had a call from a withheld number and it was him. We chatted for nearly 30 minutes and I said to him, “I just had to call”.
He said we shouldn’t really be talking and had his missus never seen the Facebook messages then we would still be seeing each other now. He said he never regretted anything we did. He said he understood why I contacted him and maybe we would talk in another eight years.
Mark, Rugby, UK
I forgave my ex to release him from the guilt
I contacted a significant ex to tell him I had forgiven him – he didn’t ever do anything particularly awful, but we were together for five years, 15 years ago, and he put me through a lot of heartache.
Oddly, although I was the one who was heartbroken at the time, he was the one who carried the pain – I knew he had always felt terrible about it. I moved on, went wild, and then settled down.
I have been married for more than 10 years and have three children, he is just beginning his “family life phase” and I feel a deep, probably everlasting, warm love and fondness for him, and genuine care.
At the start of Covid-19 I felt not everyone would be untouched by this virus, and I wanted him to know that I had moved into a platonic, positive form of “memory love” for him and that he was absolutely forgiven.
I didn’t use quite such blunt words, but I told him what truly great, formative memories I had from our time together and essentially released him from the weight of the guilt that I knew he carried.
His response was the most open-hearted, vulnerable, loving (not romantic love), grateful and moving email I have ever received. He was always emotionally unavailable when I knew him, and I hadn’t quite expected it to mean so much to him.
It then opened up more communication where I was able to be a support to him.
It’s fascinating how Covid-19 has reached its tendrils right into the core of who we are. I love these small little shifts in our human behaviour, little clicks in the cogs of time, etching our stories as part of an enormous whole.
It took courage to suggest he might want my forgiveness – he could have come back all cool and brushed me off, but I didn’t really mind taking the risk. If one of us dies unexpectedly that experience is now just a positive, loving part of our lives.
Katie, New South Wales, Australia
