The most sensible strategy, if you want to win someone back, is probably a combination of loving words and powerful actions: promise change, show how you’re working on that, tell me you love me, and remind me of all the things that I can’t help but love about you. That’s a pretty good strategy, right there, if you’re wedded to the idea of having one. There are two others, though, and enough time’s passed on each that I reckon it’s OK for me to tell the following stories. The first one is romantic, the second is horny as fuck.
The romantic approach
One of the saddest things in the wake of a break-up isn’t mourning the life that you lived, but the life that you didn’t get round to living. The past is the past is the past, and by the time you break up it’s tainted by pain and bitterness and memories of the same old fights. But the future? Ah, yes. That’s shiny and bright and perfect. Imagining all the things we might do together, and the life we could build once this obstacle’s been cleared – in the sunlit uplands of Tomorrow, Where No One Ever Fights.
A long time ago, at the very very end of something special, when I was resigned to it and I thought he was too, a man I loved with my whole soul did something very out of character. We’d been working through the final bits of end-of-love admin, making silly jokes to puncture the sadness and sharing a few old memories that we couldn’t bear to leave unacknowledged. He turned to me, in the middle of his living room, shaking and white as a sheet and told me “I’ll kick myself forever if I don’t say this,” and then “I want to go to the Netherlands with you.”
Fuck my heart.
It was definitely too late for this kind of talk, but I didn’t want to cut him off when he felt like he needed to speak. I think sometimes at the end, it is healing for people to know that they’ve said everything they really want to say.
Besides, I’d listened to this same man tell me all the nasty things already: the reasons why I was appalling and mean and horrible and unworthy of love. So fuck it, if I’m honest, I also really wanted to hear this nice speech. If it’s healing for him to say it, maybe it would help me to hear it too.
“I want to go to the Netherlands with you. I want to go for stoned picnics and eat cheese and coleslaw and sourdough. I want to go for bike rides with you, host parties with you, have all the different kinds of sex with you.”
This speech continued. On and on. It was every single thing I had wanted to hear him say.
“I want to watch Taskmaster with you and play video games and let you do property speculation in Fable 3…”
It wasn’t just a list of the things I knew he wanted to do, it was also a list of the things he knew I wanted, which he’d previously told me had never been part of his plan. It wasn’t compromise, it was total surrender – surrender to all my desires as he subsumed them into his – much as I’d always done the other way round when we’d been together. Forgive me, please, but it felt so fucking good.
“I want to play Magic: the Gathering with you. I want to hug you. I want to buy hot tubs with you and renovate houses.”
In the end times with this man, I had often hoped he might do something like this: throw a rom-com third act speech at me, one so powerful it might help me get over the pain of the past. And now here he was! Doing it!
“I want to make tacos with you. I want to fuck you forever. I want to build a life with you.”
Everything I’d ever wanted to hear. I mean that so sincerely. Everything I could possibly hope for from any kind of future with this man.
I don’t know if he’d planned it or rehearsed it in his head – it sounded like the kind of thing that I’d have had to rehearse, if it were me. And as he said it he stood in the middle of his living room, arms stiff and hands trembling by his sides, sincerity resonating through every single word…
I’d love to tell you that there’s a part of me, deep down, that wonders how my life would have been if I’d said ‘yes’ right then. Leapt into his arms, kissed away his tears, allowed myself to fall back into the quicksand that was love for him. But I can’t lie, and I won’t: I have no doubts at all how this would have played out. A blissful, beautiful reunion followed by months of calm. Excitement! Joy! Shared adventures! Reconnection and make-up sex so powerful we would cause each other injury. If I’d said ‘yes’ in that moment, I know that we’d have been stunning … for a while.
Because that’s exactly what happened every other time. We’d be stunning, for a while, and then he’d hurt me.
He’d do that again, I was sure. Not through spite or cruelty, and not physically. But he’d definitely hurt me. He would stomp on me until I cracked, then tell me off for being broken.
I know it like I know how good the make-up sex would be. I can taste it as surely as I can taste that sourdough picnic. Just as I remember how it felt to slide down his fabulous dick, I remember how it felt when this man hurt me. I realised that our relationship had to be over when the resonance of those hurts was so much stronger than the memories of our past joy, or even the promise of happy tomorrows. When ‘the future’ no longer looked like a bright and beautiful place where No One Ever Fights.
I think he thought that love would be enough – that the more I loved him, the more likely it was that we’d have to reconcile eventually. In fact, the opposite is true: the more I loved him, the more his stamping cracks would hurt because… how could this person that I adored and obsessed over treat me so fucking badly? And why would I want to gather even one more extra crack? After all, the more broken you are, the harder it becomes to put yourself back together again.
As you do eventually have to, lest you become dust.
Every single thing I’m telling you here, by the way, has long since been forgiven. What’s more, I have to remind you this is just one small chapter from what was a very big life. And the narrator’s very biased. We can only tell our own stories, after all. I’m sure he has tales of his own about ways that I hurt him. There are many many chapters of this that I won’t ever show you, even more that I’ve never seen myself. I hope he is incredibly well and blissfully happy. I still moan about him sometimes – OK, probably more than is healthy – because it’s easier to do that than to admit that what I feel is quite complex. But I also think of him so often and so fondly.
As far as reconciliation strategies go, this one’s amazing and beautiful. I am incredibly grateful to him for sharing it with me, and I hope that in the moment my response was a similarly precious gift – I did my best to give to him some of what he’d just handed to me. It was probably rubbish, I didn’t have time to rehearse. But ultimately it was just a straight swap of words and ideas and love. It couldn’t be a negotiation: you can’t bargain with someone who has no room to move.
And at that point in life, I had nowhere to go but away.
The horny approach
Fuck, that was heavy, wasn’t it? Let’s lighten the mood. This is – honestly, truly and completely – my favourite attempt at reconciliation that anyone’s ever offered me. And thinking of it to this day still makes me grin with delight.
We’re sitting in a beer garden in the sunshine, picking over the carcass of our love. We do this a lot. We’ve been doing it for a very long time, if I’m honest. The problem we seem to be having is that we’re mutually obsessed and deeply, powerfully hot for each other. There are problems too, of course, but they always feel surmountable with enough discussion. Delightfully, I can tell you a little of why we didn’t work, because in this case – in hindsight – I can see the huge shining parcel labelled ‘my fault’. I was immature, jealous, deeply insecure. Unable to hear him or believe him when he told me he loved me. Too honest, to the point where I lacked diplomacy and care. He had his faults too but it’s not fair to dwell on them: it’s long since over, and every hurt he ever inflicted on me is long since forgiven. I hope he feels the same, but I don’t blame him if he doesn’t.
We’re sitting in a beer garden in the sunshine, and this particular break up was my choice, instead of his. We took turns. So it was his turn (last one was mine) to tempt me back.
“You know,” he says “I’ve got a pretty kickass story to tell you about something that happened while we’ve been apart.” My ears prick up. The way he says ‘story‘ means it’s something really hot. In the past, his ‘stories’ will usually be creative things that turn me on – a new method of masturbation that I’d never even considered before, a toy he’s bought or shag he’s embarked upon that nudges at a boundary or presses a button I wouldn’t have discovered on my own. One of his ‘stories’ involved him wanking on webcams for dudes, taking direction from eager, masturbating strangers on which toy to shove inside next. My heart throbbed with jealousy even as my whole body shuddered with abject lust. Of all the things I loved about that man, top of the list was his utter commitment to adventurous, creative filth.
“Is it a sexy thing?” I asked, redundantly.
“Oh yes,” he replied with a devious smile. Be still my beating cunt. “But I’m not going to tell you the details until you’ve agreed to give this one more shot.”
Ah fuck.
This was the problem with he and I – one of them, at any rate. If we could have kept our fucking pants on for five seconds and discussed stuff like mature adults, we’d probably have realised long ago that we weren’t compatible. But as soon as the prospect of sex was thrown into the mix, both of us would buckle and immediately want to fall straight into the nearest bed. Or sofa. Or Wetherspoons toilet. I tried to be mature:
“I can’t do that, I’m so sorry. We’ve talked about why – it’s not healthy. We need to stop torturing ourselves with the possibility that we can make this wo-”
He cut me off.
“How about I give you a little taster and you can decide?”
Hnnng.
“OK, try me.”
“I had a threesome…” Long pause, to allow the impact of that to punch into my jealous, shattered heart. He allowed a moment to consider configurations – imagine another woman squirming on his face or squealing with pleasure as he fucked her from behind while her friend kissed him deeply…
“… with a couple…” Suddenly my whole body became tense and eager as my jealousy started to fade – a couple? What sort of couple? Anyone we know? Immediately I’m flashing through every possible consideration, but for some reason my fuck-hungry cunt did not consider the best possible option…
“…of dominant…”
Unngh…
“…older…”
Fuck yeah.
“…dudes.”
I dissolved into nothing but want.
“Tell me more,” I stammered. He shook his head. “Please?” He shook it again. Now beaming widely, knowing full well he had me wriggling on the hook. There was no deception here, no pretence. He knew exactly which card he’d selected to play, and made no excuses for playing it.
“You’ll get the rest of the story if you take me back,” he concluded in triumph, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry so I went for both. Over the rest of the afternoon, we continued to pore over the wreckage of our relationship, and in the background was hovering the prize that would be hearing him tell me about this spectacular fuck. He dropped hints occasionally – “one was very aggressive” – but never let rip with the full story. I knew I wouldn’t get it till my thighs were wrapped round him and he was deep inside me and could whisper it into my ear, thrilling at the way I moaned and clenched with the revelation of each delicious detail.
I was strong though. Or stupid, depending on your take. In that moment I knew that getting back together would mean a world more pain, and I’d reached my threshold. We would hurt each other. We wouldn’t mean to, but we would. I know it like I know how spectacular that fuck would be, and how thirsty I was to hear him tell that story. If I gave in and fucked him now, it would only be more difficult to tear myself away the next time. Love is an addiction, and this man was pure heroin.
As far as reconciliation strategies go, though, this one’s powerful and bold. I am so grateful to him for doing it – I still think about it sometimes with fondness and a giant grin. But no matter how tempting an offer you slam down on the table, ultimately you can’t negotiate with someone who cannot move. I had nowhere to go but away.
When we parted at the train station, we hugged and sniffed each other – as you do, when the scent of somebody makes you whole body thrum with need. Just before I hopped aboard he leaned in to whisper in my ear. A parting gift:
“They tied me up, you know…” and I whimpered… “and at one point…” I held my breath… “one of them…” my cunt twitched… “…spat… into… my mouth.”
He waved me off with a shit-eating grin.
I think of him often and fondly.