The Ex You Can’t Get Over

It’s when a very meaningful relationship comes to an end that we stand to discover a highly peculiar fact about ourselves: our brains appear to have two separate centres of consciousness, which operate according to very different principles, are unable to share information properly, and don’t for a long time adjust to each other’s versions of the truth.

Let’s call one of these centres the logical mind. This part understands certain difficult things immediately and entirely: that someone has left us; that they treated us pretty shabbily; that for a long time, they didn’t let us know where we stood; that for ages when they were away last summer, they didn’t pick up our calls; that they flirted with other people online; that they’re rather hateworthy. And they are gone. We last heard from them months ago. There’s been total silence. They may well be deeply in love with someone else by now. 

But then there is another part of the mind, let’s call this the emotional mind, that has a very different reading of things indeed – and refuses to readily accept very much that the intellectual mind might ever chose to tell it.

This part hears the logical mind well enough. It knows it’s saying: ‘It’s over. They were no good. They didn’t deserve you. It’s a waste of energy giving them another thought.’

They follow such words sentence by sentence, but then, when no one is looking, they repeatedly quietly slip off and go somewhere else entirely. Back to the evenings in Corfu when they held us tenderly and swore they would never let us go; over to an evening in Berlin when they sat in the chair opposite us reading and they appeared infinitely kind and thoughtful; back to the time when they cried telling us how lonely they’d been at primary school and we wanted so much to have been able to comfort them.

The emotional mind refuses to accept any of the carefully assembled evidence served up by its logical counterpart. It insists: they will return, even if they have blocked me across all devices. They love me, even if they are nowhere to be seen. They are my little baby, even if this very grown-up adult has evinced not the slightest bit of interest since they disappeared into the night with their belongings many months ago.

During spare moments, the emotional mind loves to formulate all kinds of schemes that appal and frighten the logical mind. Why not hand deliver them a long letter? Why not go to their place of work and pretend to randomly bump into them in the lobby? Why not call their mother and argue the matter with her? Why not contact one of their friends? Why not pen them a long beseeching email telling them why they are ‘wrong’?

To each of these suggestions, the logical mind rushes to douse the flames. They may once have loved you, but clearly, they don’t any more. How could you ever feel safe around someone who did this to you? And the emotional mind listens politely, then turns away and begins humming again, thinking of baby’s sweet hands.

The emotional mind idealises. The ex was an intellectual colossus, a paragon of virtue and tenderness, the essence of kinky complicity. To which the logical mind struggles to add: and they were, above anything else, just another human being. And not an especially kind one at that, for what kind person leaves you with such immaturity in such a mess?

But the emotional mind is primitive; it doesn’t go in for nuances. They loved us once and told us it would be forever – so surely it will be. This mind isn’t arrogant, but it simply can’t see that someone would stop loving it if they once declared that they wouldn’t. It knows it wouldn’t appeal to everyone but once someone has been charmed, the expectation is that they will always remain on board. It has some of the fidelity and naivety of an infant waiting at the door for Mummy or Daddy to return, or a hunting dog, howling in a forest clearing, circling the putrefying body of its long-deceased owner.

It is this part of the mind that religions draw on. ‘My holy one is going to return’, it insists. One swathe of the population dreams of the return of their deity; the other, of their exes.

Eventually – let’s not put too fine a word on it – the logical mind realises that if it goes on like this, the whole system will go down; the entire host brain and body will succumb. So it stages some kind of intervention. It sounds the alarm, loud and clear. It forces a trip abroad to forget, or a visit to a psychiatrist.

There is an Arabic saying that the soul travels at the pace of a camel. In other words, one of the deepest distinctions between the logical and the emotional minds is how long it takes for information to properly enter them. The logical mind understands immediately: someone is dead, someone has gone, someone has ceased to love.

But eventually, it could be months or years after the logical mind first heard it, the news does finally start to make an impact, even on the recalcitrant folds of the emotional mind. The denial is no longer quite so vociferous. There are still intense flurries of love, but they are further apart and don’t last as long. After a long while, some kind of pact seems to be reached between the two minds. ‘OK,’ says the intellectual mind, ‘keep believing in them if you like, but in the meantime, could you accept dinner with someone else? Might we at least take a look at an app?’

At one level, the emotional mind will love forever. It’s just that other things will seize its attention. Memory will weaken. It will – blessedly – one day think of something else. And the logical mind will learn to be very, very careful with love going forward. It’s a thrilling force, this it will acknowledge, but it can also injure and maul us like nothing else ever can.