Reach Out or Move On?

This is the first piece of my advice column series where readers can submit as much (or as little) as they’d like. Thank you for your submissions and all will be responded to once I can find the words they deserve! You can send in your submissions here. Here is today’s submission:

“I dated a guy senior year of high school who I had been best friends with for years. He went to Auburn and I went to Mississippi State. He played in the marching band and I decided to join a sorority. He was perfect, so niche. Until communication ceased to exist and I kept having to be the one to reach out. He came to Mississippi State for a single game but was so sick the entire time, so never actually got to enjoy it. After that I struggled with the idea of him liking me. A detail I failed to mention earlier on was that we only kissed 4 times in 9 months of dating, and when I asked him why that was he responded with the "I don't know what attraction is."After that I decided to break things off. Over Christmas break we have the occasional run in. I see him at the store or we hangout with our high school friend group. Small glances, quick jokes only us two would get. While I have never felt anything like being with him I can't teach him how to love someone. What can I do? I have tried talking to other people. They all seem to have the personality of a blank sheet of lined paper and the intellectual abilities of drying paint. How do I find someone who is niche yet so incredibly into me? Do I give Auburn band kid another chance (if he even wants me back)?”

God knows the chokehold your high school romance will have on you.

There’s something so nice about being loved without explanation. It’s disarming being loved by someone who already knows you. You don’t need to teach them facts in topics they’ve already mastered. You don’t have to narrate your past or explain your quirks. After all, they were there when those quirks formed. Making plans doesn’t feel awkward because you’ve already done it so often. You’re comfortable, yet still convinced they’re the most attractive person you’ve ever laid your eyes on. You look at them and hear wedding bells just from the sheer ease of it all. They know how you take your coffee and the sound of your laugh when it’s real and not just pleasant. With them, existence feels effortless. Loving feels instinctual.

So when you run into them again – whether it be in the grocery aisle or within the orbit of shared friends – it feels like briefly returning to a version of yourself you forgot ever existed. All you’ve learned comes back in small moments. The jokes land instantly. The glances linger a moment too long. There’s proof that your secret language is still intact. All of these moments serve as reminders of how loving so easily becomes second nature. When we catch brief moments of it that prove it still exists after we thought it disappeared, it almost feels cruel. Like it’s been dangled in front of us and ripped away just as we go to grab it. You may have thought that you’d buried it, but suddenly love resurfaces in fragments: when choosing where to get food for dinner, when suggesting a movie, when referencing something no one else would understand.

There’s always dissonance, too. Those glimpses where we can see that parts of them have changed, serving as a reminder that time has passed without us. Maybe it’s a different cologne. Shorter hair. A favorite band replaced by another. It’s always uncomfortable to lose that quiet smugness we once felt. Of course we know everything about each other, how couldn’t we? Now, when they share something exciting - whether it be online or to mutual friends - it’s your first time hearing it too. No early access. No special role. No thought of: Of course I was the first person to know. One of the strangest changes of all is the realization that you can’t touch them the way you once did. It can be bittersweet to have familiarity without permission and love without access. It’s like they’re close enough to be recognized, but too far to be reached.

One of the hardest parts of enduring a breakup is the fact that you’ve also lost a really good friend – your best friend, even. The person who knew how your days unfolded. The one you texted your every thought to. Attraction alone is easy to replace. Good friendship, on the other hand, isn’t. And when a relationship is built on years of knowing each other, its absence feels like an aching, persistent grief. This grief can especially be felt when talking to someone new who doesn’t understand you in the way you’ve grown used to.

One notable fact is that you cannot teach a person to love you, be attracted to you, or want to be better for you. These are things they must learn on their own. The only way they’ll succeed at it is if they want to. Maybe they’ll realize it on their own and send a text asking to talk. Maybe they heal by themselves and figure they’ll just love better next time. The most important thing is to not wait while they embark on their self improvement journey. Don’t pause your life in case they come back, fully healed. Growth either happens privately, over time, or not at all. But it’s not your responsibility to monitor the status of their self-growth.

There’s discomfort in never really knowing if the explanations they give are true or not. I’ve dated men who struggled with commitment until they found someone they actually wanted to commit to. I’ve dated men who struggled to travel until they found someone who made the miles seem small. I’ve been that person too: citing busyness or logistics when the real reason was disinterest. We all do it. Love clarifies priorities without asking permission.

I went to college still in a relationship with my boyfriend from high school. It’s a little bit funny because I’d always been the biggest advocate for starting college single and there I was: the happy hypocrite. But then came the tradeoff. I found that when I was thriving at college, my relationship was unraveling. And when my relationship felt secure, I felt like I was shrinking. I couldn’t grow without splitting myself in two. It became too difficult for me to not harness some sense of resentment, and I felt like I could never know who I was supposed to be unless I discovered it alone. When you’re in a relationship, you consider the other person constantly, often subconsciously. You schedule your joy around their availability. It seems small and almost invisible to the naked eye, but it’s always there. You check in. You adjust. You make room. You bend. They occupy your mind when you go out to a party, hang out with your friends, and so forth. You dilute parts of yourself without meaning to and feel almost guilty for growing into a new version of yourself – one they had no role in forming.

After we broke up my freshman year, for two months, I felt like a part of me had died and rotted. I swallowed whatever pride I had left and texted him, asking him to talk. I begged, bargained, and negotiated. I said I’d email my psychiatrist and ask for a higher dosage of medication. I promised versions of myself I couldn’t guarantee – the idealized stable version he deserved. I said I’d never make him feel unwanted ever again and that I loved him so much it physically pained me. We briefly tried again – the final attempt – and failed again. We both realized too much hurt had been felt. Too many words were spoken that could never be unsaid. Too many wounds were reopened and impossible to close. But through that heartbreak, I gained clarity. I knew that I had done all I could. Had I not said anything, I would’ve regretted it for the rest of my life.

Sometimes, you do need to say something – the apology that’s been haunting you, the question that begs to be asked. Not because it’ll end in the way you hope, but because not knowing can follow you longer than rejection ever could. Closure isn’t always peace, but it is always clarity. It grants you the permission to stop imagining alternate endings. No more should’ve, could’ve, or what if. Only the answer of what now is.

We talk endlessly about what “closure” really is. Is it one last conversation? Is it finally feeling okay on cold Sunday nights? Is it falling in love again? There’s a sentiment that I see online often that can be summarized as: “If you knew you’d find love, how different would you act now?” I think about it a lot. I think we’d become less panicked with desperation. We’d be calmer and less willing to settle for half-somethings just to momentarily feel something and be able to say we have someone. We’d finally know with absolute certainty that someone will love us again. And they wouldn’t resent the changes we’d made because they’d never know they were changes. They would only know that they love us exactly as we are.

I know the struggles of trying to find a genuine deep relationship after your first ends. It can be exhausting trying to find someone intellectually challenging, emotionally available, and genuinely curious. After enough empty conversations, it makes sense to romanticize the one person who once knew you so well they could recognize your footsteps. It’s also very rare to only fall in love once. There will be a person to love the version of you that you have grown into – someone who you will share glances with and form new inside jokes with.

Does it feel worth asking – just once – if there’s anything left to salvage? Or does it feel kinder to yourself to trust that love will find you again?

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