It happened in the kitchen, and neither saw it coming. They had been separated for two years, but had stayed friendly. For important holidays and the birthdays of their two children, now 14 and 16, they would get together as a family. Lately, though, they had been more friendly.
You always buy tomatoes that aren’t quite ripe, he scolds her playfully as he helps make Easter dinner at her house.
She throws him a look over her shoulder. Enough, Mr. I Want To Be Jamie Oliver. Just slice it, would you?
The corner of her lip lifts in adorable irony.
Silently, he slices.
Talk turns to this and that: the kids, work and some funny asides about the new people they are dating.
At one point - over the shelling of sweet peas? - the conversation turns to cars.
Well, maybe you should look at it, he suggests. You know, take it out for a spin.
I don’t know, she wavers. I did that, and I wasn’t convinced.
You wanted a new car. He is concentrating on the tomato. Didn’t you?
Her back is to him. I like what I know. Maybe I even love what I know. I feel safe with what I know, she says almost under her breath.
She turns to face him. Her face is doing that little thing it always does when she is taking an emotional risk.
He puts down the knife.
This is not about cars.
Okay, I admit it. I made this up. Pure fiction. But it feels good, doesn’t it? And maybe, just maybe, if you’re honest, you’ll acknowledge it’s the stuff of your fantasies.
The rewooing of the ex is a common storyline, in the movies and in life. It’s as popular a theme as going home. Britney Spears is cozying up to her ex, Kevin Federline, gossip magazines report. Even if it isn’t true, perhaps the tabloid writers anticipated how well the suggestion would play in popular culture. Apparently, Mr. Federline wants to see whether there’s anything salvageable about their relationship.
In an essay published in The Encyclopedia of Exes, 26 Stories by Men of Love Gone Wrong, Michael Schur expressed the sentiment best: There is no better smell than an ex-girlfriend. Reconciliation with an ex, however brief, is a bit like a cup of comforting chicken soup.
Still, the reality of the make-up is often complex, more like a bouillabaisse.
For one woman in her 60s who reunited with her husband, after he had left her for a younger woman, reconciliation was a form of weakness. When the affair ended - he was dumped - his wife immediately took him back, despite the efforts of their children to convince her she would be better off without him. (He was not the kindest of men.) But she had not been able to cope on her own. She was incapable of reinvention. After almost 40 years of marriage, life with him was all she knew.
I talked to a reader in Vancouver about his hope that his wife would take him back. I told her I had made a mistake, he explained over the phone recently. Ten years ago, when he was 45, he left his wife of 20 years for another woman. I was looking for something different at that point, he confessed. I thought I had found it. But within two months, I realized that I hadn’t. Having made the jump, I realized I still had feelings for my wife.
They had two children, then 14 and 12. He felt terrible about how hurt his wife was. He regretted the instability he had injected into the lives of their children. His daughter wouldn’t speak to him.
Four months of therapy later, he moved back home. But his wife had a hard time getting over the infidelity. There have been good and bad patches in the last 10 years, and when we’re in a bad patch, the affair always comes up as the reason she is unsure she wants to stay with me. He still hopes she can forgive him completely. I really want to make it work, he said.
In his practice as a couples therapist, Ian Kerner, author of the bestseller Be Honest - You’re Not That Into Him Either and other books, helps many couples through their desire for reconciliation, often after affairs.
When that potent neurochemical cocktail [of a new romantic relationship] wears off, as it inevitably does, people get the bigger perspective of what they left behind; the deeper intimacy that they really had been achieving in their marriage, Mr. Kerner said.
Children have a big influence, he says. Fathers with limited custody often feel disconnected, unmoored. Many desire the stability of home. I have heard many women say that despite new boyfriends, they will never have the same emotional bond as they did with the man who is the father of their children.
Dr. Kerner has many success stories of couples who reconciled. But the resumption of happy marriage is only successful if the couple is willing to dig deeply into the issues that caused the breakup in the first place. Sometimes, even a reconciliation can feel like a thrill, and that, too, will wear off. There is also the problem that in estrangement, one of the exes, and sometimes both, see the relationship with rose-tinted glasses. They pine for something in the ex that represents an idealized view of the ex.
But let’s return to Mr. and Ms. Tomato. Fiction can speak truths, too.
They hugged after all that euphemistic car talk. He always loved the way her freshly washed hair smelled of apples. And she liked the way he put his hands in the back pockets of her jeans.
The hug felt good. It felt right, if you must know, and sometimes that’s all you have to go on. After all, the feeling that the relationship is right is often what gets you into marriage in the first place. Which is not to say they didn’t work diligently on their issues. They did. They would go to their therapist, and then out for a glass of wine. It was their Thursday evening ritual.
Married love should be bendy and generous, they tell each other. They reference the movie Married Life, in which the adulterous husband, played by Chris Cooper, returns to the arms of his wife, gratefully, after his mistress changes her mind about wanting him to be with her. Yes, it’s true, he had planned on murdering his wife with poison to make the breakup easier; he was concerned about how devastated she would be. (Thankfully, she never found out.) When he loses the other woman, he realizes how much he needs his wife. She, too, had been unfaithful, but she cares about her husband too much to leave him.
The message of that little piece of fiction? Married love, even if neglected from time to time, has very strong roots.
Which is, well, true.
Tags: adult, britney spears, colds, family, kevin federline, perspective, rth