Setting right a past imperfect

Handle the guilt

It is so much easier to spend time with an ex you don’t care about than one you were heavily invested in, emotionally. Really, hear us out. You may think it’s tougher to handle an ex who is baying for your blood but meeting a good ex who got a poor deal from you is a very tricky situation. It’s like walking on eggshells. There are always people who touch our hearts ever so fondly whom we actually end up distancing ourselves from than embracing them for life.

That brings us to a stage of repressed guilt, so facing such a person can open the floodgates of your conflicted conscience. If the nervousness of meeting the ex wasn’t bad enough, you’ll now be swept by overwhelming guilt — one that you worked over time to deal with. The best way to deal with that backlog guilt would be by being simply honest about it. Tell him or her that you’ve always felt miserable about how things ended and if you could, you’d really make the parting of ways so much easier.

Be honest without being creepy. Don’t freak him or her out by being too sappy, or worse, make them feel like you haven’t gotten over them. There’s a really fine line between being honest and being clingy... one that is crossed only too often.

Don’t be cold

A lot of people confront a past that makes them guilty by doing nothing at all. They pretend like they felt nothing and are completely unaffected about it but are internally struck by how things turned out. If you’re good at keeping a superficial calm without letting go of your guard, then by all means do what suits you best.

But if you think your ex will be able to call your bluff in a second, there’s no point in wasting either of your time by putting on a charade. You don’t need to confess to your guilt, but you needn’t put on a cold, indifferent act either. If the relationship mattered at one point, don’t insult it by being unnecessarily aloof. 

Passion call

One of the greatest temptations in such a situation is to pick up from where you last left that person and the relationship. Decades may have passed and both of you may have moved on in life but meeting suddenly after so many years might make you want to rekindle the lost passion and in some way compensate for how poorly you left him or her. That’s an emotional booby trap. If you have your own independent lives and families to boot, making out with your ex will only complicate something steady you have going on in your own lives. Tread with utmost caution.

Leave with closure

One of the most important reasons why guilt permeates over decades is because you’ve not given yourself and the other person some sense of closure over a terminated relationship. Now that you’ve had a chance to meet each other years after the fallout, you’re wiser and have developed better perspective on relationships.

Use that experience to set right a wrong. It’s really not all that hard. If you’ve had a good run before it ended, you really do owe it to your ex to try and make them feel better about it. In the process, you just may end up feeling better about your own guilt too. Life does not give us so many second chances with people, so embrace one when it comes your way. That said, don’t overdo it. Absolutely do not end the conversation on a hopeful note.

There’s nothing worse than talking to an ex you’ve loved and feeling that perhaps he/she was trying to imply that you should hook up. Don’t fall for it.