{"id":2425,"date":"2016-03-04T07:24:43","date_gmt":"2016-03-04T01:54:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2425"},"modified":"2016-03-04T07:24:43","modified_gmt":"2016-03-04T01:54:43","slug":"dating-in-your-30s-ex-girlfriends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=2425","title":{"rendered":"Dating in Your 30s With the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span><\/p><\/div>

able for two? No, sir, four for the ghosts of our past. <\/span>\n\nAs we sit across the bar, arms nudging, our feet entangle, and the warm feeling takes over. The ambience is perfect; we have eyes only for each other. A friends-turning-into-more-than-friends scenario, perhaps. <\/span>\n\nAnd then they play some song, that takes you back\u2026 back to the <\/span>person <\/span><\/a>before the one you\u2019re sitting with. That feeling, that emotion, that memory triggered, one that is annoying by the very fact that it should even resurface after so long. And you slip back into the same melancholy mode, thinking of time passed and feelings that will never return.<\/span>\n\nYou approximate a feeling of melancholy that the Portuguese call \u201csaudade\u201d, or the \u201cpresence of absence\u201d. As this Huffington Post <\/span>piece<\/span><\/a> puts it, the almost untranslatable word is a \u201ca longing for someone or something that you remember fondly but know you can never experience again. Saudade is not nostalgia where you reminisce about happy and sad emotions. You remember the happiness but feel the sadness knowing you can\u2019t recapture the feeling.\u201d<\/span>\n\nAnd then you pause and wonder, is the person you are sitting with doing the same too? <\/span>\n\nAre they also looking at the bar, remembering the moment with another person in another time, maybe even in the same bar? It makes you think whether we are both entirely with each other? Or somewhere are we still carrying along the <\/span>ghosts of the past<\/span><\/a>? Turning a date for two into a m\u00e9nage \u00e0 trois or perhaps even a ghostly foursome? And sometimes there is more than one ghost of the past. And you wonder just how many of them are on the dance floor, along with the two of you?<\/span>\n\nIn a brilliant sequence in the Charlie Puth-Selena Gomez number \u201cWe Don\u2019t Talk Anymore\u201d past lovers are shown kissing present ones in adjacent frames. A clever visual trick obliterates the present partners, so it appears as if Puth and Gomez are kissing each other. <\/span>\n

Perhaps, deep down somewhere, we are all still kissing our previous partners.<\/blockquote>\nI don\u2019t know what sucks more: Being the new guy (blissfully unaware or painfully aware of the fact) or being the person who just can\u2019t take in a new partner whole. Because your emotional hard drive still has some inaccessible bad sectors from the past. <\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s a frightening prospect. If the ghosts of my past were to manifest as apparitions, they would probably float past my current muse to pass <\/span>snide remarks<\/span><\/a>. \u201cSo, he still checks himself out in the mirror huh LOL,\u201d the ghost might ask. (And true to its past form, this ghost won\u2019t even laugh\u2026 it might actually say LOL just to irritate the fuck out of me). And my partner might say, \u201cOMG like totally and that stupid expression he makes!\u201d <\/span>\n\nSobering also is the realisation that in another corner of the world, you are the ghost for someone out there. My ghostly apparition probably floats about making sarcastic jibes like, \u201cThanks babe! Now I\u2019m dead both on the inside and outside.\u201d Not to mention the fear that today\u2019s muse could well become tomorrow\u2019s ghost as you go about accumulating so many of them even the Ghostbusters vault seems insufficient to hold them where they can do no harm.<\/span>\n\nSo, a sense of fatigue, an inability to create pure, new experiences sort of creeps in. Somewhat like how it didn\u2019t feel like a party back in college until you were spinning around on your back like an upturned turtle. But now anything more than a slightly tipsy feeling after two drinks feels like a bit too much.<\/span>\n\nDoes that mean, we\u2019re resigned to never once more experience the romantic equivalent of unabashed alcoholism? Well, unless your romantic liver is made of steel, maybe not. <\/span>\n\nBut here\u2019s the bright side. Just like your relationship with alcohol changes, so does your relationship with romance. From the heady days of brazen, emotionally intense waves of love to perhaps simply settling in for a quiet day with a person where it doesn\u2019t feel like noise when they talk. To an acceptance that your combined ghosts will linger on for a while. <\/span>\n\nYet, at some point they will get buried into the sands of time, as new memories take their place.<\/span>\n\nSome might recall that episode from the show <\/span>How I Met Your Mother<\/span><\/i>, where the <\/span>baggage <\/span><\/a>Ted has been carrying from the past continues to haunt his current relationship. But his acceptance of it at the end of the episode finally helps him move on.<\/span>\n\nBecause not all the conversations of the ghosts are haunting ones. If they could talk to each other, perhaps they\u2019d say things like \u201cHe\u2019s an idiot but he has a nice heart.\u201d Or, \u201cYes, he\u2019s frustrating but I got to admit, it\u2019s never been boring right?\u201d Or even, \u201cJust when you want to strangle him, he does something caring, doesn\u2019t he… the asshole.\u201d <\/span>\n\nFor all the bitterness, if a medium ever put us in touch, I would probably say things like \u201cHey Ghost(s), thank you for all the wonderful times. For the way you boosted my self-esteem. How you convinced me that you also found me attractive <\/span>for <\/span><\/i>the way I look, and not <\/span>despite<\/span><\/i> it, as I have always believed. For the tenderness, for turning passion into intimacy, and a kiss into a conversation. For lifting this troubled electron to a higher orbit. I hope we when we meet years later, we will look at each other and smile like the final scene in <\/span>La La Land<\/span><\/i> <\/a>where Mia and Sebastian communicate so much in one glance. It\u2019s ok that we couldn\u2019t make it with each other, but we still made it. I\u2019m happy for you \u2013 and I hope you\u2019re happy for me too.\u201d <\/span>\n\nYou wish all relationships, if they had to end, could end this way. <\/span>\n\nAs for me, I find my hope in the TV series <\/span>Scrubs<\/span><\/i>, to Carla\u2019s wedding vows when she turns to her future husband Turk and says. \u201cI\u2019ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but you\u2019ve managed to erase them all. Because each and every one of them has led me to you.\u201d <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The beginning of every new romance is laden with the prospect of a different kind of \u201cghosting\u201d \u2013 where the thoughts, memories, and spirits of our past partners haunt our present affairs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":234,"featured_media":2426,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[4935,62,63,65,66,16,4936,505,4937,3967,2227,2682,224,1466,4938,4939,3445,1869],"class_list":["post-2425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-love-and-sex","tag-affair","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-boyfriend","tag-charlie-puth","tag-dating","tag-ghosting","tag-girlfriend","tag-how-i-met-your-mother","tag-huffington-post","tag-love","tag-romance","tag-saudade","tag-selena-gomez","tag-ted","tag-thirties"],"yoast_head":"\nDating in Your 30s With the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The beginning of every new romance is laden with the prospect of a different kind of \u201cghosting\u201d \u2013 where the thoughts, memories, and spirits of our past partners haunt our present affairs.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2425\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dating in Your 30s With the Ghosts of Girlfriends Past\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The beginning of every new romance is laden with the prospect of a different kind of \u201cghosting\u201d \u2013 where the thoughts, memories, and spirits of our past partners haunt our present affairs.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=2425\" \/>\n<meta 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