Posted January 28, Reviewed by Michelle Quirk. Intense sexual and emotional desires, which are ignited by novelty and change, typically fade with time. One major exception is yearning for ex-lovers. Here, we desire someone familiar and known, instead of the novelty of new romance, so how can this puzzle be explained? In our goal-oriented society, the past is of little concern: Our gaze is directed at the future, and it seems irrational to invest our limited resources in past events.
Although the past is unchangeable, however, its emotional impact is immense. These days, ex-lovers can be easily found on social media. Exes rarely disappear from the Internet; hence, it is hard to forget them. Indeed, many people have tried to locate exes, hoping to rekindle their romantic sentiments. Nearly half of daters and cohabiters report a reconciliation, and more than half of those who break up continue a sexual relationship together Halpern-Meekin et al.
Recently I told him that I will always love him but if he is happy without me he should block me. So, he did. It is one of my greatest desires to talk to her at least once more before I die of old age. All of my breakups happened for good reasons. Then he's finished. Explaining the complex experience of yearning for exes depends on personal and circumstantial factors. Nevertheless, I suggest an explanatory framework that can be applied to most cases of such yearning that centers on an incomplete, romantic, familiar, partially fulfilled, and idealized road.
It has been found that those who experienced unfinished business with the deceased had a higher risk of chronic and severe reactions to grief Klingspon et al. Yearning for ex-lovers involves a feeling that love was unfilled, with the persistent feeling that it could have blossomed if circumstances had not prevented it.
The partial fulfillment enhances yearning for its completion, which could be expressed in casual sex or enduring romantic relationships. This yearning is associated with various other factors; I focus here on idealization, regret, and attachment. Romantic love often idealizes lovers in general, past ones in particular. Nostalgia is a bittersweet longing that combines the pleasurable positive feeling of the past with the pain that it is absent.
