578 - Getting Back Together with an Ex: Great Idea or Terrible Idea?

Have you ever gotten back together with an ex?

If you have gotten back with an ex, you’re definitely not alone. According to a 2014 study, nearly half of the adults surveyed reported a reconciliation, and over half of those who broke up continued a sexual relationship with the ex.

Getting back together is very common, but staying together is less so. The question isn’t can you, it’s should you, and what has actually changed?

Sometimes, we get back with an ex for nostalgic reasons, but sometimes it’s a rational (if occasionally misguided) calculation about the dating landscape. A lot of relationships form in college or university, and those relationships may have had structural advantages that are hard to replicate. A partner who was 85% compatible at age 23 might look very different at 31 when the dating pool has contracted and everyone has more baggage, less availability, and higher walls.

Why are exes so magnetic?

It turns out that there may be a reason why you feel drawn to your ex. Your brain is literally wired to keep them on your mind!

The Zeigarnik Effect, first discovered by Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik in the 1920s, explains why our minds often cling to unfinished tasks more than completed ones. In relationships, every unresolved conversation, ghosting situation, or ambiguous ending becomes the emotional equivalent of an unpaid bill. The worse the ending, the stronger the pull. Especially if a relationship ended with a fight, unanswered questions, or just fizzled out, your brain keeps that tab open indefinitely, treating it as a task that needs completing.

Additionally, there’s the unfinished business trap. It’s easy to confuse wanting resolution with wanting the person. The Zeigarnik Effect tricks us into thinking closure lies somewhere out there, with one more text, one more conversation, one more explanation. But the brain isn’t craving those conversations, it’s craving completion.

Some questions you can ask yourself:

1. Was the relationship actually good, or does it just feel unfinished?

2. Do you want them, or do you want resolution?

3. Would you still want them if you already had a satisfying answer to what went wrong?

When is it toxic to go back?

Research has shown that the mental health consequences of on-again/off-again relationships are just as bad as those associated with full relationship dissolution. Sometimes negative effects from an on-/off-again relationship can linger for over a year, and consequences include less relationship satisfaction, poorer communication, less commitment, more intimate partner violence, and symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Much of the research on this topic looks at monogamous dyads, often in low-income or high-stress circumstances, but the underlying mechanism of relational uncertainty and unpredictability is also relevant in non-monogamous relationships. It’s the instability that causes harm, not the reconciliation itself.

Successful reconciliations usually involve addressing core issues that caused a breakup, not just missing the other person. Breakups due to circumstantial issues like timing, distance, external pressures, etc. rather than fundamental incompatibilities are more likely to succeed.

How to decide if you should reconnect

Here are some questions to ask yourself before reconnecting with an ex:

1. Gut Check: What caused the breakup, and has it actually changed? Not "do I feel different" but what concrete evidence exists that the underlying dynamic has shifted?

2. Am I seeking completion or connection? Use the Zeigarnik test: if you magically got a full, satisfying explanation for everything that went wrong, would you still want to be with them?

3. Would this be a new relationship, or a resumed one? Research emphasizes the importance of having conversations about what is going to change and how the relationship will be different moving forward. If you can't answer that question concretely, it's a red flag.

4. For non-monogamous relationships, there’s an extra question to ask. What relationship structure makes sense now? Getting back together doesn’t have to mean reverting to the exact same structure that failed.

In non-monogamy, there’s also a difference in the meaning of an ex. An ex might still be in your polycule, a close friend within a shared community, a coparent or chosen family member, or someone with whom you still have occasional consensual intimacy. The complications are magnified, and sometimes “should I get back with my ex?” in a non-monogamous context isn’t about getting back together at all, it’s about renegotiating what kind of relationship you want to have from a menu of options that doesn’t exist in monogamy.

Some actionable takeaways from this episode:

1. Run the Zeigarnik check. Journaling exercise: write a "complete" ending to the relationship in your own words. Does the desire to reconnect go down after you've given it an ending?

2. Name the actual change. Before reaching out to an ex, write down three concrete things that are different now — not feelings, but circumstances, patterns, or personal growth.

3. Distinguish nostalgia from compatibility. The brain remembers the good more than the bad when things are unresolved. Make a genuine, non-idealized list of what didn't work.

4. Have the "what would be different" conversation first before jumping back in. This is the most evidence-backed predictor of whether a reconciliation will stick.

5. For non-monogamous listeners: Consider what role this person might play in your life and whether "getting back together" in the old form is actually what you want, or whether a different structure might honor the connection without replicating the dysfunction.

Transcript

If you find any transcription errors, please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.

Dedeker: Something that a lot of people don't necessarily think about when they're getting back together with an ex is that when you get back together with someone, it's like there's this big job of repair that has to be done. It isn't quite just a light switch on and off, right? It's not like, okay, great, we're back together and now everything's fantastic. There is, I think, a laundry list of not just the work of figuring out, hey, how did things go wrong before, how can we change that, but also there could be just straight up pain of like, yeah, you dumped me, right? Or I dumped you. And it's not quite the same as building from scratch with a new person. It's like you're almost starting a little bit in the negative.

Jase: Welcome to the Multiamory Podcast. I'm Jase.

Emily: I'm Emily.

Dedeker: And I'm Dedeker.

Emily: We believe in looking to the future of relationships, not maintaining the status quo of the past.

Dedeker: Whether you're monogamous, polyamorous, swinging, casually dating, or if you just do relationships differently, we see you and we're here for you.

Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're talking about the age-old question: is getting back together with my ex a great idea or a terrible idea? Do most of us meet the people we're supposed to be with early on in life? Today we're going to discuss the science of these questions, why the pull to get back together with an ex can feel so strong, and some special considerations for non-monogamous folks that don't get talked about as often. If you're interested in learning about our fundamental communication tools that we reference on this show, you can check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships, and you can find it wherever books are sold or at Multiamory.com/book. You can get links to buy it there.

Emily: Have the two of you ever had an on-again, off-again relationship with someone or gotten back together with an ex after being broken up for a period of time?

Dedeker: I've never done anything stupid like that. Who do you think you're talking to?

Emily: Yeah, no, I know for a fact that you have. I want you two to kind of set the scene and discuss perhaps how that went, why you think you did it, and how long you stayed with that person after you got back together with them.

Jase: Yeah. So I feel like I'm maybe the outlier here in that I haven't had a full we're broken up long-term, longer term than a week. Like, we're actually broken up. And then we get back together for realsies. I haven't had that, but I have had ones where we dated for a while, it didn't work out, and then maybe a year later or some longer period of time, we kind of become friends again and maybe are a little bit romantic-ish with each other, but it never quite has gone back to as full— we're fully in a relationship again like we were the first time.

Dedeker: Okay. What did it go back, back to then?

Jase: Like, being friends, but they were kind of a little more affectionate. Would kiss sometimes or maybe fool around a little bit, like that kind of a thing. It's been a long time since that. And usually what would happen is we'd kind of have that coming back together, it'd be sort of nice, and then we just sort of drift apart.

Emily: Was this when you were non-monogamous?

Jase: Yes, yes, this is all monogamous. And then while telling that, I just realized, no, I did actually have someone that I got back together with after a few years, more seriously. After a few years? But it was like high school was the first time, and then like during college or after college was the second time. So kind of a big break, different life stages for both of us then.

Dedeker: I guess I had one of those too, like a high school boyfriend broke up and then got back together in college as well. Now that I think about it, yeah, that was a long time ago.

Jase: Yeah, so mine was high school and then post-college got back together, and it was good, but there was What was it?

Emily: It was—

Jase: there's sort of like a distance thing, like it just didn't work out logistically. So it wasn't really a breakup exactly either time. It's like both times it just sort of didn't work. Sort of weird now that I'm thinking back on it.

Dedeker: Okay, interesting. But also a younger time, right?

Jase: Also a much younger time and a more monogamous.

Dedeker: That totally makes sense. Do things when you're young and silly. I've not done anything stupid like that in the last 5 years or anything like that.

Emily: Hmm.

Jase: Interesting. Interesting. Dedeker.

Dedeker: He's an older and wiser person.

Jase: But hypothetically, if you had, tell us how it went.

Dedeker: Oh, not great. I saw this meme floating around that said, or actually I think Emily, maybe you shared this meme with me that like sometimes God sends an ex back into your life to check whether or not you're still stupid.

Emily: I may have sent that to you. I didn't mean to be rude, but it just happened. I thought it was funny. And then Dedeker was like, You know that you're kind of dunking on me right now. Yeah. It's okay, Dedeker. You got back together with that person twice?

Dedeker: Do we need to account? Do we really need to do an ordinal list of the number of times I got back together with that person?

Emily: No, I suppose we don't. I did want to bring up—

Dedeker: It's not important.

Emily: You're absolutely right. It's not important. I did want to bring up, Jase, that your parents got back together with their high school— was it high school sweethearts?

Dedeker: Your mom's done that twice now.

Jase: My mom's done that twice. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah. Which is fascinating.

Jase: And that's obviously many, many years later, right?

Emily: True.

Jase: In both cases, both she and the person that she got back together with had been married and divorced in the meantime. One of them had had kids in the meantime. And one was what? 15, 20 years after that, and the other was like 40 years after that. So yeah, big spans of time between those. But it is interesting that kind of ended up back from that same pool of high school, them high school boys. It is interesting. And I'm curious for this episode, Emily, if you found any research kind of backing that up, because I feel like that's more common than you would think by just random chance.

Emily: Of course. Yeah, we'll get into that a little bit. This is a very common thing, actually, and I believe the only time that I've ever gotten back together with someone again was you, Jase, after like a week.

Jase: That hardly counted. We were still living together.

Emily: It hardly counted. But I really haven't done this of the three of us, which is kind of fascinating.

Dedeker: Yeah, I know.

Jase: Like, I would have thought for sure you'd be the one.

Dedeker: Yes.

Emily: No, when it's over, it's pretty over.

Jase: Sure.

Emily: Yeah. Now, that doesn't mean that I haven't pined. And we will also get into that. We've all pined for years afterwards. One specific person that I dated in college, but besides that, I never got back together with anyone. So we'll get into that a little bit. But here to start out, let's talk about from a statistical standpoint and a study-based standpoint, how common all this is and how often do people get back together and then remain together. So there was a study in 2014 called Relationship Churning in Emerging Adulthood: On/Off Relationships and Sex with an Ex. And this followed some young adults, and it found that nearly half reported a reconciliation. So a breakup basically followed by a reunion. And then over half of those who broke up continued a sexual relationship with the ex. So these are young people. These are people like in early adulthood, teens into young 20s. Now, I have done that. I have slept with an ex after the fact, like once or twice, but I wouldn't call that getting back together by any means.

Jase: Yeah, it's almost a little bit more like what I was talking about of kind of reconnecting and but not fully in a relationship again like we were the first time.

Emily: Definitely. There was another survey done by The Good Men Project. I'm not sure if you're aware of that website. It's a good one. They surveyed 4,534 people aged 18 to 55, and among that group, only 32% of exes got back together. And then of those, roughly 18% stayed together for over a year after reconciling.

Jase: I'm sorry though, I have objections here. Only 32% got back together with an ex? Like, that seems really high to me. I was like, wow, 32%. Yeah, that's a third. That's wild.

Emily: That's a lot.

Dedeker: A pretty tiny percentage of that third then got together and had to actually work out for—

Jase: that part's interesting. Yeah, that 18% of that 32% actually stayed together more than a year. Yeah, that is interesting. It's like you had to give it one more try just to check.

Emily: Yes, just to be sure. Indeed. Yes, they did. There is a website out there called Ex Back Permanently, which is— what's the craziest—

Dedeker: Is it a collection of witches' spells to get your ex back permanently?

Jase: I was gonna say, it's like those people who would leave comments on our episodes saying that they found the best wizard or witch or someone who got them back together with their ex after they broke up. Yeah, is it that?

Emily: No, it's a collection— it's again more statistics and data on trying to get back together with your ex and stay with them permanently. And they conducted a study that found that around 15% of people get back together and then stay back together. But then 14% of people that they surveyed get back together and then break up again. So it's basically like a coin toss whether or not you're going to get back together with them and stay together, period.

Jase: Those are very different numbers from The Good Men Project, where only 18% stayed together over a year. While this is saying half and half of the people that got back together. Even though their numbers for the total amount that get back together do match up where theirs is 15% get back and stay together and 14%. So that's just shy of 30. And then 32% is what The Good Men Project said. So that's interesting that that number is similar of how many people tried to do this, but they're very different numbers on how long they lasted.

Emily: And I do wonder if part of that is because there's such like a wide age range in The Good Men Project. It's 18 to 55. That's a huge amount of like life experience, different stages that you're going through in your life.

Jase: So I'm not sure who goes to a website called Ex Back Permanently and fills out a survey might be biased.

Emily: There you go.

Dedeker: Might be some bias there.

Emily: Absolutely. But okay, like a third of people, like you said, yeah, that's pretty common. So this is a fairly common thing for people to decide. I broke up with that person. But I decided actually I'm really interested in either closing that loop or I feel like I'm missing out on something. And I just, I want to see like where this goes again. Like maybe I didn't squeeze all the juice from this relationship that I could have. I mean, the question really isn't with all of this, can you get back together with your ex? In some cases it might be, but I think the larger question is, should you? And has something actually changed when you decide to get back together with that person? So let's talk about not the high school connection, but the college connection specifically. I think a lot of people out there meet their first spouse, for instance, in college, or their first really big relationship where they're choosing to spend a lot of time with this person in college.

Dedeker: First actual adult relationship where you're actually living independent arguably adult lives and creating a relationship under those conditions.

Jase: That, that stay together after that. That's like a much longer term relationship than this.

Emily: Yeah. A long-term relationship. And this is just anecdotal evidence, but my partner is younger than I am and he is friends with a lot of people who have been together for a very long time and are starting to get married or just got married. And most of them met their spouse in college. And so I don't know what that's about exactly, if like just it was the caliber of people at college, if it's just like like-minded sort of humans that you're around, what that is exactly. Some of the research that I looked at talked about that in college you're like surrounded by thousands of people of a similar age and then education level and life stage. And then they have a lot of time, like unstructured time to actually get to know each other.

Jase: Interact and Yeah, connect.

Emily: Yeah, where they're not necessarily needing to go to work every day. I mean, yeah, you're doing like college things like taking classes and then also needing to go home and study and maybe doing extracurricular activities, but sort of all of these pressures of everyday adult life are not quite there in the same way that they are when we are all adults now.

Dedeker: I know, and we didn't know how good we had it.

Emily: No, I know.

Dedeker: I don't think college was like the best time of my life or whatever, but I do sometimes look back and be like, I know how good I had it.

Jase: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, not just easier time, but I think an easier place to be social. So we've talked about one of those big challenges is how do you meet people, right? As adults, often if you move to a new city, it's really hard to find new friends and find your social group there. And often the best you can do is trying to find meetups or maybe making friends through work. But really, it's like the reason why we do that is because those are just the people that we're around, right? And in college, because you're taking different classes, you've got multiple pools of people that you're around and that those change every 6 months or something like that. It gives you this nice way of connecting with new people and old people and also that unstructured time. But even without that, it just gives you chances to be around a lot of different people to see if you connect or want to hang out or have something in common or something like that. Yeah, I wish sometimes that there were an easier way to get that in adult life that wasn't just where you work.

Emily: Yeah, there's just this great amount of proximity to other people who probably have similar interests to you. And then just the sheer, like, density of people in, like, a college town, for instance, or around your campus. I think that it's very hard to, like, replicate that in any other part of life. From the website Campus Explorer, where you can kind of look at a bunch of different colleges and like see stats and stats on those colleges, they ran their own survey and found that 28% of married college graduates attended the same college as their spouse, and that it is statistically one of the most fertile grounds for finding a long-term partner. 28% isn't even that high. Again, with my partner, his friends, many, many of them have found their partners through the college that they all went to. And it feels like a higher number than 28%.

Jase: But yeah, I mean, that's also— it's still their first marriages. It depends when you take this survey, right?

Emily: That's a very good point. So have you heard of Barry Schwartz's Paradox of Choice book?

Jase: This sounds familiar, but I can't remember what it is.

Emily: Yeah, basically just laying out this question: if we have so many different choices at our disposal, is that actually like a good thing? And I think that this is sometimes the issue with dating apps. We've talked about that on the show before, but when you have just an enormous amount of choice, it can sometimes become super duper overwhelming as well in terms of who is it that I pick? Who is it that I decide to be with? And maybe actually people that I knew in the past or people that I met organically are ultimately better for me than just this enormous amount of potential options out there.

Jase: Sure.

Emily: That are difficult to get to know and difficult to meet and foster a relationship with. So a partner who might feel like they're almost right for you at an age like 23, for example, they might look a lot more right for you when you're a little bit older because perhaps the dating pool is contracted. Maybe you feel like everyone that I meet has more baggage. They have—

Dedeker: they're partnered already, right?

Emily: Exactly.

Dedeker: Yeah.

Emily: That's why the dating pool is going down, probably because a lot of these people are already partnered. And so I could see an argument there as well as if I know somebody from my past that is still available, maybe I didn't think that they were great for me then, but perhaps now I feel like, huh, that person's looking— their stock is rising, as it were. They're looking a little bit more interesting to me now.

Jase: Yeah, I could, I could see that. I've definitely encountered things like that with reunions or something for high school or college. When you kind of see of the subset of people here, who's available? If I'm look— if I'm interested in people, it's kind of who's available. And that's even a small pool from within that pool. And if it is someone that you had some connection with before, it's kind of this like, oh, their rating or like their desirability goes up because it's like, oh, you're still available and you're kind of pre-vetted in a certain way because we've interacted-ish, right? So I could definitely see that, that making sense there of wanting to go back to that pool. And if someone becomes available after their first divorce, then that's also kind of, okay, yeah, that same logic. You're available now. And I know you were desirable enough that somebody married you.

Dedeker: So, hey, this is a factor. The social proof is a factor.

Emily: Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we're going to get a little bit more into something called the Zeigarnik Effect and why your brain might be trying to complete something when it comes to going back to an ex. But first, we are going to take a quick break.

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Emily: All right. Have the two of you heard of this thing, the Zeigarnik Effect?

Dedeker: I've never heard that word.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah. So back in 19— in like the 1920s, This Soviet psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, found that waiters, which I can attest this absolutely happened to me, but they saw that waiters would remember the orders of people down to the T, like everything perfectly until the check was cashed and then they would forget about everything. So it was like they had to close the loop on, okay, I know that this order is still open. I know that I still have to worry about it. And so I'm going to remember everything within the order until it's done, and then as soon as it's over, I don't care about it any longer.

Dedeker: That's kind of how I feel about Multiamory Podcast.

Emily: Well, I was about to say that. I was about to say that. Oh, so awesome.

Jase: As soon as we hit that stop button, it's gone. I forgot everything that we talked about.

Emily: Yeah, when people reference our episodes, I'm like, did I say that?

Jase: Cool.

Emily: I don't know. That's awesome. Interesting.

Jase: But it implies there's some, like, mechanism keeping this fresh in our brain, and then just poof, it's gone once it's completed.

Emily: Well, and that when we have relationships that kind of fizzle out or they leave us suddenly and we don't know what happened there, or perhaps like somebody ghosted us and we feel like, crap, I really want to know what the heck happened there. It can make us feel like we have to search for answers and search for meaning behind why is it that this person did this thing. And I really want to know, like, I really want to close that loop and figure it out so that I can kind of like put it to bed and play it to rest. And I think in a lot of ways, like, the stronger the pull to come back to it if it's an ending that leaves you with a lot of questions.

Jase: The more unclear the ending.

Dedeker: Unclear, ambiguous. Yeah.

Emily: Yeah.

Dedeker: Uh-huh.

Jase: Yeah. The ones that just sort of drift apart are hard, because there is sort of that, like, "Oh, man. Huh. Yeah. Like, that— maybe that could have been something." Or where it's just sort of like circumstance. "Oh, I'm going away." for a job. Okay, we're not going to stay together. I could see those maybe having some extra pull there of like, maybe that could have worked. I don't know.

Emily: Also, though, those types of relationships where you kind of keep coming back to them and saying like, if I just have one more text or one more conversation or one more explanation, then I feel like I can really put closure on this. But without those things, you may want to keep going back to the relationship. I know, like, I have had relationships like that that ended. There's one in particular that I recall that was from my youth, like my last year in college, where I thought it was going really well. I was really excited about this person. And then one day they were just like, okay, I'm breaking up with you. And I was ruminating about it, going back in my mind about what is it that I did wrong, you know, playing all of the tapes of where were the signs and wanting to reach out to this person. And get answers or like get some sort of closure from that standpoint. And it just kind of never happened. And that person definitely for years felt to me like the one that got away. Have the two of you ever had similar situations?

Jase: In certain ways, different than that. It's just reminding me of our episode we did on closure. I just checked, it's 527, which is about why your closure isn't working or like why your search for closure isn't working. And I do feel like that's an interesting kind of cousin to this episode, because there is the whole, like, getting back together with them as potentially a way of finding closure of maybe this could have gone on, versus that one's more focused on closure of, like, I want this to be done and not ever come back. And it is interesting that if you feel like there's a lack of closure, you could be tempted to go either direction of, like, let me start that back up because it never closed, or let me try to close it because it never closed.

Emily: Yeah, there was a 2011 study done in the Journal of Social Psychology that found that lingering feelings and continued attachment were the most common reasons why partners decided to try their relationship out again. And they found that uncertainty about whether the breakup was actually permanent was one of these key drivers of reconciliation. So the people in the study weren't really sure whether it was actually over. And if you were in that camp of feeling like, I don't know if it's really over, it's kind of ambiguous here, then those people were significantly more likely to try the relationship again. So that sort of ambiguous ending was what created the pull to continue, maybe wanting to get back together with this person.

Jase: I feel like comes up sometimes with breakups where it's also mismatched. Where one person might think 100%, oh, it's over, but maybe for now we might get back together. And to the other person, if you ask them separately, they'd be like, oh no, we broke up.

Emily: Yep.

Jase: And that there's kind of that ambiguity there. So I'm curious how that works out. How much is just the desire to get back together with that one you think might not be over versus how much do people actually get back together in that situation? Right. And we do see those numbers are somewhat low of actually getting back together. That's interesting. And even lower that they'd work out.

Emily: Absolutely.

Jase: Kind of like just thinking anecdotally, I don't have any research for this, but I feel like that tendency of people to try to save face or to let someone down easy or all those things we talk about with breakups, I could see that really lending itself to this kind of ambiguous ending though, right? It's like in trying to kind of be vague and not like, I never want to be with you, you kind of leave it a little bit open. And that that might, for good or for bad, I guess, because sometimes it works out, but, you know, leave this kind of open. This didn't get closure, this didn't finish, and that can be challenging, I guess, unless you actually want to leave that door open. And I think maybe a lot of people don't think about that necessarily when they're figuring out—

Emily: doing the breaking up.

Jase: Yeah, right, right.

Emily: I think it's important when you might be in that situation that you were talking about, Jase, of like, okay, the relationship's ending, And then perhaps a month or two or three or a year down the line, you might find yourself thinking back to that person and wondering, huh, should I have broken up with them? Do I want to get back together with them? And you're maybe feeling that like unfinished pull towards them. A couple of good questions to ask yourself are, was this relationship actually a good thing that I want to go back to, or does something about it just feel unfinished? And I want to address that feeling rather than the person or the relationship as a whole. Do you want that person or do you just want resolution? And then would you still want them if you had a more satisfying answer to what went wrong in the relationship?

Dedeker: Hmm. That's an interesting one.

Jase: Yeah. I like that idea of trying to separate out how much is actually, I think this could work. And this was good and I want to be with them versus how much is just that, that cognitive pull to finish this thing or to get completion or something like that. Yeah, definitely.

Dedeker: I think a question I would add to that list though is like, do I actually want to be with this person or is it I'm just like dissatisfied with my life right now or dissatisfied with dating right now or dissatisfied with my relationship or my relationships right now? I think that's an important one.

Jase: Yeah, that's a good question.

Emily: When you talk about that dissatisfaction in terms of like the relationship question, because I'm assuming you mean like the non-monogamy part of it, do you think that going back to someone would actually make that better, or do you think that maybe there's like a comfort often in going back to something that feels familiar?

Dedeker: Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily related to being non-monogamous or not. Like, I just I do just think that, like, we can catch ourselves in moments where we're feeling frustrated or feeling lonely, and then that can color our sense of how good or bad a past relationship was, because we can't be seeking that sense of comfort or familiarity. Even if it was a bad relationship, sometimes we can still be craving just something familiar.

Jase: Yeah, definitely.

Emily: I did want to talk quickly about the toxic element of this, because there is a fair bit of research done on Relationship Churning. And how it can actually kind of be not a very good thing for your mental health, which I do think makes a lot of sense because again, that ambiguity at times, if you do have an actual like on-again-off-again relationship, which is not something that I've ever really had, but I know people out there who one week they're on, one week they're doing great, and then they break up for a week.

Jase: Yeah, I feel like I've known several couples that that's been their trajectory for a lot of the time.

Emily: So there was a study done in 2009 at the University of Texas at Austin, and they did like a semi-large study with 445 US college students, two-thirds of which had experienced an on-again, off-again relationship. And they showed that these partners were less likely to report relationship positives such as love and understanding compared to those who reported more stable relationships that didn't include this on-again, off-again factor. So this wasn't specifically a survey of people wondering whether or not they wanted to get back together. It studied people that were actively in these relationships, right? And it did show again that feeling of love, that feeling of stability, was just not often there, unfortunately.

Dedeker: Well, I think what's hard is, and something that a lot of people don't necessarily think about when they're getting back together with an ex, is that when you get back together with someone it's like there's this big job of repair that has to be done. It isn't quite just a light switch on and off, right? It's not like, okay, great, we're back together and now everything's fantastic. There is, I think, a laundry list of not just the work of figuring out, hey, how did things go wrong before, how can we change that, but also like there could be just straight up pain of like, yeah, you dumped me, right? Or I dumped you. And like, we're sort of— it's not quite the same as building from scratch with a new person. It's like you're almost starting a little bit in the negative with—

Jase: right, yeah, that's a good point—

Dedeker: lack of security of the attachment of the relationship. And I say that not to say that it means it's impossible. Like, I think people can do this successfully, but I think a lot of people don't account for that. And I think that, yeah, then if you're doing the back and forth again quite a bit, I think that each time you're sort of like digging that hole of the security cost in the relationship a little bit deeper each time.

Emily: Absolutely.

Jase: It also Makes me wonder if them reporting less of those feelings of love and affection and positivity could actually be more of a symptom that we're doing this on-again, off-again thing because we're coming back, not because we want to come back, not because it's like, oh, but that was so good, I want it back again, but kind of like, well, being without them sucks more, or I don't feel like I have a lot of other options, or maybe I should get back together with them because no one else would like me. Like, it might be tied to a little bit more of a either self-esteem or just sort of confidence issue or something else, right, that brings them back to a relationship that they're not reporting a lot of positivity about when they're surveyed about it.

Emily: Well, they actually did a qualitative follow-up in 2009 as well, where they gave participants space to explain in their own words why they were cycling in these relationships, why they were going back. And some of the participants reported that dating other people after a breakup actually prompted reconciliation with the original partner because the alternative relationships didn't provide better experiences for them, not necessarily because the original relationship had improved, but just because they felt like, well, this old one was better than the one that I'm currently in.

Jase: Sure.

Emily: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, basically it's less about that ex being the right person for them and more about the other options around them. Feeling disappointing in comparison.

Jase: It's just making me think about the whole, um, relationship commitment equation that we talked about a long time ago. That's like the—

Emily: yeah, I was thinking about that with this as well. Can you remind our listeners of what that was?

Jase: Yeah, I'm trying to remember the formula here. It's your treasures minus your troubles. So it's like the positive things of the relationship minus the negative things of the relationship. On one half of it or times multiply. I don't know what the— I don't know what the signs are, but then the other side is how invested you are. So kind of how long you've been in it, how much you've put yourself into this relationship that feels like maybe a sunk cost kind of situation, or, you know, I've really put myself in this. But that one gets subtracted by your perception of other choices being out there.

Emily: Yeah.

Jase: And so this one's been shown in studies, and I didn't look this up for this, but with people, how likely they are to leave their job also. So this isn't just about relationships, it's about any kind of commitment to something that if someone spends time on job sites and has a perception that there are other jobs out there, that they're more likely to leave their job, all things being equal, because it's tipped the equation, right? Where there are Treasures and troubles are the same. Their investment in their work is the same, but you've just increased your perception of other choices. And so that's going to tip the scale a little bit. And so same thing with like being on a dating app when you're not actively looking is sort of this, wow, there's lots of people out here. But then when you are trying to find dates, suddenly the perception is, oh, actually this is really hard. It doesn't feel like there's a lot of good options. That's an interesting thing to think about that it fits into this like commitment equation or, or whatever of how likely we might go to say, Oh, actually, I thought I had all these choices and I don't feel like that now. Whether that's accurate or not, we don't know. But as long as you feel that way, that's what matters for the, for the math to work out.

Emily: And I think ultimately, Dedeker, what you were talking about, the question that we should all think about here in terms of getting back together with someone is, are we addressing like the core issues that caused the breakup? Is it us trying to find solutions to problems that were underlying and constantly there? Or is it just because we miss each other or we feel like there's not a better option? Was it maybe circumstantial? Is that something that is now better? Is timing or distance or stress or external pressures or all of those things better now than they were back then? Or do we still have like fundamental incompatibilities that make all of this much more difficult and the relationship less likely to succeed?

Jase: From here, let's move on to some specific non-monogamy issues within this. How do we complicate this or maybe make it simpler? I don't know. We'll find out. But first, we're going to take another quick break to talk about our sponsors of this show. Thank you to them for supporting us and thank you to you for giving them a listen and checking them out using our links and promo codes in our show description if they seem interesting to you. And then of course, check out our community at Multiamory Podcast.com/join. You can read about that there. We've got some really cool community members that you can connect with, and we do monthly video processing groups together with you, and you get ad-free episodes as part of the deal.

Emily: So I want to talk about exes and non-monogamy, because sometimes in non-monogamy, being an ex means something a little different than it does in like totally monogamous situations. Because I know a lot of monogamous friends who never see or hear from their ex ever again. But when you are non-monogamous, there's often this sense that, okay, if we're all a part of one big Polycule, or just I kind of peripherally am going to be around you potentially because we're all in this community. Yeah, exactly. You may get in a situation where you are seeing your ex again. Or you might have a close friend with a shared community member that you dated once upon a time, or even, you know, you might have a chosen family member or co-parent that you see all the time in, in a very different way perhaps than if you were monogamous. Or maybe you even still have intimacy with that person consensually as well, even if you don't necessarily call yourselves partners like you once did. So. I just wanted to throw that out there because the meaning and term ex is very different often. And then there is also this pull sometimes to feel like we have to remain friendly with an ex in the non-monogamous community when maybe we don't necessarily want to.

Dedeker: Well, I think in my personal experience, I think I've been lucky in that most of my exes that like I do not want to talk to ended badly or was a bad relationship, right? Like most of those exes are not exes that are still connected to me either via PolyCule or via the same community spaces. So like, that's good. And I've also been lucky in that when I've been in those situations where I have an ex who's still connected to me, either through a daisy chain of a PolyCule or through a community event, that it has tended to be exes that I've already like reconciled with, at least become friends, and like the connection's actually been healed in that particular way. And so then I feel like actually really happy for them and happy to see them with their new partner or couple partners or whatever. So I've been lucky in that regard. I know not everybody is lucky in that regard, and it does— can get tricky really quickly if you've still got some really hot, painful feelings around an ex, and then you have to navigate going to the same play parties together or things like that. When you brought this up though, Emily, the first thing that I thought of though with this whole getting back together with an ex and non-monogamy thing is I think my experience has been now people come crawling back people be coming crawling back because there's like this perception. Yeah, like, they come to my doorstep, you know, because, because it— like, I'm openly polyamorous, and therefore I'm kind of like, I'm available.

Emily: Or at least there's this idea that, oh, you're just availability, totally available to everyone and anyone.

Dedeker: And then the other thing that overlaps with that, again, if we're being very cynical about the timing, timing of people's like first marriages, second marriages, or whatever, like It's like the timing starts to run where people are in their first marriage, but they're starting to get bored and they're like starting to talk about opening up or, or group sex, right? So it's like I've had that experience of people coming back to the yard, just being like, hey, just want to like ask you about non-monogamy because my wife and I are thinking about this. And then, and then, you know, so that's more my experience is like I do think being openly non-monogamous puts this sheen of could be available You could, you could try something again in the way that maybe if you were strictly monogamous, it'd be easier to be like, you know, maybe someone could pine for you, or you could pine for somebody, but like, oh, but they're married now, or oh, but they're monogamous now, right? So that's not possible.

Emily: Yeah, it's unrequited or something.

Jase: Sure. It also brings up the thing that I definitely experienced in my monogamous days, and I've seen monogamous people do this, where within your network of people that you know, right, maybe these are exes, maybe these are old college friends, maybe these are friends in other areas, when someone does become single again, there's, there's a little bit of a race. It's a little bit of, you gotta beat the clock because they're soon gonna not be available. This comes up for with anyone within monogamy, right? Where it's like someone that you always thought was cool, you're always a friend with, but they were with this person since as long as you've known them. They were married or they were just together, and now they're not together with them. They're available now. There's that weird dance of like, okay, I don't want to move too soon because they need time. But also, I don't want to wait too long because then someone else is going to snatch them up.

Emily: I'm gonna get snatched up.

Jase: And they're not available again. And so I think that dynamic is different. So maybe that window is smaller versus in non-monogamy, no one's window is all the way closed generally, right? Maybe it's mostly shut. Mostly. Maybe it's mostly shut because you're like, oh, it's cracked. Pretty polysaturation. But there's a— here's a crack. It's like, yeah, okay, maybe. Like, at least there's a sense that that it's not such a hard, like, okay, they're with someone, door's closed, there's no getting in here. So that's one. But the direction I thought you were going to go, Emily, was a totally different one of within non-monogamy. If we were together and then we broke up, there can sometimes be more of that feeling of we broke up because it didn't work, not we broke up because some circumstance, I wanted to be with somebody else, whatever it is that you can have in monogamy where it's like, oh, I made the wrong choice, I want to go back to that one before, versus in non-monogamy I mean, sure, there's other circumstances, but sometimes it could be like, yeah, we broke up because we, we just broke up. It just wasn't working out.

Emily: That absolutely is something that I think we should be aware of, that I think in monogamy there is always that trope of like, well, I do see someone that I'm more interested in, and so I'm gonna go over here and date them now and then leave my existing partner for that person.

Jase: Or I'm gonna break up just because I think there might be other options out there and I can't pursue them if I'm with you, so we should break up.

Emily: And that's not necessarily the case in non-monogamy, just because of the structure of we're allowed to date whomever we want. I was going to say that the kind of Relationship Escalator structure of regular monogamy is also not necessarily present in non-monogamy, and therefore a person that you dated once upon a time that looked a very specific way, you could date them again at a different time, and that relationship could look structurally completely different. So for instance, if you were more on this primary partnership, or, you know, somebody that was involved in your life in a very significant way, there's the potential that, oh, maybe they could become a comet partner if they moved away, if like things fizzled out or whatever.

Jase: Opens up more options for maybe that structure of a relationship was not right for us, but there was something here.

Emily: Yeah, so I do see— because the reason why we did this episode is because people have talked about it in our Discord community, this idea of getting back together with an ex. And while there is a lot of evidence out there that maybe this isn't the best thing to do, the best decision, I think that in a non-monogamous setting, you can maybe play with a little bit more options. You can play with this idea of like, we can de-escalate, we can change the trajectory of what this relationship was maybe we thought one day going to be, and now it can be something different if both of us are okay with that, and we can explore what something else looks like if we still are interested in being together in a romantic setting, for instance.

Jase: This reminds me of something we've talked about many times on this show when we talk about breakups and how within the non-monogamy world, there can be pressure to go from being intimate partners to breaking up and being friends right away, and that, that transition is really hard to make, especially if there's feelings involved, which there probably are. And so we usually recommend that people let that take some time, and so you don't have to rush into hanging out all the time being friends. You can give yourself a little bit of time to both heal and repair on your own And so what's funny is if people were following our advice about that, then it is going to look more like getting back together with an ex rather than just transitioning a relationship, which I feel like people within the polyamory world in general would look at, oh, we transitioned our relationship. Oh, wow, that's so wonderful. And we'd look at getting back together with an ex as, oh, I don't know about that. That seems like a dumb idea. But actually, depending on the circumstance, if it is like you said, um, kind of might be the same thing. Right, we're ending this, we're giving ourselves some space, and then we're seeing if maybe this could take a different form later on. Maybe that's not so stupid. Maybe that form is friendship. Yeah, yeah, maybe it is friendship. Yeah, or, or any number of things, like you said.

Emily: Whatever.

Jase: Any number of things.

Dedeker: Well, okay, there's something I've, I've been puzzling over as I've been thinking about my own history, my own yearnings.

Emily: I feel like you've been— you've been doing some—

Dedeker: I've been chewing a lot this episode.

Emily: Yeah, processing.

Dedeker: So, okay, one way that I heard it described to me was, don't get back together with an ex, that's like going back to the trash to eat something out of the trash, right? Don't do that. And I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. And I definitely have some past relationships where I'm like, yes, in the trash, not going back to that, that's gross, right? Where I get into trouble, I think, it's not the stuff that's in the trash, it's the stuff that's just in the back of the fridge. That's been in the back of the fridge for a long time and you don't know, is this still good?

Emily: These metaphors.

Dedeker: I'm looking at it. It looks like it could still be good. We smell it.

Jase: Smells okay.

Dedeker: I can't tell. Can you smell this? It seems like it's okay. Is it okay? Is this what it always smelled like? Is this what it always— it's like a whole thing of yogurt. I don't want to throw it out. It could be useful. You know, that's where I get into trouble. It's the people who fall into that category. And let me tell you, in real life, One time there was a package of bacon in my fridge. Bacon was not that old, and I was poor and starving, right? So I was like, I really had to evaluate these things. And I smelled the bacon and I was like, it smells fine. I looked at the bacon like, it looks fine. I'm like, okay, well, I'm going to cook it. And it's cured. Like, okay, yeah, this bacon's probably going to be fine. Made myself so sick, like poisoned myself horrifically from that bad bacon that looked fine, smelled fine. And sometimes getting back with an ex is like that, you know.

Emily: I think it can be.

Dedeker: I think it's honestly, I think especially my last rodeo with this is I felt like I'm being so careful. I took so much time, had so many conversations, so much due diligence, so much checking it out with my therapist and with this person, right? Like the bacon smelled okay.

Emily: Looked fine.

Jase: It passed all the tests. Yeah, sure, sure.

Emily: In your heart of hearts, the bacon was good to go.

Dedeker: In my heart of hearts. And yet, and yet. And yet, yeah, so that's where I think it gets tricky for me personally.

Jase: Well, and when you talk about them being in the back of the fridge versus being in the trash, I do think that speaks a little bit to that closure thing.

Dedeker: Yes, 100%. It's not in the trash, it's just in the back of the fridge. Yes.

Jase: Yeah, right. That's like Emily pointed out earlier, it's what can you do to separate how much is actually my desire to eat this back of the fridge bacon and how much is just that it's there. Someone's got to eat it, right?

Dedeker: Yes.

Jase: I can't throw it out, that'd be wasteful.

Emily: If you feel poor in your choices or your ability to have other things in the fridge.

Dedeker: Yeah, if you're feeling depleted and feel like there's no other options, right? Yeah, yeah.

Jase: Boy, this metaphor works a lot better than I expected.

Emily: It's pretty, it's pretty good actually. This episode should be called In the Back of the Fridge or In the Trash. Yeah, where does your ex belong?

Dedeker: Is it a fridge ex or a trash ex?

Jase: Maybe, okay, maybe that's our, that's our takeaway tool for this episode, is this is how do you differentiate are they a trash ex or a fridge ex. Yeah, that's the, that's the real challenge, is figuring out which of those it is.

Dedeker: But also know, if it is a fridge ex, even if you think it smells good and tastes fine, it could, it could still bite you in the ass.

Jase: But keeping in mind that within non-monogamy, or just anything being a little bit more creative and open about how you structure relationships, I do feel like that changes this equation quite a bit. If you're coming into it mindful, it's not just, I'm going back to this because it didn't feel finished, or I'm going back to this because I don't feel like I have any other options. But if it is this, no, there was nice stuff here. This was tasty bacon. I do want to have more of it. And you say, but maybe I'm going to have it in a different way, right?

Emily: In a BLT.

Jase: Yeah, or like in an omelet or something. There's any number of ways you could have it.

Emily: Bacon.

Jase: You don't eat any of those things. Yeah. But, but anyway, what I'm getting at is thinking about it of the getting back together with an ex and the churning, the on-again, off-again. It seems like there's a lot of evidence to suggest that that's not a healthy way to do a relationship. And if that's the cycle you're in, it's probably best to actually just put that in the trash and then take out the trash so it's not sitting there for you to rifle through. But if it is something like, yeah, maybe we can try structuring this differently, maybe we can build a different type of relationship together, that that could be valid as long as you're doing it because you're actually interested in that relationship and not just because you want that closure or just feeling like, I don't have other options.

Emily: I did want to hit you all with some actionable takeaways here. If you are thinking about getting back together with an ex, do these things first. Just really try to like clear your mind, sit down, maybe light a candle, maybe have a glass of wine. And get out your journal and first run the Zeigarnik check. So in your journal, first look up how to spell Zeigarnik. Zeigarnik. It's pretty much the way that you think it would be spelled.

Jase: I would not guess it's spelled like this.

Emily: I'm looking at it. I don't know. Anyways, you don't have to write that out. Just write down the answer to this question, which is try to write a complete ending to the relationship in your own words. And see if your desire to reconnect goes down after you've given the relationship an ending. If it didn't have an ending, a really specific one that you can point to, like, that's the reason why we broke up. If you still have some questions around that, write out that ending and see how you feel. See, like, huh, okay, if this were a reality, would I want to still get back together with this person, or do I feel okay with maybe letting that one slide right into the trash? Also, write down 3 concrete things that are different now about your relationship. Maybe not like the feelings that you have, but try to think about circumstances or patterns or personal growth, things that maybe, you know, if you've been speaking to them or, you know, rekindling things a little bit, that you can tell like, okay, this person has changed in these ways. I've changed in these other ways. We now live 30 minutes apart instead of 2.5 hours, whatever it might be. Write down 3 things that are different that would make this relationship better.

Jase: I like that focus on them being concrete, not, oh, but it'll be different because we'll act different.

Emily: Yeah, real things. Real things. Not abstract ones. Real ones. It's normal for us, for our brains to kind of think about all the good things when something is not resolved. So try to make a list of all of the real things about this relationship that didn't really work the first time, and maybe make a list also of the things that did and compare those two lists. See, like, huh, these are the reasons why maybe not being with this person was actually a good idea. And all of the other things that you're excited about or maybe that you enjoyed about the relationship. See if they still resonate with you now.

Jase: And I think that that list might seem hard to make at first, but once you get going, I think it'll start to flow of like, no, okay, it is coming back to me now. The things that were not as great, and maybe those are things that are fine or maybe they're not. But I do think getting, getting those out, getting them onto paper is helpful because it's easy to forget.

Emily: Yes, absolutely. I think it's also really important if you are reaching out to an ex to get back together with them to have a what would be different conversation with them before you get back together. Like, what actually would change about our relationship if we're looking back at like what went wrong? How would we make those things better? And have that conversation because I think it will be a better predictor than anything of like, is this actually going to stick or not? And then finally, for like that, all you non-monogamous people out there, think about maybe what role this person will play in your life and if it's going to be different or not than what they once were to you. And you know, maybe that's better, maybe that's less dysfunctional. For instance, maybe if you only see this person once every couple of months or once every quarter, that is actually way better for your relationship than seeing them on a weekly basis. So the two of you can kind of figure out together, how is it that you want to reconnect and how is it that you actually want to be in each other's lives? Because you don't have this like prescribed, it has to look one certain way. It can be whatever way you both want it to be.

Jase: So it's kind of like that what would be different conversation, but with even more options. It's not just how would we behave different, but no, like actually what would be different? What stuff do we want to remove or add or things like that? Like really get creative. I like that.

Emily: Use the smorgasbord maybe. And if you did it in the past also, it might be interesting to see like, okay, these things that we used to be okay with, maybe we're going to put them on the I do not want list. And some of these other things we may say, yeah, I still want to include that in our relationship. Like. So the world is your oyster. Really see, like, why do I want to get back together with this person? Is my reasoning real? And does it make sense for where I am and where they are at this point in both of our lives? Alrighty, we have a question of the week for all of you out there that's going to be on our Instagram stories, and it is: have you gotten back together with an ex? How did it go? What changed? What didn't change? How long did it last? And the best place to share your thoughts with other listeners is in the episode discussion channel in our Discord server, or you can post in our private Facebook group. You can get access to these groups and join our exclusive community by going to Multiamory.com/join. In addition, you can share with us publicly on Instagram @Multiamory_Podcast.

Emily: Multiamory is created and produced by Jase Lindgren, Dedeker Winston, and me, Emily Matlack. Our production assistant is Carson Collins. Our theme song is "Forms I Know I Did" by Josh and Anand from the Fractal Cave EP. The full transcript is available on this episode's page on Multiamory.com.