Why many women get back with their exes

It is not yet half way into January – which has 40 days and 40 nights – but already, in my various circles, I have noticed something in 2020.

While many women are resourceful, like knowing how to make a shilling and a sock stretch, pardon the pun, how to multiply whatever is in the pan (whether fish or getting school fees); when it comes to the honey bunnies, it’s a wash. Many women, if push comes to shove, go back to their ex-relationships -- or at least are limited in their imagination.

I know this gorgeous Cushite chick called Fatma who got married four years ago to a loaded Somali businessman called Ibrahim (as a second wife). But this December, with the man in Iran (or somewhere), she’s back to messing with my cousin, whom she dated from 2010 and dumped in 2015, to marry Ibra.

Comfort Zone: This is why many women say an ex is easy, he’s comfortable to be back to.

But that’s like squeezing your new figure into an old faded dress. Why not be like a guy? Taste the Discomfort Zone. Date the opposite of your Ex. You may be surprised, or even delighted, at deviating from ‘type.’

New you: Many men make this mistake too, using ‘New You’ to woo the ones that got away.

New job, car, career, and you find a fellow chasing the hot estate/village girl who rejected ‘em in 2009.

This is how our ‘winter bunnies’ return from USA, after a decade and marry proud Waitherera, yet they had a shot with some Californian beau; but ‘ex’ fixation is like a witchcraft hex of mind.

Loneliness: You may not have liked your relationship, but you can’t stand being ‘just by myself’ either. There is nothing like a good month, year or even decade alone, until you can finally figure out who you are, and who you want.

Getting back at the ex: Believe it or not, in my years here on the surface of this planet, I have seen people, often women, who want to get back an ‘ex’ who messed them/abandoned them, just so they can ‘win’ by being the ones to dump them/cheat on them. Unless you are in college or a gun-slinging cowboy at high noon, that behaviour is as churlish as it is childish.

I’ll fix you: My daughter has a series of broken bikes (from her third, fifth and seventh year) that we both know can never be repaired, not even by that billionaire guy who founded Tesla. Your ‘ex’ is an insatiable womaniser or irredeemable alcoholic or gambling addict – why you dumped him – but now you think you can ‘go back in’ and fix him?

Social media: Out of the clear blue skies of the decade that has just passed, came these things called Facebook and WhatsApp that gave a chance to two humans, forever lost in the mists of 1995, to reminisce and re-connect. This is how technology, Tinder too, brings trouble, through the remembered tenders.

Biz & Kids: Sell the business, and share child custody like civilised human beings. The video of the 9-year-old lass clinging to her Dad’s neck like her life depended on it, which it did, was heartbreaking to say the least, because some Kitui court had awarded custody of her to a mother she ain’t seen since age 1.

Possessiveness: This is one of the worst reason to hang onto an ‘ex,’ or keep going back to them.

So that no-one else is with them! If you all are still hang up on each other, then put a ring on it, and get trapped in marriage like normal human beings. Locust wewe!

No better pastures: Now this is just plain sad. You broke up yonks ago, you ran all over the place, and came to the realisation that either he was the best you ever had/ none better out there.

Sentimentality: The year is 2020, but there is a Time Capsule back to 2010, when your career seemed exciting, or to 2000, when you were in that last year of college, or 1990, when you were in Standard 8, and realised too late your crush on Rex. It’s called an ‘ex’ (or Rex), which is a reduction ad absurdum coz Time goes forward. Unless said ‘Rex’ is rara avis (a rare bird), those entire relationships are best summed up with the song-line: ‘the regrets, are useless, coz we can’t turn back time/ so I’ll be forgetting you, but not the Time ...’

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