Love-back: is it ever a good idea to get back together with your ex?

You are sitting at home alone one night when your phone buzzes. It’s a WhatsApp message. “Hi,” is all there is to it but it’s from an ex you haven’t heard from in a while. Although confused, you are smiling and suddenly asking yourself, “Why did we even break up?”

Love-back happens when you rekindle a relationship with an ex and a few of our local celebs have been stung by Cupid’s redirected arrows.

AKA and DJ Zinhle, for example, have been in the news lately with speculation about whether they are getting back together.

Khanyi Mbau and Tebogo Lerole broke up earlier this year but their recent social media posts suggest love-back could be on the cards.

But before you are tempted to poke your ex on Facebook, you might want to take a moment to consider whether love-back is a good idea. According to Paula Quinsee, a relationship expert and author of Embracing Conflict, a break-up is feedback that something wasn’t working in the relationship.

Quinsee says if you do want to rekindle an old flame, you need to understand why because the break-up will have had an emotional impact on both parties.

Are you getting back together “because you both genuinely want to work on the relationship to resolve past issues and move forward together” or is it because “you are feeling lonely and going back to the familiar is better than being alone”?

Quinsee adds: “Other times it’s because we did not get the closure we needed in order to move on.”

She does say if both parties have matured in the time spent apart, and are able to forgive each other, it’s possible to move forward together. She cautions that the relationship could fail again if the couple has not learnt from the initial break-up.

Quinsee believes some damage might be irreversible, for example, if one or both partners have cheated. She also warns against rekindling abusive relationships because “your personal safety and wellbeing comes first”.

“Every relationship has ups and downs – it’s how you approach the situation and the manner in which you resolve the issues in order to move forward together that will determine the success of your relationship,” she says.

So, if you insist on getting love back, make sure you have thought carefully about why you want to rekindle that relationship. Because while love-back might be enticing while you are lonely, if you don’t fix the cracks that led to the break-up, you are just setting yourself up to relive the pain and go back to screaming the words to Adele songs at the top of your lungs.