The year was 2003 and the air was buzzing with a new movie to be released titled “how to lose a guy in 10 days.” A young, fresh out of school girl found the whole concept very intriguing and googled the title so she could read reviews. And what she found instead were self-help sites titled “how to win your ex back in 10 days” or “step by step guide to get him crawling back to you.” Now, she had no illusions about herself or her looks… or her weight; she knew that finding a boyfriend for her is going to take years, (if not decades) and then maybe a few weeks later he would become her ex. So she ignored the sites and closed the tab dejected that she hadn’t found the review.
5 years later…
After being with a guy for a few months and then being dumped rather unceremoniously she had no intentions of even looking at his dumb face again, let alone to try winning him back. However, some things are unexplainable and somehow her thoughts kept going back to the self help sites she had opened years ago. She decided there was no harm in checking them out just for fun and she did. And oh my god!!
Conflicting views, drastically regressive and cheaply manipulative mind games were out there for grabs. “Ignore him till he calls you”, “try to remain as happy as you can and make sure he knows it” , “start seeing other men.” Yeah right. If that was that easy I don’t think there would have been any poets in the world. (Except for wordsworth; I guess, he wrote a poem on daffodils for crying out loud and to this date I think it is one of the most over rated poems I ever read. I would have gladly exchanged roshesh’s poems instead in my textbooks. Anywho… I don’t want to be beaten to death by any of his fans so continuing with the plot) the point is, those were the theories pelted at heartbroken girls all over the world.
Just for the heck of it, she checked the male counterpart of that self help guide – “How to get HER crawling back to you.” Wonderful advice, not at all manipulative and I-did-not-see-this-coming methods were listed for the heartbroken guys: “Ignore her till she calls you”, “try to remain as happy as you can and make sure she knows it” , “start seeing other women.” Hmm… wonder what if both the parties want to get their ex back, neither of them will call each other going by these guidelines and both of them will see how the other is so damn happy without them and end up thinking that the other person doesn’t care. Wow!
And after each of these self help guidelines were the oh-so-astonishing words, for the full fledged guide, send in a check of 5 dollars (see? So cheap) and get a book free. Money back, no questions asked if the formula doesn’t work. I have no idea how many actually get suckered into the whole fiasco.
What do I think? I think ex is ex for a reason - whether it is an ex boyfriend/girlfriend or just a really good friend. If things have gone to the brink so much that either one of you doesn’t want to even look at the other, or apologizing isn’t helping, then it’s better to leave things the way they are. You never know when you would run back into them, and then get chatting again, all differences, heartache forgotten to find a newfound friendship within yourselves.
As for the girl, she got to watch that movie 9 years after it’s release. She enjoyed it. With her friends. And when she was watching love blossom between the leads, she wasn’t even thinking of her ex.
