There can be few pastimes more compelling than to ruminate on an ex.
How extraordinary they were, what beauty they had, what happiness it would bring to have them back.
Thoughts of them can intrude on new relationships.
They follow us into workplace meetings.
They cause us to cry at certain moments in films.
They come between us and the beautiful places we've traveled hours to see.
There might be one rather counterintuitive way of dealing with the trouble of exes: to take very seriously the one thought that we have, until now, probably been resisting, that we could, in fact, get them back.
This is likely to sound, at first blush, entirely implausible.
They said they were done.
There have been months of silence.
