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wWhen people ask me and my boyfriend Lewis how we met, I take a deep breath and hope he’ll open up the conversation. While most couples may have a sweet encounter, our story is not so simple. In fact, 2021 marked the thousandth time we had a random relationship, breaking up and then circling back after a mutual friend introduced us. In our early twenties we were both consistently reckless, somewhat selfish, and exceptionally immature. But by the age of 29 it started working. In March 2025, we finally became a proper couple.
So, it really was the right person, wrong time – until it wasn’t.
This is the type of relationship people usually warn you about. “It should be easy,” my (single) mother has told me hundreds of times. Love“If you’re confused, he doesn’t like you,” women on TikTok scream, preaching against the ambiguity of label-free dating, aka terrible situation vehicleOr simply simply: “If he’s an ex, he’s an ex for a reason”,
As yet, studies have shown More than one-third of cohabiting couples and one-fifth of married couples have already broken up.
Even in most rom-coms, they have to win each other over. From Netflix’s David Nicholls adaptation one dayFor the BBC’s Sally Rooney adaptation normal people, Young people are becoming more accustomed to romance more frequently than ever before – and, in the debris of modern dating, it has become increasingly common off-screen too.
Psychotherapist Dr. Nicole Gehl says, “When both people have reflected on their role and their responsibility in the breakup, if they have learned from it and developed more emotional or communication skills, things may have turned out differently.” She adds, “The positive thing is that you’re not starting from scratch – but you have to recognize that you’re coming together as different people.” “The question is not ‘can this work’ but ‘have we both grown and changed enough to do something different instead of repeating the same old patterns… Self-awareness is everything.”
37-year-old Zoe first met her boyfriend Joe 10 years ago. They went on fun nights out with his friends, and she felt she could totally be around him – but who was not like the “problematic musician” she was attracted to at the time. “I had a four-year relationship that broke up a year ago,” she says. “It turned me into a massive commitment-phobe.” They dated for a year, but when Jo started planning for them to go on vacations together, she called it off. “I panicked, it was too much,” she says.
In the years that followed, Joe and Zoe remained in touch by sporadic text messages. Then in 2023 – eight years after they first dated – they rekindled their romance over cocktails. “I fell out of love with dating. No one made any effort,” Zoe reflects. “But he really did. Two weeks later, he kept saying ‘I love you’ by mistake,” she laughs. “I just realized that I couldn’t get along well with anyone else, but I’m with her the same way I am with my best friend.” Then, quite simply, they fell in love. “That’s it,” Zoe says of the sudden but seismic shift. The couple is now expecting their first child.
“At first, I was very focused on career and he seemed a little lost. He was nowhere near as confident as he is now,” says Zoe. “Joe is really, really kind and so patient with me and I didn’t prioritize those qualities when I was that age when we first dated. I was a cliché: fascinated by someone who plays the blues, or falling for good-looking people in public; the outgoing, life-and-party kind of soul. I thought anxiety-filled relationships meant I cared more. Joe showed me I was wrong. But we were both Needed time to grow up. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have worked.”
Dr. Gehl warns that, although you need to address old issues in a relationship when they rekindle them, it’s important not to dwell on them. “There needs to be real accountability, but also an appreciation that you’re building something new,” she says. “It helps if people are getting back together because the time apart has given them clarity – not because they’re afraid of being alone. A lot of people get back into relationships because it’s scary. You really need to reconnect. Then it’s worth a try. So, don’t forget about what happened but you need to be able to forgive. is required.”
But there are two sides to this coin – it can undoubtedly be disastrous. While some second-chance couples become successful, others are stuck on the third, fourth, fifth chance; The Relationship Cycle, discovered by Professor Cale Monk of the University of Missouri lasting negative effects on mental health Of those involved.
Now on TikTok, it’s also trending to track your on-again, off-again relationship statistics and share them with the world. Some track over the course of up to five years. “I’m 39 and I’ve done this for 11 years,” one user warned a young poster in the comments. “Please, stay as long as you can. I wasted so much of my life and now I’m old and alone.” Another person shares: “I have completed 23 years,” she says. “It’s like a prison sentence.”
“It can be very toxic,” says relationship therapist Simone Boas, of the intense highs and turbulent lows of an incompatible relationship that many of us actively seek out. “It’s more interesting, it keeps you active,” she says, adding that there’s also a chemical element involved. “You get that dopamine hit. That oxytocin. And if you’re stuck in that kind of cycle, it becomes a pattern that you’re familiar with and you look forward to it. If you’re not getting it, you might get a little bored. So, then you’ll probably create drama almost without realizing it. It can be completely subconscious.”
Bose says the best way to break this vicious cycle is for people to first admit that they have a problem with being attracted to drama – and then work on figuring out where this inclination comes from. If your child’s parents were inconsistent, this may be part of the problem. But to encourage their patients to choose someone stable over the passion and drama of an inconsistent partner, relationship therapists have a question similar to the one asked in the TikTok comments. “Imagine what it will be like 10 years from now,” she says. “Is that what you want?”
For Bose, the big decision of whether to stick with an old flame or turn to it boils down to a few key smaller decisions: “Do you feel your values are being met? Are you communicating well? Are your needs being met?” she asks. When Zoey and Joe reconnect in 2023, they are delighted to learn that the answers to all those questions were “yes.” Her commitment-phobia was cured, and her sense of self was affirmed. “Sometimes you can [re]Meet people eight years later and they haven’t done any work,” says Bose. ”But other people can grow up, go through life as they get older, become more adults – just through survival.”
I met Lewis after a boozy party at 2am on a Friday night in 2021, after we’d both had enough drinks to sober up a large horse – and I had work in the morning. Four years later, we still have a tendency to stay at a party too long; But we have grown together in other important ways. Has the humor and fun in the relationship stopped? I hope so.