You’re Not Still Obsessed With Your Ex, You’re Just Bored

You know when you’re bored, you instantly feel the need to incessantly eat? Obsessing with your ex is kinda like this, but worse.

An ex is like pasta with really good marinara. You try to push it away when you’re full, but it’s just there, staring at you — tempting you in your state of nothingness. When you don’t have anything to fill that boredom, the craving for things you don’t really need arises — like a need to obsess over your ex.

By Candice Jalili/ Elite Daily

It’s 9:09 am Monday morning. You don’t have a whole lot of work to do yet, and your friends aren’t responding to your texts. So now, you’re just sort of sitting there aimlessly, pretending to read emails as your brain defaults to the same topic it always defaults to: him.

And no, I’m not talking about the good Lord, Him. I’m talking about your ex, the one you broke up with months ago. The one you logically know wasn’t right for you. The one who CHEATED on you. The one who wasn’t even that hot. The one whom your friends hated. The one whom you never even liked that much in the first place. Yeah, that him.

You wonder what he’s doing right now. Does he think of you as much as you think of him? Has he hooked up with anyone else? Well, there was that one girl in his Instagram the other day, but then there was the other girl in his Snap story.

Does he like any of them? Or maybe, he’s just posting them to make you jealous. Will he ever like anyone as much as he liked you? Then, you see he watched your Snapchat story. Your heart skips a beat. That’s a sign, right? Maybe you should just text him and see what he’s up to real quick. Ugh, but your friends would kill you.

The funniest thing about it all is, you know you’re over him. You were over him the minute he cheated on you, the minute you decided you were done playing this weird back-and-forth and walked away for good. Or maybe, he broke up with you and shattered your heart so badly that you could never look at him the same way again.

Either way, you now see him for his true colors.

You don’t hold him on that pedestal you used to hold him on. Sure, maybe you do for the first two minutes of your daydream, but then you start remembering the other stuff.

It starts off with you remembering the cute things he did when you first met: when he snuggled you after your first night together and it wasn’t even repulsive, when he bought you tickets to go see your favorite band live and when you guys went on a first date that ended up lasting hours because you just couldn’t stop talking. At first, that mushy happy stuff floods your mind.

And those were the thoughts that kept you from fully breaking things off with him for so long. His name would float into your head, and suddenly, you’d be flooded with all of these good memories.

Your friends would talk smack about him, and you’d find yourself defending him. Well, not really him, but that guy you were dating in the beginning. You were protective over that guy. He sat on a pedestal in your heart that was nearly impossible to knock down.

But now, something different is starting to happen. His name pops up, and you still get flooded with all of those warm, happy memories. But then, you fast-forward 30 seconds, and you start remembering the bad stuff.

You remember when he became distant. You remember when snuggling with him stopped feeling cozy and started feeling awkward. You remember when you started getting suspicious of other girls. You remember when he bailed on you for what had to be the millionth time. You remember all of the promises he made and never kept. You remember when he turned you into the sort of girl you swore you’d never be.

And you try to think back to the good stuff, only to realize the bad outweighs it.

You know the bad outweighs the good, you know you were right to move on from him and you know he’s really not this fantastic guy you made him out to be in your head. Simply put, you’re over him.

So WHY are you still sitting here at what is now probably 9:20 am, drafting and deleting texts to him after a deep Instagram stalk of whomever that girl was in his Instagram from two weeks ago?

I’ll tell you why: It’s because you’re bored. Yes, that’s right. You’re bored. That’s all there is to it. You are thinking about your ex because you literally have nothing and nobody better to occupy your mind with. You miss the excitement of having just the sight of someone’s name on your phone screen send your heart into overdrive. And he’s just your placeholder until you find someone who can give you that thrill again.

Let me be clear: I’m not saying your happiness depends on having a guy in your life. No, you can be perfectly happy and stable and functional and just miss the excitement that comes along with having someone in your life.

The fact of the matter is, you’re a sexual being, and every once in a while — no matter how happy and stable and functional you are — you’re going to get bored and start thinking about guys. He just so happens to be the most recent one of significance. So, that’s who your brain is going to default to.

So, the next time you find yourself spiraling and wondering why you’re such a total pathetic loser who can’t seem to get over this guy you really don’t think you even liked that much in the first place, just remember it’s really not a big deal.

You’re not unfulfilled, you don’t need a guy to make you happy and most of all, you’re not still obsessed with him. You’re just bored, and when it comes to guys, he’s the person your brain is used to thinking about.