Truth be told, I don't know anyone, aside from one friend who married their high school sweetheart, who doesn't suffer from the dreaded symptoms of Syndrome Ex.
There's the waking up in a sweat after having a nightmare (which involved the two of you getting back together); the shaking and tensing up whenever you pass the old favourite haunt where the two of you hung out, and the incessant driving by their place in the hope of not catching them ensconced in a passionate kiss someone else (otherwise known as stalking). After all, it's only been a mere two/five/ten years since you broke up.
Yet heed a word of advice: They say that after a break-up you should never return to the scene of the crime. As 19th century writer Charles Caleb Colton famously put it: "Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never."
Yet these days, with people racking up more exes on their belts than skeletons (and shoes) in Paris Hilton's closet, it seems these old-fangled ex-rules might no longer apply.
Why? For a start we're marrying later than ever before (according to the ABS, the median age for men to marry is now 32 and for women it's 30), serial monogamy is a growing trend and one-night stands no longer shrug-worthy. Indeed if we shunned all our exes, would there be anyone left for us to hang out with?
The problem is that even if we tried deleting them from our mental inboxes, it's almost an impossible task. Even if they snored, made passes at our friends, or were a complete and utter nutcase, somehow they still manage to linger on (and on and on) in our psyches.
Plus what if you and your ex are in the same social circle? What if they work in the same building as you? Or worse - what if they're now dating one of your mates? Is it ever possible to truly let go?
My friend just declared to me he's no longer working at the bar he's been at for the last couple of years because the ex of his ex now works there too. (Sad but true.)
Yet another male friend of mine believes he's found the solution to curing the syndrome. "If you can't stop thinking about them and they're thinking about you, then why not just go back to them? I thought to myself, the only way I'm going to get over this is either move states, or move back in together. So my ex and I talked through our problems, set up some new rules and boundaries and realised that yes, we do have problems, but if we're missing each other so badly, then we should be able to sort them out without too much fuss."
Which brings us to sex with the ex. Nikki Gemmell, author of Pleasure (HarperCollins) dubs it as "Graveyard Sex" because by her reckoning, it's the type of sex that should be avoided at all costs.
Yet even Gemmell admits she once succumbed to the temptation, describing her bed-with-the-ex experience as melancholy, squalid and ghost-burdened. (Sound familiar?)
Maybe the idea of moving state to get rid of the Syndrome Ex isn't such a bad idea after all ...
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