Malia Kuo
Welcome back to Sex on the WKND! We’re an anonymous YDN column dedicated to answering your burning questions about sex, love and anything in between. Last year, we had one writer, but now we are a collective of students, each with our own unique sexual and romantic experiences. We’ve had straight sex, queer sex and long, long periods without sex. We’ve been in long-term relationships, we’ve walked twenty minutes to avoid former hookups on Cross Campus and we’ve done the whole FroCo-group-cest thing. We may be different this year, but we’re still sex-positive, we’re still anti-capitalist, and we sure as hell still support the Green New Deal.
Obsessing over sex is a Yale tradition as old as the Oldest College Daily itself. Whether you’re fucking your roommate, still yearning for your first kiss, or dealing with an unsettling skin rash, Sex on the WKND is here for you. Nothing is too personal or silly. Ask us anything 😉
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Dear Sex on the WKND,
My ex-boyfriend still wears my homemade gifts around campus. How am I supposed to go about my life when any walk to class could come with a glaring reminder of our relationship and breakup?
Sincerely,
Unhappy ex
This summer I lived among ghosts. I shared a century-old home with other college students who reported all sorts of paranormal experiences, from mysterious patches of cold air to strange sounds in the night. I don’t consider myself superstitious, but there were times where even I admitted to experiencing an eerie feeling of being watched. I thought I had left behind the preternatural as I made my way back to New Haven, but I found that returning to a fully-populated campus meant brushes with a different kind of specter: the ghosts of lovers past.
When I think about the scariest parts of college, I would put the constant threat of bumping into a past partner or fling near the top of the list, just below facing the wrath of Dr. G in Gen Chem Lab. “Out of sight, out of mind” is a noble mantra, but blocking a number and unfollowing on social media only goes so far when you share a campus. Yalies take all sorts of preventative measures in the name of limiting post-breakup chance meetings: no suite-cest or dating friends or hooking up with someone in your college. I’ve broken all of these cardinal rules, which honestly indicates a short-sightedness that should disqualify me from giving any sort of relationship advice. But no matter how careful you are, living in the same square mile as an ex means that unexpected encounters are almost guaranteed.
Every relationship is different, and so is every breakup. Some exes will cross the street to avoid eye contact, while others can manage a friendly hello in line at Commons — we’ll leave the age-old question “Can exes be friends?” for another day. While what’s healthy or comfortable looks different for everyone, there’s one universal hardship that comes with navigating the new terms of an ended relationship: you have to do it on your own. Relationships themselves are exercises in collaboration, a set of dynamics and norms that partners create together in constant conversation. But a breakup necessarily ends this partnership, and each person is left to define their own rules of engagement. Even in the most mutual of uncouplings, exes might have totally different ideas of how to proceed, paving the way for plenty of tense or awkward moments.
Deciding what to do with physical reminders of a relationship is one of the hundreds of little choices that need to be made after a breakup, and it sounds like you and your ex have elected to go about it differently. I get why you feel a little weird about your exes choice to continue using your gifts, especially because they’re homemade. If the gift was practical or generic, it might be more economic or sustainable to keep it in use. I have a friend who’s kept an air fryer she got from a past anniversary because, as she says, a breakup wouldn’t come between her and convenient, low-calorie fried treats. But your homemade gifts are not air fryers, and — no offense — I doubt your hand-knit scarf or whatever could be considered half as useful as an all-in-one countertop gadget that can cook Trader Joe’s Mandarin Orange Chicken in 12 minutes plus pre-heating. More importantly, your gifts carried much more sentimental meaning than the fastest growing kitchen appliance in America, which can prepare anything from golden-brown mozzarella sticks to perfectly crisp cauliflower nuggets.
You didn’t mention what kind of terms you and your ex are on, but if seeing him wear these gifts really bothers you, it might be worth bringing it up with him. Just because a breakup means less communication doesn’t mean you’re not entitled to mention something that’s making you feel uncomfortable or hurt.
But if you’re like me, you’re probably less concerned about your ex’s choice itself than you are about what glimpses it may give into his mental state. It’s easy to obsess over the possible meaning of every little action after a breakup, zooming in on Instagram posts and analyzing text message punctuation with the precision of a Comp Lit major. You might be thinking he’s hanging on to these items because he’s not ready to let go of the relationship, or that it’s evidence he’s moved on Joshua Bassett-style to the point where these gifts don’t mean anything at all.
The hard truth is that whatever this choice might say about how he’s processing the breakup — if it even says anything at all — is none of your business. One of the universally acknowledged hardships of breakups is that you must go through it without the support of the one you considered your person. Even for exes who stay in touch, talking about in-the-moment individual experiences of heartbreak is usually off-limits, and for good reason. Keeping that emotional distance is kind of the point of breaking up. Navigating your own way from heartbreak to healing is a challenging, vital first step in the process of disentangling your life from another’s.
Bumping into exes on this claustrophobic campus is usually just awkward, but in the early days of a breakup it can also really hurt. Greeting someone you once loved with the same quiet wave you’d give a near-stranger from section is a reminder that you no longer get to know each other deeply, not in the way you once did. Maybe it’s just the season, but I’d say that’s a pretty spooky feeling. Acknowledging this is a first step in growing comfortable with the way your life and that of your ex have diverged. This takes time — there’s a reason it’s called “going through” a breakup — but you might find that establishing these emotional boundaries will allow you to continue to exist in one another’s lives on new terms. After all, haunting is better left to ghosts.
