We all know them, the couple that breaks up, gets back together only to break up and get back together again...over and over again. I think it's ridiculous, probably for the same reasons as why I don't remain friends with ex's (there was only one exception, it was years ago and even that friendship has now faded into time). I am a firm believer in the "they are my ex's for a reason" rule. FOCUS: Tell us your opinion or even better tell a story about witnessing the Hot and Cold Couple interact at their best and/or worst. Alt. FOCUS: If you want to touch on the friends with ex's thing I guess go for it although I believe it's been done more than once.
One of my best male friends and best female friends are married and they're horrible to each other. They've cheated on each other, scream at each other in public, and just shitty to one another. One time in particular, he was too sick to take her on a date for Valentines Day., so she poured soap into his betta fish's bowl. Julius the fish didn't make it. On another occasion she made a cake for her mom and while she was at work, he whipped out his dick and plopped it in the cake so there was clear imprint of his penis on it. But hey they got married to fix everything so I'm sure they're fine now.
Yeah, that's kind of been me for the last, oh, two years of my life. Constant, constant, constant fighting about anything and everything, ranging from "why didn't you post those pictures of us on facebook?" to "do the women you work with know that you have a girlfriend?" to "WHY CAN'T YOU FOCUS ON HOW HURT I AM?" to whatever the fuck else she could make up to stir up some shit. Every time we patch it up, there are promises about how it will be different this time and no I don't want to bring up old fights, only to have her bring up an old fight within a day or so, and then get upset at me for saying she shouldn't have done that. I'm hoping this time it sticks and we don't get back together. If you're asking why it's been like this, it's a combination of things. 1. She's far too good-looking for my own good. 2. On a surface level, we do have some compatibilities that made a relationship seem feasible - similar interests, neither of us want kids, etc. 3. I live in a town of maybe 20,000 people, 80% of which are male, and a 2 hour drive from the nearest thing you could respectably call a city. The odds of being able to so much as find a rebound are slim to none, so after a few months of loneliness and sexual frustration, all those fights you used to have really do lose their importance. I'm not saying I'm proud of myself, I'm just saying what's happened.
I hate the hot and cold couple. It is cyclical and it is nasty. I have only ever really known one instance of this, and the female in the relationship is a chick I work with. Her dude is a waste of space and she breaks up with him once or twice a year as a power move to get him to do something she wants. From what I can tell, she falls really hard into the sub role and whoever she is with calls ALL the shots, so she doesn't know how to have a healthy adult relationship, compromises and discussions included in that. Her "boyfriend" (awesome term because this fucker is a real manchild) has been unemployed for the entirety of their on again off again 5 year relationshit. This summer, he was "staying over" at her place while she struggled to make rent. She was eventually evicted because it's weird, but one waitress can't seem to make ends meet when she is supporting herself, her 10 year old child, and her 25 year old man child. She had the most expensive cable package so that he could watch sports while she was at work. He sent her to walk to the gas station on the corner to pick him up a sprite (she doesn't have a car and his is usually broken) around midnight one night after she came home from a long ass double. There, she was witness to an armed robbery. He constantly belittles her, comments on her weight (he is overweight too), and is generally a misogynistic pig. Fuck him. I feel like the only way their relationship will really completely end will be when he dies in a car accident from the brakes he incorrectly changed, because he doesn't know how to do anything right except kill himself. As much as I hate this slob that she wants to marry and have a baby with (yes, this is real life), she does this shit to herself. Quit playing the victim babydoll and wake the hell up. You are creating your own misery.
Hot and cold couples are weird to me, mainly cause I've never been a part of one. I only have one "ex" that I even have hooked up with after breaking up, and that was a unique situation almost 9 months later. For me, the only way to mentally process and deal with the breakup is to just disassociate myself from the feelings. I have exes who are very attractive that I was completely into at the time who I don't even find sexually desirable anymore past a cursory level due to the mindset. I guess its a good and bad thing. I have no problem with hot and cold couples as a matter of principle; however, when you have a a friend in one, and they consistently bitch about their bf/gf while engaged in that merry-go-round, its fucking infuriating. Alt-Focus: I'm good to very good friends with 3 of my exes. One is relatively new, the other are from relationships that ended 6-8 years ago. The key component to all of them is time. All were situations where we knew similar people and had interactions with each other, and after 3-6 months of being broken up/fighting/awkwardness, the things that made us compatible for a time in a relationship, allowed us to become good friends. Once you have an ex that you've moved on enough as friends to discuss their new relationships and the like, thats a great friend to have cause they are a fantastic sounding board, knowing what they know from the past.
I don't know if Ive ever known anyone that has had a serious on again off again relationship with their exes to the extend of this thread's focus. My old roommate and his girl were in a seriously toxic relationship, the worst Ive been privy to at least. They only broke up and got back together once before their break up for good. They were more hot than cold when they were together which lead to a lot of awkward outings with them. It was a messed up relationship and he claims, and I believe him 100%, that she'd still fuck him if he asked even though she is now married with two kids. One of my other college friends was the type who had a long term relationship with his high school girlfriend broke up with his girl probably 5 times or so from the time I met him until they got married. The number one reason so that he could fuck another girl he had his eye on at work. Same scenario every time, new girl would start at work, he'd start bitching at his girlfriend and stir shit until she'd move back with her parents, he'd fuck the new girl for a month, get tired of it, and then make up with his girlfriend. Kind of shitty that she'd put up with it as she knew what he was doing. It was his way of saying he never cheated on her. Im not sure if he got it all out of his system but I don't think he'd be the type to fuck around on his wife now that they are married. She obviously has trust issues with him so I still get the warnings from him not to mention that we talked/hung out with girls when we do hang out.
Focus: I've known a few people in these kinds of relationships. I was always amazed at the ability to fight THAT MUCH and yet somehow still want to be together. One guy put up with it because his previous girlfriend was literally in a mental institution so he thought crazy behavior was just how girls acted in relationships so having his current one flip out for no reason wasn't a blip on the radar. After they broke up she dated a new guy. They fought for about eight years straight and then magically stopped, got married, and are happy together somehow. Alt-Focus: I've mentioned before that I'm generally on good terms with exes, sleep with some from time to time. A couple have definitely faded away but I'm hard pressed to think of any that hate my guts or anything similar. The key, as mentioned above, has been a certain amount of time and breathing room before talking again.
I had a friend who dated this rather plain chick for a year that started fights all the time with him. They were long distance and she definitely bitched at him late in their relationship that he didn't put up the Hawaii trip pictures on Facebook fast enough for her liking. Over the course of a year, they went on 8 "breaks" that lasted anywhere from an hour to a week. He was a bitch and should have broke-up with her sooner. He didn't break-up with her until she actually had the chance to move out there and it all hit him after a year. They ended up hanging out again over the Christmas holidays and banging it out a few times, but thank god they didn't get back together. I haven't had many long relationships to keep exes in the picture. One relationship I had in college for 6 months, I tried to keep in touch with via gchat, lasted awhile then fell off. Other chicks I've just cut ties with because it just wasn't going to work for whatever reason.
Y'all are talking to someone who's been divorced twice because she can't tolerate constant arguing. I don't know any back and forth couples because - like I said - I don't tolerate that personality type in my life. And, I told The Husband wayyyyyyyyy before we got married - if it gets to a point we can't stand each other, we need to talk about it and determine whether we want to work to save it. Life's too short to be fucking miserable, love happens at any age, and I'd rather walk away with nothing and restart than sit in the same place contemplating how much I hate my existence. Fuck that noise.
My best friend and her fiance have been on and off for the last 10 years. I'm using the word fiance loosely, because they have been engaged for three years now. On more than one occasion, their break-up has involved having to call the police and my friend couch surfing for awhile. The main reason they stay in the relationship is because they have a daughter together. They haven't broken up since they got engaged, but that might also be because she got laid off from her job and couldn't find another until very recently. Oddly enough, their daughter is one of the most well-adjusted children I have ever met.
Relationships (If you want to call them that) like this are utterly toxic and masochistic. You're literally wallowing in misery, all the time, and all you have to look forward to is the NEXT miserable moment. A break-up itself is often horrible, traumatizing and rarely happens clean. Hot and Cold couples do that crap over, and over, and over. I can't fathom why people willingly participate in such trash, bring down the hammer and be done with it. Not just for your sake, but for all those around you who care about you and who YOU are driving fucking insane with your on-again-off-again bullshit.
Even in non-insane relationships, I have never understood the idea of purposefully long engagements. You hear it all the time "When's the wedding?" "We're planning on a long engagement" Now, I get it for logistical reasons. There's some factor that requires it, for whatever reason. But the people who treat being engaged as its own relationship stage to draw out for a set amount of time baffle me. Aren't you engaged because you WANT to be married? Very weird to me.