Watch out everyone: Mercury is in officially in retrograde for the first time this year. Scientifically, this is a period of time when Earth’s orbit around the sun is shorter than Mercury’s, so it looks like Mercury is moving backwards when mapping out planetary movement.
What does that mean for us? Astrologically, it means that everyone is losing their minds. This is a period of time cited as being highly stressful — with frequently cancelled travel plans and unexpected things breaking. What does this mean for our relationships? This is a time for exes and former beaus to come out of the woodwork, which begs the question: should they?
I’m sure we’ve all been thrown off by a jarring “hey you!” or “what’s up?” text from someone from our past. Just typing those words brings back late night memories and frantic feelings of wanting to throw my phone in the Charles River. But I am not always the victim here — I will admit to sending a Snapchat message or a text that probably shouldn’t have been sent. It became so crucial to one of my relationships that we would switch off who would reach out to the other after several months of not talking. Some things in life are only familiar in their cyclical nature.
There are a few things that one has to consider before coming back into someone’s life — the most important of which is the way things ended between the two people. This also includes friendships that have gone sour or any form of relationship where two people drifted apart. The circumstances in which the relationship ended are important to determine whether or not you should introduce yourself into their life again. If they broke up with you and haven’t talked to you in a few months, it’s best to not call them at 3 a.m. and asking them to take you back. Was the other person ghosted? Here, you want to avoid coming back out of the blue and elevating the ghosting to the level of zombie. Before reaching out to someone in your past, you have to think critically about the ways in which you’ve treated them and how things ended in the relationship.
If you’re trying to come back into someone’s life, what is your intention? Are you trying to make amends? Has enough time passed where this is OK? You may want to reach out to someone that you have hurt. This is another difficult situation because you’re not sure how they’re feeling about you. Once again, this is something that you have to think carefully about and decide whether to bring it up or make them susceptible to a hurt they haven’t felt recently. When we leave people hurt, we leave them with wounds. What is the cost of opening those wounds? Sometimes, it’s best to leave them as is.
I know that sometimes it is not our intention to come back into someone’s life the way that we may do as college-aged people. We text them during late nights; we like their photos or tweets so that they notice us; we even try to say hi to them as they pass us on Comm. Ave. Sometimes it is too easy to fall back into the memories of good times that we have with someone, the times they made us laugh so hard, our stomachs hurt. We so easily choose to forget the hurt that people put us through to think about the future opportunities they could have with us.
Sometimes, we don’t remember the ways in which we’ve hurt someone else because we miss the way that they made us feel. All of this boils down to say: If you’re going to come back into someone’s life, you must have some intention to stay in it. People put other people through so much hurt that it’s sometimes better to walk away than to try and reconcile. Just because it’s “Mercury in retrograde” and the “seasons of the exes” does not mean that you can toy with someone’s emotions without ramifications.
Relationships come with their own set of strings and lines. Sometimes it’s best to not pull them in an effort to try to unfray the wires. Sometimes it’s best to leave them as is and not get tangled.
Meredith loves telling stories and pretending to be Carrie Bradshaw, minus the man and comfy NYC apartment. She, however, eats enough brunch to cover all six seasons. When she's not drowning in 16th-century literature, she can be found lamenting over the bad grammar and bad boys in her middle school diary.
Find her on twitter @merewilsh or email her mwilsher@bu.edu with all your love musings or questions.
