Am I the Idiot for Going Back to Him?

There’s this one scene in Desperate Housewives where Gaby, one of the housewives, who’s been having an affair with her 16-year-old gardener, gets confronted by the boy’s parents. While the mother is visibly upset and threatens to call the police, his dad is relaxed, even enthusiastic to meet the married woman his son has been hooking up with.

This obviously confuses Gaby, so she asks the dad why he’s so calm and not mad at her. He ends up telling her that throughout his entire life, he has always done what he should have done, the right thing, the healthy thing: find a girl, get married and have kids.

But… he now wonders how his life would have turned out if he had done just one wrong, toxic decision. If only one time, he wouldn’t have done what was expected out of him and…misbehaved.

This got me thinking: Should we stop ourselves from making bad choices? You know, the ones that make you immediately shake your head “no” but leave you afterwards with a smirk on your face that you brush off hysterically.

Okay, I’m not talking about the extreme ones: sleeping with your bestie’s ex or your ex’s father, although who am I to judge you on the last one?

I’m talking about those times you REALLY feel the urge to do something you consider so stupid that you’re 100% sure you’ll regret it afterwards- like going back to him.

Here lies my question. Are we genuinely that dumb if we decide to… do it?

I have always been the girl who walked away when disrespected and never looked back. My best friend though, has been dealing with her ex for a dragging 2 years, 2 years during which they’d keep going back to each other, trying to repair something but always repeating the same cycle.

As much as I supported and been there for her every time, I admit that sometimes I would ask myself why she kept going back. I didn’t get why she wouldn’t simply walk away once and for all from Mr. Wrong.

That was until I found my Mr. Wrong.

When things were “done” between us, all of a sudden, I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. Never in my life have I felt such a strong desire to text someone.

I started questioning everything about myself. Have I lost the inner confidence I have worked so hard for? Am I all of a sudden desperate, needy and pathetic?

After a night of drinking 1 (or 3) glasses of cheap wine over at my bestie’s house, I told her it was physically hurting me to keep the no contact anymore.

So she told me, “Then text him; stop overthinking it.”

And so I did. I texted him, saying I missed him.

Did something change? Did he suddenly become a better man and start treating me right?

No.

But I changed the narrative. I stopped shaming myself for doing something I shouldn’t have done.

Maybe going back isn’t always about weakness. Maybe it’s about rewriting how we see the story. Maybe it’s the only way we know how to navigate love, or maybe — just maybe — it’s our way of taking back control.

Maybe by getting the answers we so long for, moving forward seems clearer and easier.

Because that’s how I chose to see it. I didn’t get the apologies or effort I deserved, but that was still an answer. An answer that proved to me that I should let go, an answer that actually made letting go easier.

It wasn’t rational. And maybe it doesn’t have to be rational.

Love is weird, it cannot always be explained by our brains. The things that we want to do in love often seem odd. But we still wanna do them, right?

Maybe sometimes we don’t need a grand reason or a deep psychological breakthrough. Maybe we just need to let ourselves be human and do what we want, without labelling it as a mistake.

Maybe you just want to go back because, for whatever reason, that’s what feels right at the moment. And maybe that’s enough.

But what I do know is that I will always live my life without regrets- whether that’s the regret of not texting him or the regret of texting him.

So go ahead, text him, don’t text him — just make sure that whatever choice you make, it’s yours. Not society’s, not your friends, and not the rules of dating. Just yours.

Because you will always have the power to shape how you see things. You may not have the power to dictate how things will unfold, yet no matter how they will, you are the only one who can see them in an advantageous light or not.

Trust that no matter what you end up doing, you did it for your own good and peace of mind and you will be able to get through it, no matter the outcome.

To every girl and woman who has ever reached out to someone who didn’t deserve her — you are not stupid, insecure, or naive. You are human. A human who dared to feel, to want, to risk. A human who chose experience over hesitation, emotion over indifference, and life over fear. And that is never something to be ashamed of.

So… what will your choice be?