Why recycling your exes is bad for the environment By Mandy Hale

It happens to the best of us. You’re walking along, fine as wine, having yourself a big & rich time when all of a sudden, out of nowhere…your phone rings. Or it lights up, indicating a text. Or you get a Twitter update that someone has @ replied you. Or a Facebook alert that you have a new message. After determining which of your many methods of communication is signaling you, you see it. That familiar name. HIM. After months and months or years and years of absolutely no contact, not even the occasional standard “How’s life?” email, suddenly with one swift click on a keypad, HE has resurrected himself from the Island of Former Boyfriends. And just like that – you’re smack dab in the middle of the X-Files.

 

You can bet the bank on it – give an ex-boyfriend long enough and he will always come back around. It’s just one of those undeniable facts of life, like spilling something on yourself every time you wear a new shirt or men leaving the toilet seat up - it’s gonna happen. No matter how long it’s been since you broke up or what remote, deserted island you moved to in order to escape him – he will find you. He will Google his way back into your life no matter how much searching he has to do to locate your new cell number…you know, the one you changed on account of him. Nope – ain’t no mountain high enough, ain’t no river wide enough to keep him from you. And more than likely it will happen right at the very second that you finally get over him. It’s like a weird male antenna that receives a signal that you’re not hung up on him anymore and his fingers are suddenly drawn to his phone like a moth to a flame. “She’s not crying into her pillow every night anymore! I better call and remind her why she was crying in the first place!”

 

While not all exes have bad intentions, and some might actually be calling just to see how you’re doing, it’s best to avoid that danger zone like a bad perm. Why? Because as the old adage says, “A leopard never changes its spots.” In this case – the spots being whatever reasons you had for ending the relationship in the first place. Whatever spots he had when last you saw him, you can bet they’re still there – even if he’s cleverly hiding them behind a more mature age, smoother talk or sudden eagerness to commit. A friend of mine once tried to date a guy when she was 20, then again when she was about 26, then again when she was 31, and he was sketchier and shadier every time she gave him another chance. It’s like this guy went out of his way to get in his lifetime quota of weird dating behavior with my friend, leaving her to sometimes wonder if she was in the middle of an episode of Candid Camera, his behavior was so bizarre. For months afterwards when out on a date with a new guy, she would glance over his shoulder to see if a cameraman was lurking in the bushes or hiding behind the dessert cart – that’s how much this ex of hers scarred her. Take it from my friend - constantly waiting for the sound of canned laughter and the “big reveal” is no way to live.

 

Exes are, by definition alone, bad news. Exile, excommunicate, exclude, extradite, exhume, exhausted…do any of these words give you a warm and fuzzy feeling? There’s a reason that “ex” comes before “boyfriend” – and it’s best to leave that relationship in the ground where it belongs and not try and recreate a moment that probably wasn’t all that great to begin with. Besides – if you’re filling up your calendar with X’s, you’re leaving no room for O’s – as in “Oh, he’s so wonderful!” - so the only “ex” you should be headed for is the exit, lady, and quickly!

 

At the end of the day, recycling exes might not be bad for the environment, but it’s bad for YOUR environment. If he didn’t make it past your past, he’s certainly not worthy of your future, so quit wasting time on “what might have been” and look ahead to what might be! Just because “ex” didn’t mark the spot doesn’t mean there’s not still buried treasure to be found…most likely where you’re least expecting it. So here’s a shovel. Start diggin’.

Why Letting Go & Moving On is the Most TITANIC Decision You'll Ever Make

 THE SINGLE WOMAN SAYS

“I’ll never let go, Jack. I’ll never let go!”

In perhaps the most tear-inducing movie scene of all time, found in the mother of all chick flicks, the very film that I myself saw at the theaters six times and own not one, but TWO copies of…Kate Winslet’s Rose famously makes a promise to Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jack that she’ll never let him go. She cried…we cried…the person in the next theater over watching Men in Black cried, completely enraptured by the sheer beauty and epic romance of Rose refusing to let go of her beloved. The music rises to a crescendo, and the magic of the moment transports you to another time and place, until you feel as if you’re floating on the next log over from Jack and Rose, watching this beautiful moment in cinematic history take place. Tears roll down your cheeks, your vision blurs and you start to gulp and hiccup from the intense emotion…waiting for the star-crossed couple to meet their demise together, giving Romeo and Juliet the boot as most popular, most tragic, most romantic couple ever to land on the silver screen.

Then...wait a minute. Something’s happening. She’s sitting up. She’s kissing him goodbye. She’s…could it be? Letting him go?!?!?

Though my lip quivers a bit just thinking about that scene, the symbolism of what happens in the film’s climactic finale moment is not lost on me. And while you may argue that she only lets him go “figuratively”…the fact is, Rose had to physically and even emotionally untie herself from Jack, not only to just move on with her life…but to SAVE her life. Had she opted to stay there, clinging to him with the same desperation that she clung to her life raft (and believe me, if Leonardo DiCaprio was holding my hand, I’d be pretty tempted to stay behind, come hell or high water, myself), that would have been the end of her story, too.

No, Rose didn’t get the Happy Ending she had hoped for, because life had other plans for her. And though they are fictional characters, I feel certain that plenty of people throughout history have found themselves in similar predicaments: “Do I cling to a sinking dream for dear life and risk certain disaster…or let go and move on to an uncertain future without the person I thought would be standing beside me for the rest of my life?

As we weather the choppy waters we call Life, it’s a decision we will face time and time and time again: Do we cling to a situation that’s taking us under out of fear of letting go of the familiar, or do we open our hand and let go of that friendship, that relationship, that job, that opportunity, or that grievance that we’ve been clinging to, realizing that to flail around uncertainly for a season is all a part of discovering our destiny?

Rose made the decision to let go. As painful as it might have been to release her lover in order to rescue herself, she was determined not to miss out on everything ahead of her by trying to raise the dead. And though she didn’t get her Happily Ever After with Jack, she did get it. In the closing scene of the movie, when we see the older version of Rose peacefully sleeping, the camera pans to countless photos from her colorful and well-lived life. We see that Rose went on to take risks and have adventures and live life to the very last drop, even without Jack there beside her. Knowing him made her a better person, introduced her to a side of herself she didn’t even know existed, helped her take her first unsteady, hesitant steps toward becoming the woman she was meant to be; but letting him go was the catalyst for actually realizing her destiny, and fulfilling her dreams, and living up to her true potential. The truth is: friends and lovers and opportunities will come into our lives and, in some cases, shake us to our very core along the way…however, not all are meant to stay.

THE SINGLE WOMAN SAYS: Some people pass through our lives for a season to teach us lessons that could never be learned if they stayed.

The trick to not getting mired in the past and missing out on the future lies solely in our ability to let go and move on, yet this seems to be the most difficult thing in the world for most people (including myself) to do. The ebb and flow…the stay or go…the hold on and the let go…what does letting go and moving on actually look like? How do you know when it’s time to let go and move on? More importantly, what exactly are you supposed to let go of and move on from? Hands down, the number one request for advice I get involves the process of letting go and moving on. It seems that although we know in our hearts it’s time to move on from what was, we need someone to be the voice of reason, reminding us WHY we need to do it and HOW exactly to do it.

I hope my new book will be that voice for you.

No matter how sexy or appealing or flashy or tall, dark, and handsome the object of your desire may be…no matter how AMAZING the job opportunity may seem…no matter the size of your impossible dream…if it is NOT meant for you, it is time to let it go and move on to what IS. Just as Rose let go of Jack, so she could bloom instead of meet her doom.

“But MY Leonardo DiCaprio WANTS to be held,” you might argue.

No, he doesn’t. (If he did, you wouldn’t be reading this.)

THE SINGLE WOMAN SAYS: You don't have to cling to what is truly meant for you. You can let go. It'll stick around.

“But MY Leonardo needs me to cling to it. If I don’t, someone else will snatch it away!”

No, they won’t. And if they do – it wasn’t meant for you!

THE SINGLE WOMAN SAYS: No one can take what's TRULY yours…so if they took it, it wasn't yours. Something better is on its way!

“But MY Leonardo wants to be with me, he just doesn’t realize it. I just have to hang on and give him TIME to realize it!”

No, he realizes what you don’t: That it’s time to let go.

THE SINGLE WOMAN SAYS: If they want to be in your life, they'll find a way to be in your life. Otherwise they'll find excuses.

I say all this not to be harsh, but to be REAL…because you deserve the whole truth and not the faux truth. And here’s something else that’s REAL: You are FAR too fabulous to cling to someone or something that doesn’t fit you, doesn’t want you, or doesn’t belong to you. While you’re clinging to the WRONG thing, you’re letting the RIGHT thing slip right through your fingers!

So what does this actually look like, this “letting go and moving on” thing? What are the steps? What does it mean? And how do you know when it’s time to throw in the towel…call it a day…and walk away? In my new book, we cover the five major areas of life that we often find ourselves needing to let go of: Relationships, Friendships, Jobs, Opportunities, and Grievances. How are we going to do it? By examining the five benchmarks for letting go and moving on: the Who, the What, the Why, the When, and the How. At the end of each chapter, we review the Five Fabulous Finds from that section for you to take away as daily affirmations, pick-me-ups, or sassy reminders to get you off of “What Might Have Been” Highway and back on the road to letting go and moving on.

 I must say I just love Mandy Hale, her take on Life & love are refreshing,i'm definetely getting her book. Have a fabulous weekend my hunnies, and it looks like Joburg will experience another cold weekend...can't say i'm looking forward to it, but complaining doesn't help. I've been conditioned to stop moaning and complaining and to just enjoy my life. I've made a resolute choice to enjoy every minute of everyday, to enjoy every moment of my life...you should also make that conscious decision to be happy, not matter what. I appreciate each and everyone of you out ther. ONE LOVE

Living my Life because it's golden
Grace