I wish I was kissing you instead of missing you.
– Brian McNight
True love has a habit of coming back.
– Turcois Ominek
You will never know just how much I would give up to have you back in my life.
– Harry Warren
Most people don’t realize that it is possible to fall in love backwards. I have been studying relationships for decades and I only recently came to learn that it was possible to fall in love backwards. Not too long ago, I found myself in a situation where, by accident, I learned that such a phenomenon even existed. As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued by such a claim.
It was during a long car ride where I learned that some types of people actually fall in love backwards. That is, some types of people can only fall in love with their exes. I can almost hear the questioning as readers are asking themselves: How is it possible to fall in love backwards? I agree that the possibility of such a phenomenon does sound strange. Now let’s see whether or not I can provide a good explanation.
One night during a typical Colorado snow storm, three of my guy friends and I were on the way home from the movies. We were moving very slowly as the snow quickly accumulated on the already icy road surfaces. As many groups of guys do, the four of us were discussing women and relationships. This wasn’t any big surprise in a car full of middle-aged males talking about their dating lives. During that conversation, each of us had a turn to ponder the wisdom about dating that we had acquired over the past 20 to 30 years.
When it came to my friend Martin, he blurted out something that not only grabbed my complete attention, but immediately put me in a sociological stranglehold. He began his turn at talking about his dating life by commenting, “You know it’s strange, but I think I can only fall in love backwards” To say the least, my curiosity was immediately piqued. What the heck did Martin mean by that? I had no clue where this conversation was headed, but I was suddenly paying closer attention to it.
Martin went on to explain that the women he dated during his lifetime had never really challenged him. What he meant by that was that he could make the women he dated easily do anything he asked of them. He was, as he liked to say, “top shelf” dating material. Martin was very good-looking. His women counterparts, the “top shelf” females unquestionably competed for his attention.
Back in the day, Martin had been an extremely handsome young man. He was a blend of Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe, so the women literally threw themselves at Martin. All Martin had to do was kick back and wait for the women to chase him. Martin was that handsome.
Martin then made another comment as intriguing as his first one. He said “It seems like I tend to become attracted to my exes because they are the only ones that make me try.” I was blown away by this conversation and was anxious to find out where it was headed.
Over the years, Martin had never refined his approach to meeting women; precisely because he didn’t have to. As I mentioned earlier, Martin was so handsome, that, as he said, “top shelf” women were the ones doing the pursing. In short, Martin didn’t ever really have to work at getting attractive women to pay attention to him.
Martin ended his turn at discussing his dating life by scrunching his face in a gesture of confusion when he said, “Yeah my exes were the only ones who ever made me put any effort into keeping a relationship going. With all the other women who I dated, they rather quickly made it known that they wanted a relationship with me and would do all the work to try and make that happen.” As the conversation progressed, I knew that I was on to something very interesting about dating and relationships.
That statement told me all I needed to know about the phenomenon Martin was describing. Since the women in Martin’s past had done most of the work, at either establishing or maintaining a relationship with him, he was only required to exert a minimal amount of effort when it came to his relationships with them. But after a breakup, Martin was unable to take these formerly “easy-to-get” women for granted. Hence, Martin quickly revived his interest in them. After all, these exes were the only women who ever made Martin put forth any effort into any aspect of his relationships.
What was happening here was that because Martin was so handsome, he had absolutely no problem attracting women. Women who came into contact with him ended up finding a way to interact and flirt with him. Pursuing attractive women was no challenge to Martin.
The only women who posed any challenge to Martin were the ones who he had a prior relationship with. These women who had broken up with him were the only women who had put any significant “distance” between themselves and Martin. Remember, it is precisely the fact that overcoming such “distance” is what makes anyone attracted to a person. For Martin, finding a new woman to date was too easy. There was never any “distance” between him and these new “wanna be girlfriends.”
After that conversation with Martin, the idea of “falling in love backwards” was something that I couldn’t stop thinking about. All I knew was that I just HAD to find out more about this strange phenomenon. But the problem was who else could I ask about this phenomenon? I couldn’t just ask random good-looking people if they had ever fallen in love backwards.
First of all, asking such a question of a strikingly beautiful person would likely draw their ire; or it may baffle them completely. After all, what person has even heard about such a concept, much less figured out that such a phenomenon was actually affecting them?
Second, I wanted answers to this question, and I wanted them sooner-than-later. So the only thing I could do was to remain vigilant as to what was going on with other attractive people such as Martin. All I could hope for was that some other attractive person would somehow realize that this odd phenomenon affected them and then agree to discuss it with me.
Fortunately, my sociological vibes were piqued about a year later. I was in Arizona on business when a chance encounter presented another opportunity for me to learn more about this peculiar phenomenon. One of my good friends had invited me to stay with his family during my trip. During a dinner with them, his attractive teenage daughter made a remark that sent chills down my spine. After my friend asked how my research on relationships was progressing, I brought him up to speed on such activities.
His attractive teenage daughter listened patiently, never actually joining the conversation until that point. Then during a lull in the conversation, my friend’s daughter said, “Yeah, it seems like I always end up going back to my loser boyfriends.” She made the comment as a look of despair spread across her face. I immediately asked her why she thought this was happening to her. She looked up slightly as she pondered my question and came up with the following answer, “I guess it’s because they were the only ones who made me try.” After hearing this comment, I almost peed in my pants!
Had I been thinking in a conventional manner, I would have missed out on such a fantastic opportunity learn more about the often unnoticed nuances of relationships. Admittedly, such a discovery was somewhat depressing, but it was a discovery nonetheless. Who would have thought that such a phenomenon even existed?
During three decades of studying relationships, I had never even heard of such a phenomenon. But after hearing that comment, I knew that I still needed to learn more about this tendency to “fall in love backwards.” But as I mentioned earlier, at the time, I was at a loss as to how to access such information. After all, I couldn’t merely approach beautiful strangers on the street and start asking them all kind of questions about what type of people that they become attracted to and why this is the case.
Eventually I learned that many people actually do play the game of “falling in love backwards.” However, most of these people play the game on a much smaller scale. This game always starts out because the good-looking partners isn’t required to expend much effort in their relationships.
Their often less-attractive partner, more often than not, doesn’t want to lose the more attractive one. Therefore, the less-attractive one is willing to do most of the work required to maintain the relationship. However, this scenario causes the more attractive partner to take the less attractive one for granted. The more attractive partner may actually become bored with the less-attractive one.
In order to keep themselves from becoming bored with their partner, the better-looking partner finds a way to keep in place a constant state of “distance” between them and their less-attractive partner. That is, the better-looking ones find ways to push away their less-attractive partners. After establishing such “distance,” the better-looking partner’s interest in the less-attractive one is re-established. In all likelihood, this type of scenario becomes a hard-to-break cycle.
These physically attractive types push their less-attractive partners away until they are about to go “off the cliff” (breakup with them). But as the less-attractive partner they are pushing over the cliff is about to go over the precipice, the attractive and “pushing” partner suddenly “cares” about the relationship that is about to disintegrate. And it is the fact that it will take a considerable amount of effort to rescue and reestablish their relationship that motivates such an action. Thereby these physically attractive types keep on finding ways to push away their partners in order to continually create the “distance” in their relationships that rekindles their interest in it.
The best-looking ones who “fall in love backwards” will allow their partner to actually break up with them before they once again become interested in saving or rescuing the relationship. These attractive types are only interested in their partners when they have shown signs of permanently leaving them. It is only once the less-attractive partner has actually left the relationship that these extremely attractive partners become interested in re-establishing or rescuing the relationship.
In sum, the way this phenomenon emerges and develops goes something like this. The extremely good-looking person has absolutely no problem attracting the attention of new people who express an interest in them. Therefore, the good-looking types only become interested in an ex who actually broke up with them. After all, their exes are the only ones who offer these attractive types any sort of challenge in the “relationship department.” Thus, these very attractive types aren’t that interested in being with anyone new; they are mainly interested in getting back with their exes. It is only their exes that offer them any type of challenge in establishing or maintaining a relationship.
Have you or anyone you know ever “fallen in love backwards”?
