My new manager is in town this week, and he took both the success and services teams based here in New York to dinner tonight. My parents-in-law also arrived just for the evening tonight since they are en route to Toronto this week for an event, and so I decided to leave the dinner a bit early to spend some time with them before bedtime.

Towards the end of the time at the dinner table, a colleague and I were discussing with our half of the table relationships in general and how we’ve each gotten together with our spouses. We left early together since he has a longer commute back to Long Island. He walked me to my train stop since it was en route for him to Penn Station, and we continued our romantic relationships discussion. He asked me about my relationship before Chris, how and why it ended, and if I still kept in touch with the guy.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to… he didn’t,” I said to my colleague. “He said it would be too awkward and painful,” especially since we almost got engaged. My colleague told me he had repeatedly tried to get in contact with his ex-girlfriends just to have a coffee or drink together, but they repeatedly refused. They want nothing to do with him.

I told him I get it, though. When you think about it, it’s a pretty painful situation. In almost every breakup, it’s usually one side that initiated the breakup, while the other side didn’t want it. In the time you were together, you probably knew each other intimately in both an emotional and physical way, and once you break up, all of that is also broken, as well. All the shared truths, the intimate details of each others’ lives, the vulnerabilities… it’s all wasted knowledge. All that time spent together is like a sunk cost. The time you spend with people, whether it’s platonic or romantic, in some way can be seen as an ‘investment’ into building a relationship of some sort. But once broken up, neither can do anything with that knowledge. It won’t bring you closer because you’ve broken up, never to return to that same intimate state ever again. You know each other and are aware of each others’ existence, but you are strangers once again. That person is just somebody you used to know. It’s just like that Gotye song that Christina Grimmie and Adam Levine covered for “The Voice.” It’s a bit tragic when you think about it — time spent, invested, that is ultimately wasted; a relationship that once had its glory moments that has essentially died, needing to be buried or cremated. You need to forget it to survive and move on.

“Somebody That I Used To Know” – Gotye

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember