After reaching out to “Gigi” through Instagram DMs in his junior year, UT student “Alex” started dating his current girlfriend. The pair went on three dates before making their relationship official.
“We met through what I call ‘Gen Z love,’ in a way, of how I saw her on Instagram because her friend posted and I followed her,” Alex said. “I just did what everyone does, (started) snapping her. And (for) me, I don’t like texting a lot. I like (to) hang with people, so I texted her (asking) to get coffee.”
The two continued their relationship for three months the summer before their senior year. Going into their last year of college, Alex said he felt like he could count on Gigi to be there no matter what. For him, the period before senior year was their honeymoon phase.
“This is nothing against her. Junior year was really amazing, and she was a really good girlfriend,” Alex said. “I was busy with a lot of other postgrad stuff that I had to get going. I’m going to law school, and I would have to take the LSAT, and then I just got lost in the LSAT. She was merely just something that I had in the corner of my life that if I ever needed her, she was always there for me.”
However, Alex started to change his feelings about their relationship and life as a college student. Being a senior and focusing on graduate school, Alex said college is the time to realize who you are as a person.
Following a traumatic event in Gigi’s life, their relationship began to break, leading Alex to question his role in their relationship before breaking up at the beginning of this spring.
“Christmas break was the first time I got to really view myself, who I was (and) who I wanted to be with,” Alex said. “I felt like, ‘Maybe I just don’t want to be with her,’ not saying she was (a) bad girl or anything, but in terms of how I wanted to live my life. In a way, a lot of the time, men are controlled by that relationship.”
Despite Alex’s breakup with Gigi, the two have somewhat rekindled their relationship into a “situationship.” The two still text and hang out and were even each other’s Valentines.
Going back to an ex can be tricky, but the real question is — are they truly still in love with them? If the only reason someone goes back to a partner is for pity or for the idea of them, then the relationship isn’t built on love and is likely to fall apart.
Exes are exes for a reason, no matter how sad it may be to leave them. Alex and Gigi should have another conversation about a breakup and figure out their feelings before they graduate and Alex goes to grad school.
“Maybe I was the man for her, but she wasn’t the one for me,” Alex said. “She was gonna be the one I would love to marry, but I don’t know if I was supposed to.”
