Rebounds. Natural or Selfish? 🖤
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Hands up if you think having a rebound ‘relationship’ is only natural after a breakup? 🙋🏼♀️
Hands up if you ever told your rebound, they were a rebound…? 😮
Rebound: Using one person to unlove another.
Sounds harsh doesn’t it? That was just my definition due to my own experiences with rebounding.
It has been soooo interesting listening to what my people had to say when asked to discuss their thoughts on the REBOUND or the rebounding process. Here are some of my favourites:
GBF (30): “The process of shagging a guy right after you have split from a relationship. This process can also be to date as well as shag! Lol.”
👸🏼🎭: This intrigued me because I personally wouldn’t link rebounding with dating. I see dating as a positive experience, unlike rebounding.
Baps Work Fam (26): “Ahhhhh. The rebound.”
👸🏼🎭: HAHAHHAA
Niece (18): To me, I would see a rebound as being like when you break up with someone, and get with someone else that you don’t actually really want to be with, you are just doing it to get back at the ex??
👸🏼🎭: I love the question marks here… so innocent ❤️
AJ (27): “I don’t like rebounds because they are just a way to not be lonely. They don’t let you get over the other person. I have only had one and when I think of him he makes my skin crawl.”
👸🏼🎭: Mine too, AJ. Mine too 😂
Phoebe (29): “Taking whatever action necessary to put yourself back together.”
👸🏼🎭: I didn’t know she was rebounding herself until she said this to me…
Tuts (28): “Getting under somebody to try and get over somebody else.”
👸🏼🎭: The text book response, but still extremely valid!
‘B’ Work Fam (32):
‘On the rebound’
Ready to have a few flings or one nighters to help relieve the stress of a recent break up.
No-strings-attached sexual encounters or even just kissing to try and make the ex jealous or to try and get over them quicker. It can often excuse risky or slutty decisions too.
“Omg she’s taking him home!”
“Ah leave her alone she’s on the rebound.”
👸🏼🎭: Such an English graduate. Written like a true pro. A pro, who has in fact, never rebounded!
B adds: “I am so boring I have never been on the rebound.”
There is Nothing Pure or Honest about a Rebound Relationship ☹️
I have been both. Someone’s rebound and the person rebounding. Neither experiences have been particularly good for the soul for me. Both experiences have left me feeling lost, without the love I want and unsure about what move to make next.
The reason I started to write this entry is because I was pissed off with finding out that I was, unbeknownst to me, playing the leading role in T’s film called, ‘She’ll Do For Now’. (Only the sex scenes would be a Box Office hit to be fair because his chat is absolutely shit!) But this is because he is still in love with someone else. He doesn’t want to get to know me, he just wants distraction 😈… Nonetheless, I was livid when I found out. Bastard! How dare he use me to get over someone else? 🤨
Everybody has different ways of moving on from things that have hurt them. When I left baby’s Dad, 3, it was the easiest break up (on my heart) that I had ever been through despite it being my most ‘adult’ relationship to date. He was supposed to be my forever. Yet, I left a home, left to be a single mam and did not shed a tear or ever once look back. Why? (Because he was a vile, narcissistic wanker who couldn’t keep his hands to himself) but also because I knew I would get over it. I knew I would move on. I had done this before.
However, rebounding was not a part of the plan for moving on from 3, for many reasons. One being: yes I was now single, but a single MAM. Let’s sort that out first shall we? Let’s work out how I’m going to juggle full time work, single parenting, running a home, paying the bills, always having to take a pee with a baby around my ankles, etc.
Another reason being that I felt so crap about myself after the break up because of the way I looked (to be fair, I had gotten so fat) but also because of the way 3 made me feel about myself as a person too. I can hear him now, “It’s baby, work, then me.” He was right. But we had both left somebody very important out of that pecking order there… ME 🙋🏼♀️ Where should I have been placed in the rankings?
Being a Mam had taken over my life (obviously and rightly so) and my new job had too. I spent the first 18 months of baby’s life doing mam shit and work shit only. No relationship shit and no me shit. I was just trying to find my way as a mam and keep another tiny human being happy, clean, full, entertained and let’s face it, alive, whilst bossing it in my new job role too.
So now that I was a shit down with 3 out of the picture, I knew I had to add in the ME time BUT I also knew this time was not meant to be invested in a rebound. The overarching reason for this was because I still have so many bad feelings about the way I left things with my rebound from 2. His name was M.
He loved me. I loved Him. If only He were Him.
I read this quote somewhere and it summed up the way I feel when I look back at my fleeting 6 week relationship with M. It hit home that he is one of my most saddest connections because I carried into that relationship an unhealed bond to what was, so it was never possible for us to see what could be. I know now, that was so selfish of me and it still honestly is one of my biggest regrets in life.
But… Rebounding is unavoidable!
Up until now, I had always used this as an excuse. Everybody who gets out of a relationship has to meet somebody new- therefore they are the rebound by default. They should realise this if they know someone has just broken up with somebody else.
“Surely, M knew he was a rebound?” To me, it was obvious. I had just got out of a 5 year relationship, I was obviously not looking to jump into another serious relationship. Looking back now- was I actually making this obvious to M? No. The complete opposite! Because I wanted to lie to myself too. I recall him asking me about my ties to 2 several times, he said he didn’t want to waste his time with me if I was still in love with him. I found myself reassuring him that I was never going back there. (Which is what I wanted in my head… the old ticker was feeling differently 💔)
We went for lovely date nights, spoke over the phone for hours at a time, he had met my friends and we had some really good sex. It wasn’t relationship sex- I don’t think M had been in a long term relationship before. It was very ‘samey’ for the first few times. Like he had his one stand routine. I soon got him out of that.✋🏻I think if he took anything from being with me, apart from the bruised ego, it was how to mix it up a bit!
Anyway, 2 got wind of my new relationship and started upping the ante with the phone calls and texts whilst I was with M. This made M a little paranoid. As a grand gesture, I invited M to be my plus one at my uni friend’s engagement party. My friends loved him and we all still talk fondly of that party, but, I’ll never forget what happened when we got back to the hotel later that night. M asked me to meet his parents the next day… I said I would. M fell asleep looking so happy and content whilst I was laying in his arms with my back to his front. I closed my eyes so tight I could see clouds of colour, I had to try and fight back the tears I could feel trying to flood from my eyes. I still swear I could actually feel my heart hurting. It was 3am and I remember quietly reaching over to my phone to text my Burry and AJ the words, “I just wish he was him.” M pulled me in tight. I held my breath so that he would not notice that I was crying. My body didn’t move. But the tears still dripped onto his arms until I fell asleep.
I don’t think it takes a genius to work out what I did to M. And to be honest, putting how I did it down in black and white is a dreaded fate for another day. It is, as I’ve already said, one of my biggest regrets in life. And I just want to say, I am so sorry. 😔
Mr or Miss Right Now
So, my experiences do not really sell rebounding very well. I was an emotional maniac. I had generated genuine feelings and emotions for M but they just could not top those I had for 2. As a result, both of them and I got hurt. So, I asked myself, is rebounding ever ok?
I think there are advantages to rebound relationships:
- I mean, let’s put it out there- it’s fun! You’ve had a shitty time lately. Fun is good.
- It can make the transition into single life easier.
- It gives you a chance to figure what you do or do not want in a new partner
- And let’s face it… it could work out!
BUT! All those advantages are extremely selfish and do not protect the partner you are bringing into the rebounding relationship. One could argue that there is nothing inherently wrong with two adults engaging in a short term relationship…
Perhaps! As long as both people involved are aware of what it is you want to get out of the new relationship you are starting up together, then maybe rebounding does not have to be as bitter of an experience as mine was. Just remember: it is not ok to waste anybody’s time. Including your own. Do not do what I did and pretend you are not feeling things that you are or vice versa, because sure as shit, that stuff is going to pour out of you like an exorcism vomit one way or another.
If you are the one dating someone who is rebounding, you may wand to consider if he or she is capable of starting a new relationship or if you are, instead, simply a substitute for the love that they have lost. I suppose, finding out the answer to that depends on how loose you are willing to be with your time and your heart. ♥️
The Not- So- Secret Diary of a Drama Queen 