myself (27F) and my partner (28M) broke up back in January after 4 years 8 months together. it was a mutual break up on decent terms, we’d been friends for 8 years before getting together in the first place and we run a theatre group together with a couple of friends so had to keep speaking to some extent!

the first couple of months was filled with logistics like re-mortgaging the house, moving stuff out, deciding who would have our two cats, etc. I feel like now the dust has settled a bit, we’ve had a couple of really good chats and I really think that if we had started addressing our problems a couple of months earlier, we never would’ve broken up at all. it’s like neither of us made any effort to fight for it and just let it fall apart.

obviously I can’t go back and solve the issues before we ever broke up in the first place, but I have been thinking more and more lately that I miss our life together, and it could be really good if we both made an effort with it. I know that the feelings of missing it all aren’t just loneliness because I have started seeing someone else on a casual basis, and I’m just getting this overwhelming feeling that I don’t want to be with this person, I want my old life and my ex back.

could the 6-7 months we’ve had apart be enough for us to have identified what went wrong and know how to fix it? does getting back with an ex ever work out? or is this just a normal stage of the break up process and I just need to ride it through and I’ll get over it eventually?