Ex Flare-Ups

Some things in life flare up on you. No warning, no pattern you can predict; they’re just suddenly there.

That’s how I’ve come to think of dealing with my ex. Not constant, not even frequent, but when it happens, it happens fast and hits harder than you’d expect for something so infrequent.

I’ve noticed these flare-ups tend to cluster around the predictable stress points: birthdays, holidays, the usual suspects. And I have exactly as much control over the timing as you’d expect: none.

I know the honest counterargument here: I chose to marry him, and whether something he says or does actually counts as a “flare-up” is really just my own interpretation. It’s not an illness. It’s a reaction. That distinction matters, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise.

But the useful part of the comparison holds anyway: whether something is a genuine crisis or just my own reaction to it, having a strategy for managing the reaction still matters. So over time, I built one.

The flare-ups come on suddenly, out of nowhere, infrequent but sharp. I never see them coming. Instead, I built a response system for after they hit.

First, I write out my full, unfiltered, knee-jerk emotional reaction, everything, no editing, no restraint, in an email. I ensure the “to” field is empty before I even start typing, so there’s no chance of accidentally sending it to him. When I’m done, I send it to a dummy account of my own instead. I don’t fully understand why it works, but it does. Something about hitting send, even into the void, gets it out of my system.

Then I give myself time. I don’t run straight to my support network to vent about whatever the latest thing was, not for a few days at least.

I breathe. I try to meditate. I remind myself that things rarely turn out as badly as my imagination insists they will.

None of this makes the flare-up disappear. But it does take the edge off the worst symptoms, the sleeplessness, the short temper, all of it.

More importantly, it gets me to a place where I can actually deal with him productively. Before I had any of this in place, my instinct was either to fight or to avoid entirely. Fighting feeds the flare-up. Avoiding leaves you sitting in dread, waiting for the next one.

So this time, I emailed him and proposed we talk in person, with some ground rules set in advance to keep the conversation collaborative.

After a few conversations, things settled. We’re back in a good routine, and I’m still working on ways to keep these flare-ups further and further apart.