The question of getting back with an ex is on everyone's mind this week, as Love Island host Maya Jama and rapper Stormzy were photographed holding hands in Greece and have reportedly reunited. The pair dated from 2015 to 2019, and split following rumours that Stormzy had cheated. During their time apart, their careers flourished separately, and Maya dated and was engaged to basketball player Ben Simmons. The couple were always a firm favourite in the UK, meaning there's been a lot of celebration on social media since the images surfaced. Stormzy's sincere (and public) remorse at losing Jama won many people over, but others are warning that this love story shouldn't encourage you to get back with an ex.
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Popular culture (and my personal experiences) had me firmly in the camp of never getting back with an ex, but after watching friends (and celebrities) successfully do it, perhaps I was wrong to judge. Sayings like ‘what’s done is done' and ‘once a cheat always a cheat’ are parroted to any woman who hints at rekindling with a past love, so, it's no wonder our default reaction is to warn off second chances. There's a shame attached to it, especially for women in heterosexual relationships, that maybe isn't all that warranted. People can, and do, change; Relationships evolve, sometimes apart and back together; Love can be lost and found; Mistakes are human and often forgivable.
Speaking with GLAMOUR, Dr. Tara, sex and relationship expert at Luvbites and TV host of Celebs Go Dating, says: “The psychology behind getting back with an ex is more than meets the eye. Research shows about 40% of young adults reconcile and get back with an ex-partner at least once in their lifetime, and many people are in ‘on again, off again’ relationships.”
Dr. Tara explains that people with anxious attachment styles are more likely to get back with an ex, even if the person is incompatible with them, and the relationship they hope to have, adding “That being said, I don't advise people to get back with an ex unless a significant amount of time has passed. 1 month later? Absolutely not. 5 years later and you've both grown, healed from past issues, or changed in a meaningful way? Possibly.” So, maybe Stormzy and Jama have a shot at a second-chance, with their four years apart.
She continued: “A study found that increased online communication contributes to people being more likely to have sex with their exes, so I recommend blocking them on social media and moving forward with your life. Another study also suggests that focusing on someone new is a great way to prevent getting back with an ex. Perhaps the old saying ‘the best way to get over someone is to get under someone’ has some merit.”
Before you do (or don't) text your ex, keep reading. GLAMOUR spoke with three women who got back with their exes and found love, again...
In June of 2015, Chris and his friend had been travelling the world when they run out of money and needed to get a job for the summer season. They wound up managing the bar at a luxury alternative retreat on the island of Skyros, Greece, complete with mindfulness classes and daily yoga. I had just dropped out of uni for the second time, and in need of some ’spiritual intervention’ shall we say, my mum whisked me off on a retreat to figure out my future- where she promised there would be no phones, no Facebook and no boys.
The first thing I ever said to Chris was “can I have 2 gin and tonics please?” and with a simple yes, and a smile, I was in love with him, just like you hear about in the films. It was like a lightning bolt struck and all my fate realigned and intertwined with his. At the end of his shift we stayed up until 6 am, drinking and talking. We continued doing this dance for the rest of my weeks holiday, waiting for someone to make the first move. I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my summer in Greece and the day before I was due to fly home I found out I could work as a housekeeper at the same retreat. That night, after a shit ton of Mythos, and local pine wine Retsina, he kissed me under the stars on the romantically titled ‘dead goats’ beach.
We spent a summer in love, but as it drew to a close I was nervous about if we could exist in 'the real world’. After Greece, we moved back to England together and camped out with my mum whilst we figured out what to do next. We decided we wanted to do a Ski Season and hopefully one day convert a van to travel full time. The ski season was terrible - we had no one but each other for company, our guests were for the most part awful, and our boss was the worst guy I’ve ever met. It was the beginning of the end, and when we came back to England after an early exit from the Alps, it felt like something had changed. Chris started to withdraw from me and it felt like my future was unravelling. It made me more eager to try and control everything and everyone around me.
Chris got a job at a restaurant and started going out a lot, and I was getting increasingly more insecure and anxious about him going out and staying out all night with the guys from his work. I tried to talk to him, but he didn’t want to hear it, and as much as I loved him I knew I loved myself more and I couldn’t keep being hurt. The day after we broke up, I drove him to the airport and put him on a plane back to the Western Isles in Scotland, where his parents were living at the time. I sat and cried for so long in the Heathrow car park I got a parking ticket.
4 years came and went, as did various failed relationships on both sides, and I found myself home alone on a Tuesday night eating a microwave lasagne and opening my second bottle of Castillo del diablo thinking about Chris - so I thought ‘f**k it’ I'm going to add him on Facebook. 3 minutes later my request was accepted, 4 minutes later a message popped through saying “so, are we friends again now?”
He had started working as a fisherman and was living on the Isle of Skye, meaning my little house in Reading felt like an entire world away. We chatted, exchanged some niceties but it all felt insincere. Just like those years ago in Greece, I thought he was never going to make the first move, so I asked “What do I mean to you now?”. Out poured everything from the last 4 years and we concluded that we should probably try and see each other to give things another go. I knew that if it didn’t work this time, it never would. I was anxious to find out if he was different and to test my newly erected boundaries on how I expected to be treated in a relationship but mostly I was full of childlike hope that this man was still the boy I kissed on the beach all those years ago.
Chris arrived on 25th March 2020 with a gym bag stuffed full of clothes and never left. We bought our first house in August 2020 in the Devon town of Totnes, renovated it and sold it when I was 8 months pregnant in July 2022. We’re now engaged, have a one year old Flynn, a border collie Riley, and we're in the process of renovating our second home.
Our lives are a testament to the adage ‘right person, wrong time’. The time Chris and I spent apart reinforced our love for one another. People in relationships often say ‘I don’t know what id do without you’. Well, we know what life is like apart, so everyday we chose each other, not out of convenience or habit, but because we know from experience that our lives are significantly better for the other one being in it. The grass certainly isn’t greener
The people we were then were not conducive to a healthy and successful relationship and breaking up gave us the space to grow and heal ourselves of the things that impacted how we both behaved the first time around, without causing irreparable damage to the other person. As the life we have created grows around us, it takes up more space than the shadows of our former selves, to the point now where they barely exist.
Olly and I met just over 4 years ago when he sent me a message on Hinge asking the names of my cats. We had a bit of back and forth over a couple of weeks but it definitely wasn't love at first text. Then, I spontaneously asked him to pick me up at my friend's house almost 45 minutes away from him because I got a bit too drunk. He turned up is his beat up blue Peugeot 206 and the first thing I said to him was 'I can't believe that's your car'. From that next morning, we became inseparable. After my 10pm finishes at the petrol station I worked at, I would drive to Bristol or he would make the journey to where I lived in Stroud. Pretty quickly, we decided he would move in with me and all was sweet until Covid-19 hit.
We were together for about 6 months before Covid-19, and had only lived with each other for a couple of months before we were locked in together, seeing no-one apart from each other and it soon took its toll on us. We went from wanting to see each other to not having a choice. On top of that, I was working bad hours at a shitty services, and I resented Olly with his normal hours in his well paid job- I just didn't have the skills yet to communicate my problems, so we broke up.
Our breakup was awful. I remember being at the garage when his Dad came to pick up his belongings and staring out the window wondering if they would come my way and if I could catch one last glimpse of Olly. Obviously, they didn't. So, at 10.30pm that night, I went home to a very empty house and wondered what I had done. We spoke intermittently, but with no kindness to each other and ultimately went months with no contact.
Eventually, one of us suggested a visit to Olly's new flat in his hometown. This led to a one night stand, which led to larger conversations about us. To complicate things, Olly was planning a move to his University town of Bournemouth and I was very at peace in Stroud but for a year we made the long distance relationship work. After that year, it was my turn to make the big move and I left the best job I could only have dreamed of, and we both moved to a flat in a lovely Borough of Bournemouth. This time, I felt no bitterness of resentment, and I knew that this was it for us. During those months of separation, we both realised we could live without each other, but we weren't as happy as we could be with each other. Although not an ideal relationship timeline, we are both proud to have made it through and we can't wait to make Bournemouth our home together.
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Like every modern day love story, James and I met back in 2014 on a dating app. It was just before Christmas, and we shared an interest in the same music and books. Our first date didn’t exactly go to plan - my phone died an hour before we were supposed to meet, and without being able to contact each other, we didn’t make it to our date. After lots of apologising on my part, so began the first of many second chances we gave each other over the years.
Our second first date was by the book, and perfect in every way. We met in a pub in East London, proceeded to drink too much red wine and ended the evening dancing outside to the sound of the music coming from a late-night club. It felt like he was my best friend that I hadn’t seen in a few years, and we were catching up on life. The next 10 months went by very fast. We lived in each other's pockets, existing only until the next time we could see each other. We went to festivals, we travelled, we lay in bed together all weekend, we commuted to work together and it felt like we breathed in and out at the same time. I had found the greatest love of my life, like you only ever do when you are 22.
And then in the September of 2015, as we partied separately with friends, for the first time in a while, he disappeared. My texts wouldn’t send, his friends ignored my concerned messages, my calls didn’t go through. To cut a long and very hurtful story short, he had gone to meet an ex-girlfriend that he still had feelings for.
Our intense whirlwind and infatuation to one another was suddenly halted by the messy reality of unaddressed feelings, and we broke up. However, (and in every good love story like ours there has to be a however) we quietly and cautiously kept in touch. For months we darted in and out of each other's lives, one night of drunken passion here and there, or a fleeting like on the other's social media posts.
It wasn’t until some 2 years later, 3 separate failed relationships, 5 countries travelled without one another, that we met once more in a bar. He had become that friend that I was catching up with about life. Yet this time, it wasn’t with awe and intensity like 22 year old me might have felt, I saw him for who he was, with all of the wrinkles and creases and mistakes and flaws that we all have.
We talked at length, honestly and openly, about our values and non-negotiables, and how this time we would take things slowly. During the following months, we tentatively met for the odd coffee, a walk on the weekend, or a concert of a mutual band we liked. Sometimes the trust faltered, and we would have long intense conversations about what we needed from one another. Our friends and families tiptoed even more cautiously. But slowly and surely we began to progress through life together.
It became our new unspoken rule to be honest and open and real with each other. We knew we loved all of each other's best bits, but we both agreed to fall in love with each other's worst bits too.
It sounds cliche but truly it felt like we were always meant to be together, but only when the time was right. Then last November, in front of all of our loved ones we said I do, and it really was the happiest day of my life. We have since shared the news that we are expecting our first baby, a little boy, due in a couple of months, and I can’t wait for our next big adventure together as parents.
Our love story is just as perfect as 22 year old me hoped it would be, but with way way more honesty, maturity, and communication, and to me that's the foundation of the strongest relationships there are.
For more from GLAMOUR's Contributing Editor, Chloe Laws, follow her @chloegracelaws.
