Last night my husband read me an email about a potential job opportunity (this is A Perk [no] of marriage to a physician: getting dozens of recruitment postcards/emails daily touting all the wonderful! opportunities! in unnamed cities all over the country) in a city out west, and I remarked casually that I thought that’s where my high school ex-boyfriend lived. Then when I was getting ready for bed, I noticed that I was wearing a sweatshirt that once belonged to that same ex-boyfriend, and I figured this is where the Lifetime Movie of my alternate reality would start playing sleazy music and it would turn out that I had been having a steamy affair with my high school ex-boyfriend for years unbeknownst to my poor unsuspecting husband. Listen, Lifetime is as hard-up for content as we all are.
Do you have clothes that once belonged to an ex? Or… other things? I don’t know what those other things might be; all I have is this sweatshirt.
And I have it – and persist in wearing it twenty-odd years later – not because it has anything to do with the ex, but because it is the softest most comfortable sweatshirt ever made. (I used to think its unusual softness had something to do with his mom’s fabric softener; she used one of the liquid versions, like Downy or Snuggle, while my mother used fabric sheets. But considering the woman hasn’t run it through her ultra-specialized laundering process in more than two decades, I’m no longer certain.)
There’s really nothing sordid about the sweatshirt. The ex and I didn’t come to some tragic end or anything. We simply broke up when I went to another state for college, which meant that we ended the relationship on a no-fault note rather than going through the excruciating process of learning that we are absolutely not compatible in the long-term. I am glad that we broke up on friendly terms, but I am also glad that we broke up, full stop. (I feel duty bound to tell you – get the Lifetime people on standby – that I still exchange Christmas cards with the ex’s mother. She writes * Christmas letters * – nice long ones! – and so I get a mini-update on her and my ex AND his brother, with whom I was friends in high school. That’s the closest and only contact I have had with the ex since my husband and I saw him at his brother’s wedding back in the early 2000s.)
I no longer remember if the ex gave me the sweatshirt, or loaned it to me, or whether I purloined it from his house or locker. But I do love it. It does have some sentimental value, because it has the name of my high school on it. (Not that my memories of high school are good, heavens no; if I think too hard about high school I sink into a quicksand of shame and despair.) But mainly it is just very comfortable. It’s thin enough to wear on a balmy evening when you wish you had more than a T-shirt on but aren’t ready for the heavy artillery (wool; turtlenecks). And somehow, no matter how old I get, it’s always the exact perfect size: just a little baggy. It’s a great sweatshirt. I own many, many sweatshirts and none has ever come close. A rat is going to build a nest in it now that I’ve extolled my love for it publicly.
The only other “borrowed” item I have is a sweatshirt from my best friend. We met in middle school. We haven’t lived in the same state since 1999, but I still consider her my best friend (spouses excluded). I was never a big fan of borrowing/lending clothing, but I loved to borrow her stuff. She has always been super fashionable, and she always had the chicest clothes, like stuff from the Gap and Banana Republic, when we had neither store even in our state. I don’t know how or why I came to be in possession of this particular sweatshirt of hers. I don’t wear it often – it’s kind of like the sweatpants of sweatshirts, which both does and does not make any sense at all, so I’m hoping you understand what I mean. Every time I wear it, unlike with the sweatshirt that once belonged to my ex, I think of my friend and smile. In that case, it’s the original owner that makes the sweatshirt precious, rather than the sweatshirt itself being great.
My husband does not care in the least that I sill wear the ex-boyfriend’s sweatshirt. It is an interesting mind game to imagine how I might feel if my husband still wore a sweatshirt that once belonged to his high school ex. Even considering I went to lunch with my husband and TWO of his high-school ex girlfriends back in the years before we were engaged, I think I might be in favor of accidentally shrinking it in the wash. And yet I would be outraged – OUTRAGED – if my husband seemed the least touchy about my beloved sweatshirt (which once belonged to my ex). (That is a very different sentence indeed than saying “my beloved ex’s old sweatshirt.” Make sure you know what your adjectives are or could be modifying, people!) Fortunately, my husband is not going around wearing ex-girlfriends’ old clothes so I haven’t had to reveal what a dirty double standard bearer I am.
I don’t think anyone has any old clothing of mine, so no one is out there pining away for me or thinking of me fondly. At least not in a sartorial way.
I don’t think I own anything from an ex, but I am not Absolutely Sure, because I might have something in a box somewhere—but I don’t have anything in regular use. If I DID, I too would be outraged if Paul objected, while definitely objecting to similar usage from him.
For a LONG TIME I had/wore a polo shirt from a boy I had a years-long crush on in the age 13/14/15/16/frankly-still-now range. His mom gave us a bag of handmedowns for my brother, and was Not Pleased to see me wearing the shirt, and thought it was inappropriate, which it kind of was, but I just loved it. I thought of this because she used Gain detergent, which I discovered YEARS later: I associated that scent STRONGLY with him (I went as long as I could before washing the polo shirt), and didn’t realize it was Gain until I bought Gain as an adult and suddenly all of our clothes smelled like That Cute Boy.
HA! That would be jarring, to suddenly have your whole family smelling like That Cute Boy.
I can just FEEL that comfy sweatshirt and am so glad you have it! I still have one “letter” sweatshirt that belonged to my big sister in the sorority I was in in college. I haven’t worn it in years, and don’t remember it being all that comfortable. Though my kids know I was in the sorority, I would feel weird wearing Greek letters at the age of 46, heh. Even just around the house. Interestingly, there is a plaid fabric in the letters that, I think, is the same plaid as my daughter’s school uniforms from elementary.
The only ex-boyfriend thing I have is a gold necklace/chain — one of those flat ones, you remember? — that an ex wore a few times and then gave to me. I never wear it; I guess I keep it for sentimentality. It’s possible my daughter borrowed it once and I’ve never seen it again – haven’t looked for it lately.
Oh! That reminds me that I probably still have a ring that the same ex-boyfriend gave me? (He gave me a RING? Am I remembering this correctly???) Like your necklace, my ring may have been appropriated by my daughter… but I haven’t checked.
I’m guessing gifts aren’t what you have in mind, more like objects that once belonged to the person, right? I can’t think of anything like that, definitely no clothes. I do have some tiny figurines one might use in a role playing game (an angel, an archer, and a wizard) my high school boyfriend hand painted for me. They’re on the mantel in my living room among other knickknacks. I let the kids play with them when they were little, so they’ve lost some of their more breakable features.
I also have shoeboxes full of letters from various exes in the basement.
The only things I have is a ring that was gifted to me by an ex (once The Husband figured out where I got it he had a duck fit – I don’t wear the ring but I keep it for the memories – the ex-boyfriend was a great guy but not The One.) and a jacket from a high school friend (I can’t even remember his name anymore).
I do have a necklace from my friend who died and every time I look at that necklace or wear it, I think of her and smile through the tears.
Oh, how nice to have a necklace from your friend!
I love your honestly that you would be upset if your husband had a fav clothing article from an ex.
I guess I did not really date anyone seriously enough to have any ‘stuff’ from them. Coach was my first really serious guy. I might have some art pencils from an ex boyfriend the year I lived in Ireland.
I do still have newspaper clippings from a high school crush who played on the high school golf team . . . with COACH. I saved the articles because of the crush but at the time Coach was simply my brother’s good friend. Coach appears in these articles. How funny. Sadly my crush was killed in a drunk driving accident in the fall of our freshman year of college.
I’m so sorry to hear that. 😦
I do not have anything from any of my old boyfriends – unless I have some jewelry they gave me, or something, but I definitely don’t have any of THEIR things. Mostly, my old relationships crashed and burned and frankly, things tended to end in such a way that we didn’t keep in touch.
I would also be bothered if my husband had something of his ex-girlfriend(s) – but it’s funny, I did find a whole bunch of photos of an old girlfriend in one of his pre-me photo albums. She looked EXACTLY like Jennifer Grey from Dirty Dancing. Like, it was SHOCKING. It was kind of weird to see these photos of her at my in-laws’ house, to be honest!