How to Write About Your Ex

For the first year I lived there, Los Angeles was not as kind to me as I would have hoped. I found myself frequently sitting alone in my tiny studio apartment, looking out the window at a dreary brick wall and feeling sorry for myself. I desperately needed money and some reassurance that I was actually good at this writing thing I had moved there for. Luckily, the art goddesses heard my plea. After months of feeling rejected, I received a cold call email.

“Hey, we love your writing, would you like to contribute to our blog? We pay!”

The universe was good to me again, giving me a much-needed rush of confidence (and a cash infusion) just when I needed it. Feeling hopeful, I responded immediately, asking for more information on what exactly they were looking for. The editor’s response surprised me.

“I love your pieces about your ex!” it said. “Do you have any more?”

I shivered. This was something I had heard before. Somehow, over the last few years, I felt like I had become The Girl Who Writes About Her Ex. Seeing this newest email, I wondered: Is this my entire writerly identity?

When I started working on the manuscript for my first essay collection, I began mining my life for material. I wrote several pieces about past relationships that had been challenging for me, as well as a few about some particularly memorable and embarrassing short-lived situationships. As my essay collection formed, I realized I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend the bulk of my manuscript on the men of my past. Looking over what I had written, I saw a number of essays about shitty boys, and although they were humorous or sometimes tragic, I didn’t want them polluting the entire book. I wanted my collection to focus on my other ideas and experiences in my life, topics that I wanted to dig into deeper—or what would be on my mind if you called me at one o’clock in the morning: resilience, loneliness, East Bay punk rock, the perfect peach salad.

I had felt compelled to write about the boys that had come before as a part of my process, but now that I no longer needed them, I started submitting my ex pieces for publication to build my portfolio. I figured I wasn’t saving them for the book, so there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t publish them individually online.

As my essays were published and I shared them on social media, a few people I knew DMed me.

“I can’t believe you are brave enough to do that!” a friend exclaimed about a particular piece. “What if he reads it?”

So what? I thought. It happened. And I always do my best to tell the truth.

My most-used internet GIF is Diane Keaton crying in front of a laptop. I send it to friends regularly in response to questions like, “What are you up to?” or “What are your plans for the weekend?” as a bit of self-deprecating humor. The source image of the GIF is from the Nancy Meyers classic Something’s Gotta Give, in which our distraught heroine writes a hit play after being rejected by her lover (played by Jack Nicholson). As much as it would be almost romantic to weep in front of my computer as I pine over a lost lover or recover from a heartbreak, I fortunately have never cried while writing about an ex.

When we think about a woman writing about her ex, I think it’s often assumed that the writer’s intention is revenge—especially if her ex is male. People seem to believe that the purpose of writing about the experience at all is to publicly lay the blame on the other party, publishing their sins on the front page for the world to see. This trope appears in countless movies and popular HBO shows. However, the essays I write are not about the men and women I have dated as much as they are about my attempts to understand myself in the context of their company. Where was I on this crazy life journey when I met them? When I write how it all went down, I can finally see not only the behavior I will no longer tolerate in others but also, most importantly, the behavior I will no longer tolerate in myself.

I wish writing about my ex was as therapeutic as it was for crying-GIF Diane Keaton, but, unfortunately, I write essays, and I do not get the option to simply kill off my ex as she did in the fictional play she was writing. As each conversation, encounter, and flirty text message make their way onto the page, I see, more often than not, where I went wrong.

When I write about love gone wrong, I am writing about myself at some of my most desperate, embarrassing, and vulnerable times. These moments in my life are often free from glamor and are filled with sadness, desperation, and hyperfixation on something or someone I know is bad for me—or at the very least on someone who won’t return my feelings (or text messages). Sure, I get a little bit of revenge by writing candidly, but I am less interested in how these exes were mean than I am in why I was there and why I put up with it. I’d like to think that this is why those essays have connected with so many readers and why I keep getting asked to write them again.

In Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury wrote that in order to write well, you have to see your writing as a lark or a fascinating adventure. I suppose both are true when it comes to relationships and writing about them. Each piece starts as a lark—at first I feel like Carrie Bradshaw in my city apartment documenting tales of my lovers while wearing a Moschino scarf I got at a thrift shop. But as the words go onto the page, the fascinating adventure begins. Why did I say that? What made me react in that way? And then, suddenly, the story I thought I had right gets a little bit fuzzy—but also clearer. I am less sure of myself, but clearer in my convictions. Why did I allow that to go on for so long? Why didn’t I just walk away?

Unfortunately, my Carrie Bradshaw fantasy has become a little bit more of a reality. Years after writing essays about my exes, I found myself being asked to write more about the men of my past—men I truly no longer wished to remember. (Although no one has stopped me on the street and told me they recognize me from my author photo yet.)

I am less interested in how these exes were mean than I am in why I was there and why I put up with it.

Sometimes I am embarrassed that the bulk of my published work focuses on one subject; it can make me feel less valid as a writer. Whenever I feel this way, I try to remember the readers my work can help and make feel less alone—I get to be a gal pal to the girl who just ran into her ex and whose heart rate hasn’t quite come down. And luckily, readers have told me how much they needed that and have given me positive responses. Sometimes I am very proud of my work, and other days I feel embarrassed that I could not just leave these relationships behind but instead had to dissect and explore them thoroughly the best way I know how—on the page. I worry that the men and women I write about will get the impression that I still think about them, when in all honesty I don’t.

But when I consider it more deeply, I am less embarrassed about the idea of an ex reading an essay in which they are a character and more embarrassed that I put an essay out that explores some of the least sexy parts of my personality.

In 2021, I started to teach a workshop, “How to Write About Your Ex,” choosing to lean into my accidental “brand” as a woman who writes about her exes. To my surprise, most of the students who take my class have no trouble writing compelling nonfiction but are more concerned about publishing the piece for the world to see. I have students that ask me, before writing their own essay, “What will my ex say?” My answer is always the same: They will probably say nothing. Stories about heartbreak are always so much more than one individual event. They shape us and give us insight into who we are and where we are going. As my students work on their essays, the exes in question, whose opinions they fear, usually barely appear in their completed works. I assure my students that even if someone in their essay were to read their perspective, they are very unlikely to want to hash it out with them.

Even with this reassurance that a late-night DM is unlikely, my shiest students continue to ask me, “What if my ex contacts me? What will they think if I write about them?” To calm their nerves, I give them Anne Lamott’s famous quote as a starting point: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” But then I always ask them, “What will this story say about you?”

An exercise I use when I write or when my students are having a hard time finding their voice involves playing with the trope we may already have in our heads about relationships—that we are the heroes of our own stories—and then asking the page to show us that there are times we are not: Write one paragraph of your story where you are the perfect partner who did nothing wrong in the relationship. Lean into everything you did right. Then write one more where you are the villain of the story. Lean into everything you screwed up or wish went differently. How do these compare? Sometimes what is right for one person is painful for another. Nuance is okay. Gray areas are okay. These paragraphs don’t have to make sense together. Often we can find the answers just by playing these roles as if our relationships played out in an HBO drama—are we the hero or the villain?

When I start an essay now, I no longer sit down with a Carrie Bradshaw fantasy in mind. I know now I will get an honest self-portrait of myself at my worst, because there is no worse version of myself than being in love in a way I don’t deserve. I know now, after writing so many essays about my past loves, it is truly better to have no relationship than a shitty one.

I continue to write about my exes, learning about the former me and the present me, and overall the truth, as best as I can.

I encourage everyone to write about their ex. Release them. Release yourself. Feel the peace. They will not contact you, I promise. And whether you choose to publish the essay or keep it in your drafts folder, you’ll learn something along the way.

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