At first glance, Jennifer Lopez, Maya Jama and I have very little in common – aside from the fact that we are all women and have all returned to our exes, only for it not to work out, again.
Admittedly, J Lo and husband Ben Affleck have not announced a split, but the rumour mill has been churning for some time after the couple have allegedly been spending more time apart and reportedly spent their second wedding anniversary, which fell over the weekend, apart.
When it comes to Jama though, she’s now a fully paid-up member of the “second break-up club’” after her and Stormzy announced their separation via a joint statement on Instagram on Wednesday.
“We’ve been laughing whilst drafting this because we never, ever, in a million years thought we’d be the couple announcing a break-up, but for the sake of clarity and, more importantly, to allow us the space and grace that’s needed for us both to be able to navigate this next bit of our lives with peace, we thought it might be best to,” the statement read.
“We fell madly in love in 2014, broke up in 2019, and then spent five years manoeuvring life apart. We decided to try for the final time in August 2023, and we’ve spent this past year trying our best to make it work; however, we recently decided to call it quits.”
And though I don’t know either of them personally, nor have I been privy to the ins and outs of their relationship, for me, their announcement stirred up a sense of unease. Ultimately, Jama and Stormzy’s relationship did not end up being the romcom movie-style reunion we had all hoped it would be, and the fallout of that is one I know the pains of only too well.
I remember exactly where I was the day my ex, let’s call him James, texted me. It was raining and I was running from the car to my front door with a Tesco Bag For Life over my head.
“Hello stranger. Sorry I haven’t been in touch.”
My breath suddenly felt sticky in my throat. “In touch?” We hadn’t spoken since I had stormed out of his room at university after finding out he had been cheating on me. And, if you imagine here that I left enraged by his actions and determined to leave him behind, you’d only be right on the first count, because – and I still feel a sense of shame in admitting this – I was prepared to forgive him, so strong was my belief of our futures being inextricably intertwined.
The problem was, he didn’t want forgiveness, he was looking to move on from his last relationship, and I knew through mutual friends (and admittedly, some social media stalking) that he had recently split from that same girl he cheated on me with. I tentatively replied, “Ohh, that’s what you’re sorry for?”
“You’re funny,” he replied almost immediately. “You always were.”
And there it was, in that four letter word – “were” – the reason why going back to an ex is so common among both celebrities and mere mortals. We had a history. We knew each other. Talking to James was easier, and more enjoyable, than the stunted dating app messages I’d engaged in over the time we’d been apart, it was more natural. It felt like coming home after a stint away: filled with an easy nostalgia, an odd sense of comfort even after his wrongdoing.
Within months we were spending several nights a week together, rewatching films we both loved and spending hours tucked away in an intimate corner of the local pub, exchanging stories from the 12 months we’d missed out of each other’s lives. And for a while it was almost as if no time had passed at all, so high was I on the frenetic passion of our reunion.
I was entirely consumed by the rekindling of our flame, intent on forgetting how cruelly it had been extinguished last time. It was an intoxicating cocktail of new moves and old favourites, but it wasn’t all butterflies and rainbows.
Not everyone had been as elated as I was about James being back in my life. “I honestly feel like I’ve lost all respect for you,” one of my friends, a person who had held me while I sobbed for months after the initial break-up, told me bluntly, while another explained that though they wanted me to be happy, they just couldn’t spend time with us as a couple any more.
In fact, after such a mixed reaction from my closest friends, I stopped telling people that I was back in a relationship with James. I’d carefully omit it from catch-ups and dodge questions around dating if asked. And even behind closed doors, as much as I tried to shut it out, there were times where I was forced to acknowledge the reason behind our initial separation. When he had booked a new restaurant for date night, for example, and then suggested we get the bone marrow bread because “it was perfect for sharing” last time he came.
And then there was the sense of foreboding that underpinned my happiness, one that felt difficult to quash in my solitary moments, where questions around whether I could trust James this time ricocheted around my mind. Add to that the pressure that comes with giving a relationship a second go, the expectation, the subconscious (and at times conscious) striving to recreate what you had in a new set of circumstances, and what I thought would be a formula for forever happiness felt more like a recipe for disaster.
There was no sudden realisation, no lightning bolt that struck me, but as the six-month mark approached, I could no longer convince myself it was right. For the first time since I’d met James, I no longer thought he was “the one”, and the sacrifices I had had to make to keep version 2.0 of our relationship afloat began to feel too great.
I dealt with the fallout of this second break-up for years after it happened, not because of James but because of the trust I had lost among my friends, and if I was honest, in myself. It took time to win people back round, to learn to trust myself again and to re-immerse myself in the life I had stepped back from while I’d been with him.
What I did get from my reunion with James, though, was a new ending, one where I wasn’t the victim. That was immeasurably healing, though it wasn’t my reason for ending it at the time. And I hope the same will be true for Jama, who, as far as we know, co-created a statement with her ex that felt light, considered and mutual, in stark comparison to their first break-up.
As Stormzy says in his song “Lessons” about his split with Jama: “There’s a couple lines in our script I think we should edit.” But perhaps, in some cases, the script should be thrown away altogether in order for a new story, with new characters, to emerge.