To think bumping into an ex unexpectedly...

[LondonDays1]

... stirs up old feelings, no matter how things ended or who did the dumping? This has happened to me after 4 years of no contact. We chatted a bit, he's been in my head since, although I know this will pass.
I felt a bit sad/nostalgic - AIBU?

What’s your current life like?

and surely you grasp that this doesn’t happen in every case.

No that doesn’t always happen at all.

Do you think maybe you are just fantasising that the relationship / he was better than it was?

You split up for a reason.

I think the thread you need to start OP is probably about how unhappy you are with your present life

I'm actually very content and happy, my life couldn't be better and there's zero chance of ever going back there, but he was in my life for a long time and overnight we never saw each other again.

I very much doubt that
if bumping in to an ex can leave you feeling sad and nostalgic

either way… I hope things improve

I was once walking down the street and I noticed some man glaring at me. He looked strangely familiar and I realised half way down the street that he was the person that I thought was the love of my life more than twenty years ago. It didn't give rise to a flood of nostalgia other than wondering why I put up with somebody who treated me so badly for so long. My husband turned out to be the real love of my life.

Totally understandable, OP. You're human, he obviously meant a lot to you at some stage. I found myself in the same boat, I am very happily married with children. Brought up old memories...It did pass though.

It’s perfectly natural to wonder what life would be if you took a different path, it doesn’t mean that your life now isn’t happy and complete. I’ve found as I’ve got older I often wonder where I would be if I’d done things different my life now has its troubles but in the whole is good and I wouldn’t swap it

you say you wouldn’t go back but during the time with him you had good times and happy memories which bumping into him has reminded you of.

but he was in my life for a long time and overnight we never saw each other again.

most break ups aren’t quite like that. Why was the rupture so sudden?

I think bumping into any of my exes would induce a state of instant relief that i never married them and in some cases, a bit of vomit!!

No way would any of them made me as happy as I am with DH!!

Yes it can bring up some feelings but it will also pass. I bumped into a ex a while ago and didn’t think about him until I noticed your thread. He definitely won’t have thought about me afterwards.
Probably more nostalgia than anything else.
They’re an ex for a reason.