Maybe we’re the ones who want their ex back

The hottest gossip on the timeline right now: are Ariana Grande and her ex, Ricky Alvarez, back together?

There are the concert appearances, the footage of him shaking her father’s hand and, naturally, the lyric change during thank u, next that sent fans searching for meaning.

But why does it matter?

Why does it matter to you, me or anyone else desperately refreshing their timeline for another glimpse of them together?

The obvious answer is that it is delicious. But that is definitely not the only reason.

There's a part of us that wants to believe that maybe this time, things will work out for them. Or maybe we're just looking for some form of escapism. Anything but looking at our own lives. Or perhaps we simply cannot resist the promise of an old flame rekindled.

Celebrity culture has given us plenty of supposed second-chance romances to obsess over. Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck reunited nearly two decades after ending their engagement. Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth repeatedly found their way back to one another, until they did not. Taylor Swift and Matty Healy became the subject of years of speculation before their brief relationship seemingly brought an old chapter back into the present.

Some reunions last. Some collapse. Others barely become relationships at all.

Still, we keep watching.

The fantasy of doing it right this time

Who has not experienced a spell of wanting an ex back?

A familiar old flame waltzes into your life looking shiny and seemingly new, while still being someone whose shape you already recognise. Falling back in love has never felt easier. Perhaps this is finally your second chance to do it right.

When it happens to your favourite celebrity, that feeling becomes magnified tenfold.

Pop culture has also become increasingly consumed by nostalgia. Reunion tours, reboots, sequels and revivals promise to return us to a time that felt simpler — or at least looks simpler from where we are standing now.

The COVID-19 pandemic left a strange gap in many people’s lives, sharpening our longing for the years and experiences we feel we lost. Since then, familiarity has become particularly marketable. We want the bands back together. We want the television characters reunited. Apparently, we also want our favourite celebrities to return to the people they once loved.

A reunion with an ex is nostalgia applied to romance: choosing the comfort of the known over the risk of the new.

But wanting your own ex back is personal. It still does not entirely explain why strangers become so invested in someone else doing it.

When a relationship becomes a storyline

That is the thing about celebrity relationships: they are rarely allowed to remain merely relationships.

Even celebrities who retreat from public view cannot completely escape the spotlight. In fact, the more elusive a relationship becomes, the more desirable every supposed clue appears.

So we devour it all.

Every headline, rumour and grainy social-media post becomes evidence. Every altered lyric from Sabrina Carpenter, Taylor Swift or Ariana Grande becomes worthy of analysis. Fans post incessantly, declaring that one ex was better, another was terrible and the newest partner is either perfect or completely wrong for someone they have never met.

It puts the “fan” in “fanfiction” into perspective.

Fanfiction is usually associated with fictional characters, but audiences have been “shipping” real people for years. Anyone who has spent enough time on Wattpad, FanFiction.net or Archive of Our Own (AO3) knows how passionately people can become attached to the possibility of two people ending up together.

Parasocial culture has made the line between reality and fiction even blurrier.

parasocial (adjective)

relating to or involving a one-sided emotional connection with someone (especially a celebrity or fictional character) whom one does not know personally.

A reunion is no longer simply two people reconnecting. It becomes a chapter update from the writer. A feeling of “the writer is finally giving us what we want!”.

Once fans enter that rabbit hole, they can begin to feel entitled to a front-row seat. Not only to the excitement, but also to the eventual resolution.

We want their ending to prove something

The problem is that every fan wants a different ending.

Some may want Ariana to move on and find her own version of a grand, public love story. Others may want Ricky to be the person who was right for her all along.

But beneath those competing fantasies is something more personal: we project our own hopes onto their relationship.

We pin the outcome we want for ourselves onto them. We wish for their happy ending because it allows us to believe that love can return, mistakes can be repaired and timing can eventually become right.

As if their reunion means ours might still be possible too.

Perhaps that is why celebrity exes fascinate us. Their relationships give us somewhere public to place the private questions we are too afraid to answer ourselves.

Would it work if we tried again? Have they changed? Have we? Can an old love become something new, or are we simply returning to a story because we already know how it begins?

If you are a millennial or zillennial who is not already settled down, do not pretend the thought of texting that person from 2017 — still sitting quietly in your contacts — has never crossed your mind. Afterall, we are all suckers for a face we have always known.

Celebrities are no exception. Ariana may simply be doing what the rest of us have considered doing at 1am, but under a microscope.

In the grand scheme of things, whether she returns to an ex changes nothing for the rest of us. We are not characters in their relationship, no matter how closely we follow its plot.

So perhaps the real question is not whether Ariana and Ricky are back together.

It is why we need their story to end a particular way, and what that reveals about the stories we are still trying to rewrite for ourselves.