My ex and I broke up three months ago, but we’ve been talking about meeting to clear the air. The thing is, every time I go out, she watches my stories within minutes, and then mutual friends start dropping hints like they're reporting back to her. Yesterday she texted, 'Heard you were having fun with Sarah, guess you’re not taking our talk seriously.' It feels like she's running background checks and auditioning me before she'll even agree to a coffee. I still want her back so much, but is this just her being cautious, or am I blinding myself?

She isn’t being cautious; she is testing how much power she still holds over your life without offering you any real commitment in return. In tight-knit circles, mutual friends and Instagram easily turn into surveillance tools. When an ex uses your social life as leverage to grant or withhold a conversation, it puts you in the position of an applicant on probation. Hope makes you interpret that jealousy as disguised longing, but monitoring your evenings isn't the same thing as wanting a mature, mutual fresh start. The only way out of this audition is to refuse the stage. The next time she throws a secondhand rumor at you, don't defend yourself. Instead, be crisp: "If we want to meet and see where we stand, let's pick a day this week. But I'm not going to justify who I grab a drink with while we’re broken up." Her reaction to that boundary will tell you everything you actually need to know about a second chance.