When you get back together with an old boyfriend, it's pathetic. It's like having a garage sale and buying your own stuff back.

Kightlinger uses a sharp, self-deprecating simile to mock the impulse to return to a past relationship. Comparing reconciliation with an “old boyfriend” to a garage sale suggests you once “cleared out” that part of your life for a reason—recognizing it as outdated, low-value, or no longer fitting. Buying your own items back implies a kind of circularity and poor judgment: you pay (emotionally, and perhaps socially) to re-acquire what you already decided to discard. The humor lands because it reframes romantic nostalgia as consumer behavior, exposing how sentimentality can override the practical lessons that led to the breakup.