If you’re anything like me you’ve spent almost half of your life in and out of relationships. Kind of like a car that you lease, some are flashier, some are more functional but when your 3yr contract is up you’re not buying it out and that comes down to practicality and desire. For one reason or another it just doesn’t make sense to stick with it and just like that you’re onto something newer. That’s life right? But it doesn’t make it any easier.
There’s those weird days right after a break up where you move from blind optimism to devastation in the blink of an eye. Everything is fine and then someone walks past wearing his cologne but you keep it together until your friend asks if you’re alright. And there’s that break-up euphoria that makes you feel invincible, like if every man in the world started brawling because of you, you wouldn’t be surprised. And in those moments you fully trust that EVERYTHING will be okay, until you think about the fact you need to buy groceries and this will be the first time you go to the store alone in months.
You get to choose how to end things usually, are you going to be civil or are you going to embody every good Miranda Lambert break-up song? I’ve always preferred the angry way out, I’ve never regretted burning bridges because I don’t believe in real second chances. There are those small breakups that you know aren’t really the end and that’s one thing, but the moment you choose to walk out of my life you better believe I locked the door behind you. …and then built a moat…and then filled that moat with cobras, and then bred the biggest of those cobras to each other until I created the world’s first group of moat-dwelling super cobras. THAT is how done I am.
It’s scary to think of burning bridges initially, it’s easy to think that if you’re just a little nicer to them then maybe they’ll come to their senses, you can “nice” them into loving you again. And while I don’t think you need to go full crazy I think even the subconscious desire to win someone back after they’ve walked out of your life needs to be ended.
I doesn’t necessarily mean that you should carry the heavy weight of hatred on your shoulders. I mean you need to recognize that you don’t need to be the emotional support for someone who no longer fits in to your life. Yes, every situation is different, there are those people whose time in your life has expired but mutually there’s still love and you can part ways as good friends. But more often than not, communication after breakup just muddies the waters, provides one/both of you with false hope, and there are those (usually with control issues) who are merely leeches attached to your mental and emotional well being just draining you in your attempts to not harden your heart against them.
You don’t NEED someone who, even for a week, decided that they don’t NEED you. Those long, drawn out breakups where you both go back and forth, angry to sad to hopeful is just a WASTE OF TIME. When you think about it, time is the only resource in your life for which there is no yardstick. You never know how much time you have and more importantly the time you spend you can NEVER get back. So when you think “maybe if I just say this last thing, maybe if I send this one text, *6 tequilas later* but maybe if I send this one last text NOW, maybe if I KEEP fighting, things will go back to normal (that rose-colored lense “normal” that we tend to use when thinking about our relationships after a breakup). There’s this fear, in a break-up, that you’re losing this person and you’ll never find anyone else like them. and to an extent that’s true, men are like snowflakes, I fucking hate them. Just kidding I mean no two men are the same. But we need to stop thinking about the person and instead think about the emotions. If that person made you HAPPY then what you truly want is to be happy and there are endless options for happiness outside of a person who, in the end, made you sad. I have a STRONG inclination that the only people who die alone or live unhappily are the ones who refuse to move on. Not everything that you think is meant for you is truly meant for you, just LET IT GO.
Being self aware is important, in dating AND in breakups. Being honest with yourself and accepting your reality is important, in dating AND in breakups. LOVE for yourself is important, in dating AND in breakups so I will leave you with this last note…
Humans are so resilient. I remember 10yrs ago driving home I had to pull over because I couldn’t see through my tears. I thought my heart would never heal. But life went on and it did. And then it was ripped open, over and over again. And just when you think you couldn’t possibly be okay, you are. You can hold the weight of the world in sorrow and just when you’re strong enough to bear it with ease, life adds to it. And it’s so sad and exhausting but it’s also inspiring to accidentally prove that you are stronger than you could’ve ever imagined. We continue to test the universe and open ourselves up to suffering because it is in our nature to hope and hope, while it may be the cruelest part of love is SO brave. So pain isn’t a weakness or flaw. It is a result of the braveness of hope and the resilience of love. So stop pretending you’re a martyr for living a complacent life instead of constantly celebrating your ability to FEEL. It is an honor to feel happiness and it is humbling to feel pain. There is no nobility in settling.