thread to get over a breakup

Excerpted from thehairpin.com because it seemed to me to be basically, constitutionally true and this is exactly what I did even though at the time it seemed recklessly self-destructive but maybe I'm just like that:

You gotta hurt. This is the worst part, but do you really want to get over this thoroughly and move on with your life and not still be talking about this person many years from now? OK. Then you have to go to all of the places where the pain is and feel every single bit of it. You have to seek out the pain like you're playing a videogame where you get a point every time you find and deal with another aspect of your heartbreak. You have to tread and re-tread all the neural pathways and smoke it all out and give voice to all of your deepest fears about your loss and then conquer it by telling a new story about it. The story that's always worked for me is "I was lucky to experience this relationship and I've learned from it, and just because a relationship ends doesn't mean someone failed." Just kidding, that has never worked for anyone, but try it on anyway because hopefully that's how you will actually feel in a few months. Only time works, but it always works. You will get over this person. You are NOT the exception to the rule. Feel the pain until it bores you.

Feel the pain until it bores you OTM

http://i.imgur.com/m01u7.png

Excerpted from thehairpin.com because it seemed to me to be basically, constitutionally true and this is exactly what I did even though at the time it seemed recklessly self-destructive but maybe I'm just like that:

i went into full-on self-destructive mode after a breakup years ago. i don't recommend it.

i didn't mind the breakup per se, so much, i guess that was my fault. but it deeply bothered me that i lost her as a friend. i'm not a grudge-holder, so that confused me.

Self-destructive mode is such an easy answer because it's easy to feel devalued or down on yourself after a breakup. I mean, wallowing in self-pity or slumming it for a bit has its appeal, but you've got to bounce out of that or at least not do anything that you're going to regret in the long term.

I think that both the 'try and establish a friendship now so that you don't add regrets to your list of painful things' and 'feel the pain, all of it, now' can work together. All too easily, probably. I guess a lot depends on how patient the other party can be with you during the establishing-friendship phase. I will be testing all this out Thursday night.

I also think 'feel the pain until it bores you' is nicely put. I sort of remember that feeling and can't wait for that day. Currently alternating between feeling nothing and feeling in a blind panic that I did the wrong thing and cheated myself out of some great times and a deepening relationship. Sort of hoping this will be disproved Thursday night after some just-got-to-ask-you questioning.

make sure he's interested in having that friendship, too

Yes. As the drama wears off, that's the test.

xxxp no, the self-destructive part was the rooting out of all my insecurities and the places the haertbreak was living, like, "Of course he left you, you lack x quality and y quality, how could you have expected anything else? Don't be ridiculous -- learn your place, feel sorry for yourself for an afternoon, then pick up and resign yourself and let's find something else to do." That kind of talk.

It was sort of cutting out the parts that were throbbing and having a sharper, cleaner pain in their place, but it was pretty hard on me, doing it.

a toothache is always worse than the pain after a root canal because your tooth has a throbbing infected nerve. once you kill the nerve and remove it (ie have a root canal), the tooth may ache from being messed with so much, but it's not the same inside-your-head pain of an infected tooth.

finding something else to do is key

I have an inner Yankee spinster aunt who tells me I'm being boring and self-indulgent before I am actually bored w myself necessarily. She's not very nice but she does get the job done.

man, the 'friends' thing, i don't even know why people want that. Do women tend to want it more than men? Seems that way ime but i don't know if it's that way generally

It just strikes me as the uberchallenge, when getting out of serious relationship sane and able to hopefully try it all again someday with somebody else should be enough on your plate.

I don't get it either, d. So many of my exes have insisted that we'll be friends afterward and I'm like, ru insane? First of all if they are the ones breaking up with me, that's IT: they don't get to have just the parts of me that they want, THERE IS NO LAUREL BUFFET. They want to be free of their commitment to me? Be free. Be very free. Be so free that you never call me or email me again.

Second is the pain & healing part, I just can't do that while keeping in touch.

First of all if they are the ones breaking up with me, that's IT: they don't get to have just the parts of me that they want, THERE IS NO LAUREL BUFFET

truth buffet imo

First of all if they are the ones breaking up with me, that's IT: they don't get to have just the parts of me that they want,

Yeah, I pretty much told my ex-bf that verbatim, though I broke up with him after I found out he was cheating and he didn't want to stop seeing the other girl. He's still seeing her. I told him that I couldn't completely forgive him and be close friends with him until he stopped getting with this chick.

THERE IS NO LAUREL BUFFET

hahaha, I'd like to imagine you actually saying this at significant break-up moments

but it's hard to just jettison that history of intimacy, especially if you were with that person for a significant amount of time.

not as hard as trying to integrate it into your new roles as people who don't date, again just ime/o

VP, it is my goal to be a person who says that next time!! I'm glad you like it.

xp - it depends on the relationship -- really, the percentage of time spent doing things together specific to couples might be a major factor vs. percentage of time spent together doing things that friends do.

like we probably spent more time together at hardware stores than having sex.

oh i am trying so hard to think of more than y'know that one thing that fits that category

we really spent a lot of time at hardware stores!

well i spent a lot of time at hardware stores with tony o toole from inishturk in the summer of 96 but y'know he never asked to meet my dad or nothing

his name fits into this really well now i look again

I do not miss the way he insisted on carrying the 50lb bags of drywall mix rather than putting them in a cart like a normal person.

oh you want the 'things men do' thread imo?

I do not miss the way he was significantly oblivious to the organizing principles of hardware stores (considering how much time we spent in them), and would take forever to find where the thing we were looking for was kept in the store.

Why would you think Walgreen's would carry buss fuses?!!!

were with that person for a significant amount of time

I think that's totally otm at least ime but what kind of friends you want to be sort of makes a difference too, I think.

I am still friends with both my boyfriend from HS (dated 3 years) and the guy I dated off and on all through college over ten years later. I think that's been made possible mainly by the fact that we're friends on FB with every couple of months email updates type friends and not the hang out all the time type friends. I don't know if it would have been possible then.

Of course, being in touch can also lead to some fucked up and tricky situations years later. Like, oh I don't know, when one of the aforementioned visits the foreign country in which you now live with a partner and asks you out for friendly drinks during which he decides to propose to you. The evening then sets off a chain of events that result in your life spinning out of control for a while but, hey, at least it'll make for a somewhat interesting story years later and help you realize that he was always sort of an asshole and that you were always better off without him and don't really even care that much about being friends with him in the end.

if 'Friends' ever did the movie huh

Yeah but with one of the male leads being a much much bigger jerk.

what, then even ross? get out

ha

d - "things men do" and "things my ex-bf does because he has a huge martyr complex" overlap, but are not exactly the same.

I tried playing the martyr at the end of a relationship once, but even at the time it felt cheap and wrong and I've never done it again.

xp Walgreens does sell Buss fuses, actually.

^best post

For me, not talking, not 'normalising', the suddenness of someone disappearing, cause more pain than weaning myself off someone gradually and changing my relationship with them. For others, it's vice versa. Both totally valid responses. My own issue is making sure I handle it ok and don't go too far too quickly with expecting a friendship.

Mind you, I'm only talking about people I really cared about. If I've lost all respect for them by the time of the breakup, then I won't want to stay friends (although would much prefer everything to be at least amicable).

Laurel, I also welcome the inner aunt. Usually, better her than people who try to tell you how they can't believe this has happened to you yet again because you are so fabulous, when you feel your lest fabulous ever and just can't help but feel they are lying.

Clearly my ex-bf needs to move to Florida, because the Walgreen's here do not sell buss fuses.

wth is a buss fuse?

http://lighting-electrical.org/_cache/Fuses/img/Buss_Fuse_0.jpg

Are those the old-style screw-in fuses that someone might have instead of circuit breakers?

Burn it down and salt the earth.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Friday, April 29, 2011 10:26 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark

this is the best advice imo

I want an answer to the fuse question.

it was re friends after iirc also otm

so. broke up with the girl 7 or so months ago. currently very much single and miserable - now i see on facebook the ex is seeing some dude. i feel like i lost. wtf. i shouldn't care but i do.

That feeling goes away

but it's ok to feel shitty over it for the time being too iirc

it's not like i want her back either. i think i feel like i failed because i'm still single maybe.