thread to get over a breakup

Zero obligation to help her. I haven't even seen her and will not.

Do you have a decent rapport with her parents?

Yes very much so.

well she is out of the psych ward and feeling better. whew. of course she is all sweet to me. too bad girl.

how long does it take to get over a breakup if it's been two years and you're still not really over it?

i never really get over a breakup until i meet someone else who has the potential to fill the hole the other person left.

fnarr

get lots of pets and pet them a lot.

I would say...if it's been two years, The braek-up grief has become a stand-in for something else.

damn, i almost forgot we had our break-ups at the same time.

I would say...if it's been two years, The braek-up grief has become a stand-in for something else.

i'd second this... the worst and most hauntng break-up i ever had was around the time my dad died, and i can't help but think my inability to get over the latter aggravated my inability to get over the former, and that in my head the two blurred into each other, and my extended period of mourning the break-up was my way of dealing with having to mourn the much greater loss of my dad.

^^^^^^^^

well the break-up grief has always been partially a stand-in for my anxieties about myself + my personal issues that led to the breakup but I figured that was a given

'getting over' can be hard to define, though. I was probably still 'getting over' an ex when I started dating ms mac 6 years ago, ifkwim?

crut, I went through a break-up back in 2001 that I didn't really get over for a few years. A large part of it probably was personal insecurities and anxieties and them, but a lot of it truly was just the loss of the emotional bonds and investments that I felt between me and her. I still thought about her, missed her, would have to say, leave a bar if someone came in who looked too much like her.

So like, even though I wish my life had been different during that time (I was 23-26 or so, so by all means I should have been having a lot more fun and meeting more people), to some extent I have respect for the grief process I went through.

One thing that I did, and ymmv so it's not "advice" or anything, was to put myself out there and start dating again. Got a steady girlfriend. And I still wasn't over her for a couple years - I know I wasn't - but maybe it helped.

i did a two year recovery once. There's eventual light at the end of that tunnel; some of it may be more about personal growth than that person. In any case, it was for me.

That seems like kind of a bad deal for the new steady girlfriend, in this case (or boyfriend, if it were flipped), but I guess it worked out for Mac and Mrs Mac, so...

Date again wouldn't NEC be my advice, mostly because I haven't lived that path so I can't wholeheartedly advise it. But if fear/reluctance w/r/t dating is presenting some kind of barrier to meeting someone else, then by all means, just go out and do it.

Totally comf recommending personal growth, otoh. You should probably get your own house in order before using someone else as a...I was going to say "crutch" but that's ungracious. Remedy?

woaah, easy on the mrs talk

I think as long as you're not 'fleeing' into another relationship- and i acknowledge this can be a thing- then it's ok not to be completely over a serious ex- again, for a given ymmv value on 'over' or, indeed, 'serious' or 'ex'

Oh god, sorry! Thought Ms in my head, fingers were faster.

let your fingers do the walking... down the aisle?

Eh I read somewhere in some novel, a woman recommending that her daughter never stay with the first guy she dated after a breakup, because that first guy was like the greasy pancake that soaks up the grease from the grill so the other ones can come out right.

This is obv gross and over-labored as a metaphor but I think the whole concept is shitty to people.

Using someone else as a crotch, surely Laurel?

I wouldn't recommend seeking out another relationship either, to be honest. It is perfectly possible to go into a good long-term relationship that began while you were still not quite over an ex, but that's different to advice saying 'get yrself a girlfriend, stat! It'll make everything better'.

posted this itt already, but my ex got married this year and the pic caught me by surprise (fuckin local papers) and i def had a weird day or two, but... that's ok imo. texted her congrats, anonymously abused him on twitter, so over it baby.

i am grateful to another relationship for not allowing me to flee into it. god knows i've tried.

emil.y- agreed, totally- just saying that 'new relationship != cure', but also that 'not quite 100% tiggerish about it != don't consider dating'

Totally see where laurel is coming from, and would have otm'd that advice in the past, but: my husband was kinda emotionally wrecked from his last relationship when we met, as well as having some other stuff to deal with; sage advice would have been to work on himself before getting involved with me, but in reality it was meeting me that helped mend him in a lot of ways (lol braggin).

if we all waited till we were emotionally healthy before dating someone we would be single a really long time! You just need to meet the person who will support you and understand you and be willing to love you unconditionally.

lol that is crazy braggin

'Unconditional love' is such balls, though, sorry. There are always conditions. I mean, what if I killed your family? What if my brain got transplanted into the body of a dog?

but that's different to advice saying 'get yrself a girlfriend, stat! It'll make everything better'.

Didn't think I was saying this, exactly. But having someone to go through personal growth with can be better than woodshedding it sometimes. Also learning about and developing different styles and habits and behaviors to a relationship helped me put my old deal in perspective, even though I wasn't 100% into the new relationship.

I don't really feel like I was being unfair to the new woman either. I mean, we did care about each other and have good times together and all. I wasn't all like, "yo bitch, fuck me til I get over my shit. cool, I'm done. peace."

^posts you instantly regret making.

strange, that worked brilliantly for me, what a woild!

Also learning about and developing different styles and habits and behaviors to a relationship helped me put my old deal in perspective

Right, this part makes sense to me! How else are you supposed to learn HOW to be in a relationship but to be in one? Totally fair, imo.

Guess I just mistrust resting your personal work on the condition of having someone to do it "with." Or "for." Or someone to support you while you do it, or whatever.

Gee, emily, I guess I should have added ” unconditional based the terms of our agreed reality” or something

Yeah, that's fair. I mean, that certainly isn't how my 24-year-old self was working things out in his head. It was less about consciously putting in personal work than thinking optimistically about an individual - over the chorus of emotional keening that was still going on in my head over my previous girlfriend - and investing some faith in them and partnering up. I wasn't really into self-analysis or conscious personal improvement at the time.

xp"

I admit my examples were extreme, but everyone has a limit. It might be 'maintain a healthy sex life', 'move halfway across the world so I can live my dream of running an emu farm', 'not cheat', 'not change your political views', 'not find/lose religious beliefs', 'stay looking like the 20-year old version of you', 'not change your mind (for/against) about having children', 'not start a blood feud with my siblings', 'not become a drug addict'... I could go on. Obviously not everyone will react to such things in the same way, but everyone has their own limit.

I'm gettin' pretty chary about the "unconditional love" part in my old age, tbh. For years I've felt like I could handle the "other stuff" if someone that *I* found unconditionally loveable would just make me the A++ #1 most important thing in his life and love me forever. It would give me...the newfound self-esteem? promise of safety? lift the threat of loneliness? who knows...that I thought I needed to be a functional "normal" person.

I don't think that anymore. Also have watched a TON of my friends decide that their long-term relationships or marriages weren't going to work anymore.

Or, I should say, not work well enough for them to not resent the limitations the other person was putting on them.

Unconditional to me obv doesn't mean "I will cover for your murder."

To back up Justine, to me it means when money is tight, when your health is at it's worst, when you are crabby & haven't slept, when you crash the car, when you've got horrible gastro & are going at both ends, that I will still be there beside you, that things would have to get pretty fucking hard to throw in the towel. It's not a guarantee. We don't shake on it. It's something I want to do, am compelled to do because I receive the same in return.

Whether you sign on for that depends on the relationship, or you, I guess. But as a concept it doesn't seem that ridiculous.

I don't think I could keep going with a car-crasher.

when money is tight, when your health is at it's worst, when you are crabby & haven't slept, when you crash the car, when you've got horrible gastro & are going at both ends, that I will still be there beside you

That's just being part of a partnership. Obviously some people might leave, others wouldn't, but those things are fairly basic.

things would have to get pretty fucking hard to throw in the towel.

Then it's not unconditional and you're using the word wrong.

If you think about 'unconditional love' as it was originally used, as in parental/familial unconditional love, then you will see that it was meant to mean that, while they might not cover for your murder, they would still love you if you were a murderer. Of course, familial unconditional love is balls, too, but the social expectations and ties of life together are usually much more of a bind to make you pretend that it's not balls.

Crashing the car is "fairly basic"?

Um, yes? I mean, I'm assuming here that it was an accident. Obviously if you were hepped up on goofballs and driving at 100mph it goes beyond basic.

If someone crashes into you, that's an accident. If you crash into someone/something else, I would want nothing to do with you as a life-partner. That's my condition.

: D

getting hung up on a type of unconditional love that i don't think anyone is arguing for here

Ehh not everyone might be into the idea of giving unconditional love, but that doesn't mean it's balls.

Lol, mister flatbread. Lol indeed. Well, I don't drive, so I'd be fine, anyway.

just1n3, if you really think that you can give unconditional love in a way that is rigorous philosophically and doesn't render the term redundant, then go for it. It seems to me that those who have argued for unconditional love existing in this thread have definitions of unconditional love that I would just call a definition of love, full stop, and certainly don't have anything to do with the term 'unconditional'.

If send our children away in one another's cars they are not to come home in a neck brace. That is the bedrock of my relationship with my wife.