thread to get over a breakup

^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.

What if my brain got transplanted into the body of a dog?

would pet

would abuse advantage at sheep trials

'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?

i loled and totally agree with you -- what we're talking about is "love" not "unconditional love"

forgot about this thread, and it's been helpful to read through parts of it.

i guess it's been about a month or so since our breakup, and i just moved out last thursday. the hardest part for me has been realizing that i have no idea how to meet girls at all. last time i was dating lots of girls, i was 20 and i was having parties at my house every other night, and going to other people's parties when i wasn't having my own. now, only 8 years later, i have a job and i'm lame and i rarely go to parties...there's a halloween one this saturday i'm going to and i'm actually fucking NERVOUS! like, wtf happened to me? anyway, the thing where you go to a bar and meet someone just doesn't work well with me, and same with other chance encounters. i tend to be a little awkward when i first meet someone, so i need to bump into people multiple times over a short period of time and let them get to know me in different settings before things ever click. at least, that's the way it used to be?

god man, someone come here and toss cold water on my face and just slap the shit out of me, i am fucking lame

there's also the fact that i'm a sickly skinny dude and that means that 90% of girls reject me on sight. i really lucked out with my ex, she was "into" skinny guys, which was like the most lucky event of my life

i have no idea how to meet girls at all

overnight civil disobedience iirc

ha, that kind of didn't pan out. we're actually friends now, which is cool (i helped her work on a tar sands presentation that she gave last night in Alexandra, actually), but i quickly realized that the conversation was never going to expand beyond environmental issues and activism. i love to talk about that, but i also love to talk about many, many other things. and in our time together we've spent about 99.5% of the time talking about enviro stuff (other 0.5% was like "where is the bathroom?")

iirc zs is among the dreamiest of ilxors based on wdyll feedback

If you have friends then you'll meet ppl, don't sweat it. You'll be doing well to avoid blind dates tbh.

Also, go through yr phonebook. Worthwhile exercise ime

haha, i've already sent a few embarrassing late-night facebook messages to people i haven't talked to in half a decade.

corny admission, i combed my phonebook because my self-appointed wingman/guru forced me to and came up with one name.

ZS is totally cute, and so is crüt. But I still don't think the 'get a new relationship/get laid to validate yourself' advice is the best. I dunno, I mean, I get 'putting yourself out there' to a certain extent, but maybe I just don't get it because the world of American dating is so alien to me?

'get a new relationship/get laid to validate yourself'

Feel like this is again a misreading.

imo never have a wingman. otoh there's a paradox here as that belief stems from my deep seated "all advice is awful/no one understands anything" conviction, so i'm not sure i can recommend this info to you.

yeah ppl have already clarified they weren't saying that i think

Well, what are you saying? It was discussed in the context of advice, so are you denying that one of the pieces of advice to get over a breakup was to go out and meet someone else? If you do deny it, then what context does it have? If you agree that it was advice, then what is to be gained by it? Most of the thoughts have been some variant on self-validation, self-respect, feeling good about oneself again.

you've put the cart rather vehemently before the horse?

I, and i think most others, told crut that you could think about dating again without fully being over a big breakup.

Not as a way to get over it or as a coping mechanism, just that y'know you don't have to exclude yourself from the notion until you feel over it or w/e

I don't think that's anything to get hung up on tbh

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

Stop being my dad! On ilx! The smiley face that came after means that you didn't real mean it, did you?

The whole unconditional love schtick is, for me, too enmeshed w religion. In fact, theologically speaking humans are INCAPABLE of unconditional love but should aspire to it because it's the most godlike or Christ-like state of being. So only God can love TRULY unconditionally, and the relationship with God is where we're supposed to find our perfect love and acceptance while at the same time taking responsibility for always trying to be better than we are so that we can creep closer to being deserving of his grace.

That recipe has every ingredient for neurosis ever, right?

Laurel, please name other instances in which I have been your dad. I am somewhat joking about the car accident thing - bad things happen to good people - but I would be extremely concerned if there were a pattern of such incidents.

Also I'm sorry to make issues about me and MY issues but tbh the pressure I had internalized to always "be better" and forgive more and absorb more and look for what *I* could do better is part of what got me into that mess.

xp Even if that was the only instance, it would still be too much. But since you are not a terrible person I will assume you're mostly joking.

ANYWAY. SORRY. BREAK-UPS AND GETTING OVER THEM.

I, and i think most others, told crut that you could think about dating again without fully being over a big breakup.

Not as a way to get over it or as a coping mechanism, just that y'know you don't have to exclude yourself from the notion until you feel over it or w/e

Yeah, that's cool. I said above I agree with that. Probably just the veering off-topic that made it seem more like it was a YOU MUST FIND SOMEONE ELSE RIGHT NOW thing.

ha cool i'm on yr side there tbh

Yeah, I certainly don't think anyone should be pressured into dating again in the hopes of transactionally gaining the benefit of getting over their ex. That does seem weird and quasi-PUA to me, but I don't think that was what I was trying to convey.

Just also, while respecting and honoring your emotions, don't be a slave to them such that you cloister yourself away for your whole early twenties while you're still cute.

looool

I have dated people in the past two years. It's definitely helped me feel more confident about myself & learn more about myself & relationships, but on the other hand these relationships were mostly full of unnecessary drama & reopened the wounds of the old breakup whenever we'd stop dating

you shouldn't let someone else's schedule of when you should be over someone/something add to your anxiety or make you feel worse as a person.

here are a bunch of things i think about this thread, i think i'm just gonna write them & then watch a film so sorry for just interrupting instead of arguing, i will come back:

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.

― just1n3, Wednesday, 26 October 2011 15:21 (4 hours ago) Bookmark

this is otm! like i feel this is just part of modern life, part of being of a generation that takes a slightly more flexible path in terms of dating diff people (compared to some maybe reductive idea of prev gens settling down at 21 or w/e). there are complicated & tangled aspects to ending up with someone new, because maybe part of you would still on some level be invested in what you were like, or who you were with, in another relationship, but i think generally that can be made irrelevant by understanding that it having fallen apart or w/e is what lead you to being who you are now & where you are now, that that was then and this is now, even if you still have secrets to whisper into a rock. relationships are so different, also; I don't think that they necessarily/definitely share/overlap enough from one to the next to give a sense of 'replacement', in which you've switched one partner for the other and carried on trucking; i think you change a whole bunch in the interim and have a diff kind of relationship w/diff priorities, etc - some domestic, some physical, some extroverted some isolated &c&c&c, but not the same.

re: the unconditional love thing: i am w/darragh in thinking that it's not really something we're trying to explore rigorously or put to a but-what-if-you________ test. i think it's just shorthand for being with someone for whom the 'love' thing is a constant, and to whom your actions will be perceived in context, ie understanding if you are going through hard times or whatever, or understanding that you had to kill their family, or understanding that you always liked dogs and so duh. it's not like love is the bulletproof thing that will DEF force someone to be with you FOREVER, even if you superglue their hands together EVERY NIGHT while they sleep; just that you're with someone with whom you're well integrated etc. obv that's never 100% guaranteed but i think enough people feel it for it to be taken at face value, for some.

& re: there's also the fact that i'm a sickly skinny dude and that means that 90% of girls reject me on sight. i really lucked out with my ex, she was "into" skinny guys, which was like the most lucky event of my life

sickly hi-five, z s. i think a bunch of ilx guys are in relationships and they are mainly variations on the handsome/occasionally beardy/skinny guy theme (high five ilx). I also think that the weird thing about contemplating a prospective, as-yet-undetailed future relationship of some sort is that you're trying to work out what the amorphous collective of all the people/guys/girls in the world would like about you, where as in fact that person is always just an exception & an individual, as likely to appear whether everyone is the same & has the same type or whether they're anomalous. i guess running with this fades into WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT bs but the statisticsy thing feels kinda irrelevant to me, i think. i quite like/mainly agree w/p20 of this on that theme.

Crut, I'm not that up on your personal life, but have you already gone the therapy/counseling route? Because that seems like the obv next step if this issue is playing out 5x over two years and you don't see a route to resolving the personal ish here.