SGSGG - The X
Breaking up sucks. Even if it’s the best possible thing that could happen to you, breaking up is no kind of fun.
There are two general ways to handle the break up. There’s the cold break where you cut off your ex from your life entirely, then there’s the sort of warm break where you’re not dating but you still can tolerate hanging out with each other. Then there’s the break up with benefits where you still snog, but don’t really communicate with each other much beyond the physical intimacy. So we’ll just ignore that one for now.
I’m mostly familiar with the cold break seeing as how divorce is pretty damn cold. We never had kids and there wasn’t a splitting of assets so there was no immediate need to try to keep in contact with each other, I felt it best to cut my ex off entirely. Sometimes I wonder if this was the most healthy approach to take. Clearly, I harbor some measure of animosity towards my ex. After all, she was the one who left me. Gradually, that’s grown to a good measure of indifference. But I wonder if there wasn’t a better way to handle the split.
I’ve always been impressed with people who are still friends with their exes. They somehow manage to recall the happy times spent together and either move past the reasons for their split or joke about them. They’ve clearly hurt each other in the past, but they’ve managed to move on and get passed that.
Certainly no good can come from holding a long standing grudge against someone. Holding on to such anger can manifest itself in health problems and added stress. And often times the target of your acrimony may not feel as strongly as you. You may end up doing yourself more harm than good. By the same token, attempting to keep in contact with someone who merely reminds you of the pain and bitterness of your break up can be equally as damaging.
So, gentle readers, how do you handle break ups?
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January 18th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I’m one of those annoying people who happens still be friendly with most, if not all of my ex-girlfriends. There’s a time, shortly after the breakup, where we won’t talk for a bit, but as I dated people with whom I shared a group of friends, and ones that happend to be just as stubborn as me, well, we turned out to be friendly in the end.
Just recently, I met up with an ex-girlfriend who had dated my best friend right after she had dumped me. She was working at a pizza place, and was engaged to one of my other old friends now. It was surprising, but I gave her my phone number and told them both that if they wanted to hang out, I’d be cool with it. It was one of those bizarre moments where I had stepped back into my old life, where I actually have ex-girlfriends, and potential girlfriends. Not so anymore, but as we grow, some things change, no?
Well, I’ve only had one bad break up where I stopped talking to someone entirely. It was with a young woman whom we’ll call L. L had a bad family life, and ended up getting sent to a mental institution for a short while before moving to Missouri. Now, she had sent a letter to me through one of her friends, printed out, telling me that she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. It was delivered to me when I was in the middle of telling a joke at lunch. I read it, folded it up, thanked the friend, and continued the joke. I had thought that I had been the one to drive her crazy for the longest time. It was only recently that we talked again, and she cleared things up for me. We can now chat like anyone else.
I’ve had other breakups that had the potential to be horrible, and that I’m a monster for doing. Both times I broke up with the girl over the phone, once on Valentines Day. There was a lot of crying. I’m still good friends with them, and had a better relationship with them after the fact.
The bizarre thing is that through high school, I apparently only dated girls from a tight-knit group of geeky girls. A bizarre twist of this is that after a relationship ended with one, I was often recommended to another, or at least introduced.
How I managed this without getting killed I’m still reflecting on, and this is getting to be a bit too expansive. I probably have enough relationship stories to fill a novella.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
I’m one of those ladies who can stay friends with an ex. I find the key for me is to be honest and clearly define expectations, so there can’t be any misinterpretation and hurt feelings from it.