posted
Let me just start by saying this isn't about me. I haven't had a girlfriend since the Carter administration.
My best friend just broke up with his girlfriend of seven years. I asked him how he was handling it, and he said everytime he had the urge to call her he was making himself do pushups till the urge passed.
I thought that was an awesome tactic (no calling, plus you're getting in shape) and I asked how it was working. "My arms are killing me," he said.
Post your best tactics here.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Wow, that sounds much more constructive than my method of thinking of him as a terminal illness that I'm recovering from on a daily basis.
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I like yours LadyDove. It adds a sense of humor to the whole thing, at least from my perspective.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
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<Laughing> Yeah, the counselors said, "Why are you laughing." I said, "I feel like I'm living through a macabre 'I Love Lucy' episode."
Posts: 2425 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
Regardless of how the relationship ended, there needs to be zero contact between then for awhile, long awhile. The biggest mistake I made with my ex was letting her try to be my friend afterwards.
I'd suggest he call all his other friends and spend as much time with them as possible. Renew old friendships, and basically reengage contact with all the parts of his life that are just him, and not him and her.
Option B is to wallow for a long time until slowly and painfully the anguish just fades away like slowly pulling a salt laden band-aid off an infected wound of incomprehensible torment.
Just thought I'd toss that in so he has some choices to pick from.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: I haven't had a girlfriend since the Carter administration.
Hm. Either you're quite a bit older than I thought you were, or you're saying that you haven't had a serious girlfriend since you finished with that whole potty training business.
posted
The best way to get over emotional trauma is to immerse yourself in something else. You have to find a way to care more passionately about something else than you care about your ex.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Accidentally run into him/her while he/she is out with a whole bunch of friends who know who you are. While you're on a date with someone else, who's a hundred times more attractive.
Especially when you don't even notice your ex's presence and paw all over the new person.
And then you get an angry email from your ex about, "How dare you!" a few days later.
One of my favorites-- A friend of mine who has a license to sell firearms took me and a couple of buds out to shoot his life-size wedding portrait with a variety of weapons the weekend after his divorce was final. We finished by firing white phosphorus shotgun rounds at it in an attempt to set it aflame, but they were too old and didn't ingnite anything. Still, it was a fun day.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
I find it best to find new outlets of fun..or entertainment. Go out and hang with the girls. (if you're a girl) and as was already stated early hang out with the guys (if you're a guy) nothing makes you feel better than the hug/sympathy/"what an asshole/bitch, forget him/her" words...of a friend. Haha, I read this quote somewhere...pretty silly..but i thought of it when I was responding.
"Friends are like the lime after a tequilia shot, they make everything easier to handle"
friends are def great motivators to get up and move on...so that you're not sitting around being all lonely and bitter....
and i dont agree with the "Find someone new" although its nice to have, its very unhealthy..to move on that fast. For the dumper and the dumpee. Take time off..key word...time...is the healthiest way to handle a breakup...in every sense of the word.
Posts: 82 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I cry. If my memory serves correctly (it's been a very long while), I mope, cry, write endless pages about him, whine to everyone who doesn't promise to drown me if they have to hear one more word, read comforting books, drink hot chocolate, and paint.
The moping and crying is necessary. It's going to happen anyway - there's no avoiding it. Might as well revel in it and get it over with.
Painting helps the most. Plus, you know you're better when you start switching to the bright, happy colors.
I don't like the Rebound idea because it seems very cruel and disrespectful to whomever you are using as the rebound person.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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On Saturday I asked my ex to join me in a small parting-of-ways ritual; we went to a bridge/overhang over a lake, said our last words over the relationship, then on the count of three, threw our wedding rings as hard as we could. That's more good for providing closure than the actual getting-over-him part, but I'm glad I did it anyway.
Posts: 957 | Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
pH, I didn't mean it as judgement. I've done it before, and it turned out my biggest regret was how I treated the rebound person. Everything else seems like part of love and war, but I still feel bad about that part.
Granted, he was exceptionally dense (if she starts crying when talking about her ex-boyfriend, she may not be over him), but the babe in the woods idiocy doesn't really exculpate me.
*waves arms* Don't mind me. Just working off the guilt issues. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Stray, I really like that. While it wasn't so formal, my ex and I did something like that. I was a mess, but it was very cathartic.
Posts: 3846 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
So...3 months and counting (for a 4 1/2 month relationship. We ended on good terms. No contact at all. How much longer is it supposed to be this bad?
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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I don't think "no contact" is bad. No contact, or at least vastly reduced contact, is part of how I move on even from short-term dating experiences.
When I'm really torn up, though, I grind out some nice heavy riffs. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
I think parting on good terms is harder than parting on bad terms.
If you part on bad terms, it usually becomes very, very clear why you guys shouldn't be together. And it also usually becomes very clear why he/she is stupid, and you don't need him/her anymore.
It makes it a lot harder to stay friends afterwards, though.
posted
Yeah, the guy who stood in my backyard calling me an expletive-deleted whore at the top of his lungs and asking which of our friends I had been cheating on him with to make me want to break up with him and then wanted to remain friends afterwards was way easier to get over than the guy who said something along the lines of "I'm sorry I feel this way, and I wish we could work it out, but I just don't think I can get past X issue so we probably need to break it off so we can both get on with our lives."
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I have a hard time staying friends afterwards. I have no problem being civil or hanging out with the people I've dated, but I'm certainly not close to any of them anymore.
Actually, all of my close friends are male.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
O_O This thread makes me wonder... I honestly don't remember ever being bummed about a break-up. At least not for long, and usually it wasn't the break up itself, but the fallout. One guy I dated in college was popular and all, but I was tired of him. We both sort of went out with other people. He felt the need to make the break-up official, and then acted all wounded. Casual acquaintences seemed angry at me for breaking his heart or something, while I was merely puzzled.
One other guy I went out with a few times stood me up at the last minute and then refused to talk to me. I was confused... it was like he'd blown a blood vessel or something - just acting totally weird.
My voice teacher noticed I was down and asked about it. I told her. She took me out to lunch and told me the story of her escape from Bulgaria, which was much more intersting than anything I'm going to tell you. Before she left, she confessed to her conductor, who was in love with her AND a KGB agent, that she was about to escape to the West, and that she couldn't be with him because she was still in love with her husband who had already escaped some two years before. He could have turned her in, but he didn't.
She said, "I didn't love him, but I knew he was worthy of my love -- this is why I told him. Many will care for you, Lady" she alwasy called me that, even though I knew she remembered my actual name "but few will be worthy of your love. This boy you think of is unworthy."
Then she gave me this fierce look, and held herself up very straight and proud. "A love for an unworthy person is like a cancer; you must cut it out, if you want to live."
Sounds silly, but it wasd like a revelation to me. "Yeah. He's a jerk. Caring for a jerk hurts. I don't like hurting, so... I'll stop caring."
And I did. *shrug* I realize that isn't very heplful, but that is how it worked for me. I flipped that switch in my head and ta-da! jerk go bye-bye.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I think that's great, if you can do it. It isn't always possible to flip the switch, I don't think.
Enchantment has one of the best post-break-up dialogues I've ever read. Let me see...*searches for quote*
Here:
quote:What she wanted from them was sympathy -- because she still felt, or at least feared, that Ivan was a good man and she had lost a prize. But if he was a good man, how could he leave me? So he must not be a good man. But if he isn't good, whtn why does it hurt so much to lose him? Is it my pride that's wounded?
Maybe. But she still knew, deep in her heart, that this was not true, either. Because if Ivan came back to her, even now, she would go to him. She woudn't trust him, but she would take him back. Because she really did love him. And love doesn't dissapear just because of the vile unworthiness of the loved one.
All I can say is, don't try to break up and then continue to live in the same residence. I know from very, very recent experience that it just doesn't work out. You either get back together or end up detesting the other person.
In my case, I'm kinda glad that it doesn't work... Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Jhai, I would have to disagree. For some situations. In a different relationship from the one I currently mourning - one a looong time ago - when the relationship ended we (for practical reasons)stayed together for another 6 months. I got all the closure I needed (unlike with this one!)and I didn't have to miss him while I was reconciling myself to the end of the romance. He is still (15 years later) a good friend and we stay in touch.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
What about what the other person needs? Does your need for closure override the other person's need to cut off contact? I realize that you put the "some situations" qualifier in there, but I suspect that it's almost never true.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Katie, I both agree with and disagree with that quote.
I believe love is a choice, and with any choice, you CAN choose differently. I have always chosen to master my emotions instead of letting them master me. It isn't always immediately possible in every situation, but it is always possible. Sometimes, it took me many sleepless nights to find the right way to think about something. If the way I saw a situation disturbed or upset me, I would find a new way of looking at it. I would make it not matter. I would choose.
Sometimes it would take some time to get to that point over something (the hardest, for me, was deciding how to look at the people in Christian school, ow to deal with how they had treated me. Forgetting about it or suppressing wasn't an option for me, for several reasons, and I didn't want to hold a grudge, because those hurt the holder more than anyone else), but would get there.
It just happened that I found it easy to get over unsuitable lovers, once Tsetse gave me the key. I put on the cloak of priide that she wore so well, and made a joke of it. "Oh, I thought I loved that boy, but I took an asprin and put my feet up until the feeling passed."
I believe that if you are really meant to love someone in a romantic way, then you work it out. If you aren't... Well, you can torture yourself with your emotions, or you can master them.
I admit the choice is rather easier for me than for some, maybe because I don't really feel what other people feel. I can't speak to that with certainty.
I just know I'd rather suffer the inconvenience of my choices than suffer the pain of superfluous emotion. Maybe other people can't do that. I don't know.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
How about living together for two years while she dates other people and spends your money and neglects your kids. Seriously, you get completely over her (or him) before she even moves out. (which if you are me, is today and I can gaurentee that I have been completely over her for a while now) I guess it's not the best method but it works.
Posts: 1294 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I'm just saying that what happened in our situation due to practicality ended up working pretty well for us. I certainly don't think this would be a good plan for everybody - and wouldn't work at all without a great deal of good will towards each other.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Noemon, You're right about my age. I was, of course, kidding with the Carter administration comment.
Katie, I personally don't mind being the rebound guy. The reason is that I go into it knowing it's a rebound thing and won't last too long. Perfect.
I think the necessary recovery time between relationships has less to do with chronological time spent together than the intimacy level involved. I've known people who dated for years that I swear they didn't even know their partner. And I've been in relationships that barely lasted months that were so intense that I had an almost visceral reaction to the breakup.
kmbboots, Time heals all wounds.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Personally I think giving something time is just a way of forgetting about things. The past doesn't hurt as much as the present, but it still hurts. I also don't really see giving people time as a way of fixing a relationship, in order to fix anything you have to work at it.
I can see that in some situations time away might be a good thing though so I'm definitely not disagreeing completely, I just don't agree with that particular blanket statement
I do agree with Katharina's and Olivet's views for the most part here though.
Posts: 459 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Well...after reading this thread... the best cure for being dumped is to fantasize about being victimized by pH.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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