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What have you learned from going through a breakup?
Question is for anyone who's ever gone through a breakup -- no matter how big or small. Also it goes for whether it was mutual, you were the one broken up with, or you had to be the one to break the news.
What did you learn from your breakup?
How did it change you?
Meta Note
I have plans to do a series of these "what have you learned from ____" topics (see previous thread: "What have you learned from being a parent?"), where the blank is filled with specific roles/identities/experiences. I'll probably post one every couple of days, but I encourage anyone here to add their own to the series. If you've got one you want to post -- go for it!
Recently divorced.
Listen to your friends, especially the ones that knew you before the relationship. You don't always have to follow their advice, but they're probably the people who know you the best and have your best interest at heart (if they don't, you make friends very differently than I do). I made the mistake of moving across country from both friends and family with a person that I had known less than a year. Nobody knew me well enough in the new location to point out the warning signs in the relationship.
If you feel like there's an imbalance in how much effort each person is putting into the relationship, speak up. If speaking up doesn't work (either because they don't listen, or don't change) then leave. I spent way too long pouring way too much effort into my marriage. It felt imbalanced for a long time, but my co-dependency always lead me to double-down and try harder to try and fill a gap that wasn't my responsibility to fill.
Glad to know you're in a better situation.
Just one observation: given that you were physically away from friends and family, I'm not even sure I'd call this "codependency", as in the psychological phenomenon where you actively kinda contribute to the issue, but rather actual dependence, since the situation of dependence was very much out of your hands.
You're right to a limited extent. Any 2 people moving to a new place would inherently need to depend on one another for support, at least for awhile.
Codependency was definitely a problem though. I've been a people-pleaser my entire life, I really enjoy making other people happy. That's not inherently bad, until I ended up in a relationship with someone who exhibits narcissistic-avoidance behaviors. Without realizing it, the relationship morphed into a one where it revolved entirely around her and keeping her happy at all costs. I have to own part of that, my own lack of boundaries contributed to a large part of it. That's something I hope I can be better about in future relationships (both romantic and otherwise).
I have learned many things from breakups.
There are no pleasant breakups, but breakups can be made retroactively way more traumatic depending on how you behave afterward. If you're not sure if it is okay for you to do something (or be with someone) even a while after a breakup then it is probably not okay.
Telling the whole truth during a breakup is only a good idea if your partner is at least marginally able to deal with whatever you have to say. That is often not the case.
If your partner has kids, you're breaking up with them too, and disappearing from their lives can be way more painful than losing a partner. So, if you're thinking of dating someone with kids, by all means, do so. But tread carefully. Boyfriends and girlfriends have no visitation rights.
Given that you're not in a toxic relationship, if your partner tells you something is not okay, in the majority of the cases they will be right and you should promptly adjust your behavior, no questions asked.
If you feel that your partner must be watched and scrutinized in order to remain faithful, there's little chance that will change in the future and you probably shouldn't be with them at all.
There's nothing to gain by persuading someone to still be with you. At the very least, you'll prolong a bad situation with a partner that is unsure they should be with you. At worst, you'll be cheated on. If someone wants to go, let them go.
...and this should make you think why I felt that was necessary.
I learned that just because two people like each other doesn't mean that they are supposed to be together. I had one serious girlfriend in high school. We broke up after I graduated high school. The relationship hadn't been dysfunctional, we had enjoyed our time together and still both liked each other a lot.
But I really had a "gut feeling" that it was time for it to be over. I was the one to break thi gs off and it sucked bad. But less than a year later I met the woman I've now been married to for eight years. I'm glad I trusted my instinct.
At 47 years old I broke up with a wonderful woman. I needed to focus on my children and myself. It was difficult. I realized afterward that I had never really broken up with someone before that. I'd had relationships that slowly degraded, but the other person had always initiated the breakup. I had always been the one being dumped.
I'd felt that any relationship could be made to work if both people committed to it. That may be true. But it may not be healthy. Periodically I miss her and wonder if I'll ever find another like her. But it is obvious to me that I made the right decision for my family and personal mental well-being at the time.
Feel free not to answer, but in my experience having a partner often helps me with myself. I don't have children, but I've had girlfriends with children, and I like to think that I helped more than got in the way. Is there a particular circumstance that made it troublesome to manage a relationship, given your circumstances?
I was recently divorced when we got together. Kids were with me one week then with their mom. One big motivator was a lack of "me" time. The children were my focus when I had them. She was my focus the other week. Couple that with some money worries and my anxiety sky-rocketed.
Sometimes you hear people say "I need to find myself," or something along those lines. This was one of those situations. She was great. She did not get in the way. It's cliché, but "It's me, not you," is real.
Anyhow, my point was largely that the action of breaking up with someone can be empowering. As a more introverted and socially anxious person, it's not an easy thing to do. And it hadn't even occurred to me that I had never done it. It's made me stronger.
This is the end of the world --> maybe it was for the best --> that was a valuable lesson [🔁]
That it is perfectly possible to remain good friends with an ex, but that the vast majority of people (and particularly new partners) do not agree, and will usually not understand. My ex and I split 5 years ago, and, partly due to both of our insecurities about our positions in the friendship groups we were in, resolved to remain friends. This took a lot of work and effort and was at times exhausting, and like being back in a relationship with her. But now she is one of my closest friends, and we are happily seeing other people. Heck, we even lived together in a shared house for a time. To us there's nothing weird about it, and we're just friends who used to be a couple, but realised that it wasn't a good fit for either of us.
The difficulty often arises with how others perceive this relationship from the outside. I completely understand this perspective, as it's against the cultural norm: we are usually expected to completely sever ties with an ex partner. Or if you are able to remain friends, there is an enforced degree of separation and superficiality to the relationship to protect from... well I'm not sure exactly what. Backsliding? Anyway, it makes for a very difficult conversation with new partners as well. On the one hand, I don't feel like history between my ex and I has any bearing on my present relationship, so it doesn't feel like "oh hey, she and I used to date" is relevant information. On the other, not mentioning it can come across as lying or hiding things, and for many it's information that they feel they have a right to know. So a balance is to be struck, and trust on both sides is central to it.
This balance can be tipped one way or another by the amounts of relationship anxiety and self-worth an individual has. A recent partner of mine was very suspicious of the friendship I had with my ex, and after a lot of difficult conversations I discovered it was because said partner had a very low degree of self-value, and felt that I would break up with them the moment a better prospect (either in the form of a new person, or if of my ex) came along. Which leads me to a personal revelation, and something that I need to spend some time working on:
Through breakups (and as the direct cause of at least two) I have discovered that I have little to no patience for anxiety in others. To be clear: I mean the long-term condition of general anxiety, rather than fleeting moments of nerves or fear. I have no doubt that an enormous amount of privilege has lead me to the position of never having experienced general anxiety, and I am very grateful for that. But I don't feel at all equipped for interacting with people who do experience it, as it is something which feels so completely far removed from my experience, that I struggle to know what it's like. For example, I simply don't understand how someone's first thought when they haven't heard from me in a little while jumps to "oh my god, she's dead in a ditch somewhere and that's why she hasn't been in touch." As a (by degrees) more rationally-lead thinker, that thought process just doesn't compute. I have been trying to practise a lot more patience with anxious people that I know since this realisation, but I still find it hard to empathise when the thought processes behind the feeling seem (to me) so far removed from probability and reality.
Just do it --- rip it like a bandaid. Once you're out, tell your tightest social circle that you don't want to talk about it, but will answer all of their questions for ONE NIGHT ONLY over a big dinner or whatever.
Also, don't be an asshole about it. Breakups are good for both parties., even if it hurts at the time.
I've had a grand total of three exes, I'll only refer to them by their first initials: M, K and D.
M was a Japanese lady who I met on Coffee Meets Bagel over four years ago. She joined the app and spoofed her location because she was looking for people to practice English with before coming here to do a full year at a foreign university. We soon ended up in a long distance relationship which went great, until we finally closed the gap and met in person. I did some things that really turned her off and she broke up with me. We tried to remain friends but after I confronted her about the breakup, she sent an incredibly scathing reply to me, which just prompted me to defriend her on everything. Ever since, we've been no contact.
The breakup with M devastated me. It almost drove me into a spiral of inceldom, but I think instead it convinced me to delve into a rabbit-hole of New Thought philosophers and reading tonnes of Neville Goddard, Joseph Murphy, Napoleon Hill, etc in a quest to change my mindset and gain more fulfillment from that.
I don't believe in that stuff now. I genuinely think the Law of Attraction is phony bullshit that people clutch upon to peddle their own brand of snake oil.
K was my second girlfriend and I met her on POF. She lived in a small town and she was the only girl of the three exes who I actually kissed. What drove us apart was me still having lingering feelings for my previous ex, and her just having no aspirations to move beyond her small town and no real personality. She is the one that I genuinely feel bad about breaking apart with, because I did find her attractive. We broke up around the start of first COVID-19 lockdown.
D was a half-Filipina who I met on Tinder. We knew each other and went on a few dates before I even met K, but she disappeared. We reconnected during lockdown and decided to actually start seeing each other. Around October 2020 she ghosts me without any kind of breakup and just blocks me on everything. I suspected that she was cheating on me with her PT but had no real evidence of it, aside from some messages she was sending me about how fit he was to try and rile me up.
I got back together with D in January this year when she got back in touch and apologized for disappearing. She had been going through severe depression and tried to take her own life a few times. We decided to keep going as if nothing had happened, which was a big costly mistake. Our relationship fell apart soon after I booked on her vacation to accompany her and my choice was to either go and salvage it as a solo vacation or be signficantly out of pocket. We tried to remain friends but she remained toxic towards me and insisted I never did anything nice for her.
I found out soon after from her cousin that D uses guys and is a horrible manipulator, which has honestly made me feel vindicated. There was no intimacy whatsoever in my 2.5 year on/off relationship with D. At first this was because she lived with parents that were shielding from COVID, but even this year that never changed.
What lessons have I learned? It has taught me to be far more wary of women, because autistic virgins like me are prime targets for manipulation.
As for losing my virginity? I'm at the age where I'd probably just go on a vacation to the Netherlands or Germany and visit a brothel to lose it, since they're the only two European nations where prostitution is legal and regulated.