Ever felt that *burn* when it’s over? You thought everything was going well- he had become a fixture in your family narrative, your family and friends adored him and you’d planned a whole future together- and then, bam! It was over, just like that.
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I don’t think it’s working anymore.
No warning, no sign, nothing- not even an answer for ‘why’ it wasn’t working. Just that it wasn’t. Just how things had simply become ‘too much,’ that he wasn’t really moving ahead with this- even some clichés like ‘you are great and deserve to be happy,’ and how he’s got to figure himself and his life before he can deal with this! Que sera sera.
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You don’t agree, obviously. But you aren’t given a choice. You’ve got to roll with this- because he *feels* he is stuck in this, and nothing you can do can make him feel otherwise. You just KNOW – when a relationship is over, it’s over.
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Relationships often face this kind of death- death by mediocrity. By stagnancy. By inactivity. He just wakes up one morning and feels it in the pit of his stomach- like a heavy weight. And he knows. It’s time to kill the bond you have. It’s nobody’s fault- but he cannot settle for anything less than complete bliss. With so many mediocre half-things in life, he can’t just let LOVE be one of them. He goes in for the final kill.
And you take the blow. Like a martyr.
Or so it seems, until you have this undeniable urge to hit back.
It starts with your friends consoling you with the in-the-book refrains- ‘you were too good for him,’ ‘he didn’t deserve you,’ ‘he’s going to regret it,’ ‘he’s an a-hole,’ and more. They lift you up (because the accompanying shots sure help) and before you know it, you are yourself engaging in the story. You say he really is an as*hole because he couldn’t see your love, couldn’t appreciate it and had no qualms breaking your heart! But tell me something, women, don’t you find something terribly wrong with talking sh*t about someone you loved (with your whole n’soul) when it’s over? Doesn’t it speak so much more about you than it does about them? What happens when you bump into each other in the future, patch things up and maybe, GET the happily ever after you’d once imagined?
You wouldn’t go for an a-hole, would you, now?
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Then, let’s address this. Just like slut-shaming, body-shaming and any form of shaming is WRONG, breakup shaming, too, is. Nobody is an as*hole for doing the stand-up thing and ending things with you because…. (the reason doesn’t matter). No, really. He could have fallen out of love, could have fallen for someone else, meant it when he said he needed to get his act together or simply, didn’t feel as invested anymore. Either which way, he chose to let you know. He may have tried to spare your feelings and not given you the whole picture- or even, denied you ‘closure’ (that false funeral you seek after a relationship’s death to gain a semblance of ‘being okay’) but he did the right thing and ended things. He didn’t give you false hopes, didn’t keep the illusion going, didn’t lead you on.
Reverse the tables, for once, and tell me, ladies- wouldn’t you think you were doing the ‘right thing’ if you didn’t feel quite ‘in love’ anymore and chose to call things off?
Then, let’s stop with the double standards already. I know that sometimes, it helps to tape back a broken heart (and bruised ego) by laying the blame (fair and square) on the shoulder of the other person- but we can all agree that sh*t’s far from fair… Let’s own our sh*t and be brave enough to call ourselves out on it- because we know that he is the nice guy we chose, because he was being the same when he chose to (rightly) end things before we realized there was something wrong and didn’t know how to deal with the pain.
It isn’t like we are more woebegone when it’s over than the men are…it’s just we take it harder and find it much more difficult to hide it. Let’s try to cover all of that with the ‘right thing’ we can do in turn. Let’s not badmouth our exes. It’s okay to throw a few words here and there when you are drinking away your pain- but let’s remember to clean up our hangover vomit. Let us not allow that bad case of intoxicated verbal diarrhea carry on- lest it spread far and wide and do more damage than the last epidemic that swept the nation. Words are powerful and once spoken, they cannot be retracted. You cannot undo the damage a wrong word can inflict. Save your heart from the guilt. Don’t taint your memories with a ‘story’ you are feeding yourself to feel better. They won’t make you feel better, in time. I can promise you that.
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So, STOP lying.
You fell in love with a good person.
The end of a relationship does not change that.
Of course, this isn’t true for all cases, but it’s true for most.
Accept the truth.
Let go.
If you have loved much, it’ll hurt much. When a relationship is over, it’ll feel like you’ve lost everything- but that’s when you have nothing left to fear. The only way forward is to gain- on life, love- every experience that you wish to add to your existence to make it meaningful.
So, treat your heartbreak as just that. Kendra Syrdal said, “Heartbreak happens to absolutely everyone. You will have your heartbroken, and it will make you want to die. But you’re not alone. Everyone has felt the sting of not being loved back in the way that you wish you were. Heartbreak is universal. It’s one of life’s great equalizers.” Believe that- and move on.
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You are better than stooping to some ‘lie’ that provides fleeting, transient comfort!
You are better than the pain you feel.
You are awesome!
Get out-and prove it. Not for others, but for yourself!
Featured image source: Google, copyright-free image under Creative Commons License
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