Breaking up is hard to do....

[LSN80]

Especially when you're the one being broken up with.

I'm not looking for the details of a break-up, per se, but rather how you've handled/handle breakups. Especially as a male, being broken up with by someone you still care for can be a huge hit to ones pride. I know it certainly was to mine in years past, as I've all but refused to acknowledge I was the one who was broken up with. "It was a mutual decision", "she didn't live up to my moral standards" and "I love her, but I couldn't stand the fighting anymore" was just some of the crap that came out of my mouth. When it came down to it, I was dumped, plain and simple, but was too prideful to admit it.

So how did I handle it otherwise? I got right back out there. Whether it was casual dating, jumping into a relationship, or jumping into bed, I've always had a hard time not having female companionship. One of the things I regret with regarding my wife is that I began seeing her just days after being dumped from a two year relationship. I feel like I robbed her from getting the "full me" when we first started dating, as I was still very much in love with my ex. It worked out in the end, and had I not been so eager for female companionship, I may not have wound up with my wife. So it worked out for me in the end, but I can't say that the way I went about it was the best.

My style of doing things has always robbed me of the chance to truly heal. Instead of confronting my feelings and dealing with the loss in my life, I've simply replaced. Instead of mourning the loss of the bed I shared with one woman for years, I jumped quickly into bed with 3 or 4 to forget the pain. As I got older, I stopped being promiscuous, but wound up jumping right into relationships. In doing so, I was being completely unfair to those women, and myself. I was claiming feelings for a new woman when all of them truly layed with the former one. I was robbing my new partner of experiencing true feelings from me because I was incapable of projecting feelings from the woman I truly wanted to be with to the woman I was then with. Comparisons were made, and the new girls simply never matched up with the former one. My wife was the first "rebound" that ever got in.

That was more then I was planning on sharing, I suppose, but you get the point of the thread. Whether it be male pride, selfishness, or overcompensation, I've spent little of my past 10 years truly single. Being married has allowed me the chance to reflect on the mistakes I've made, and to be honest with my wife about them. That's truly been the closure and healing I've needed. So I guess all there is to hope for now is that we never divorce.

How has being broken up with affected you? How have you attempted to heal from it?

If you've yet to be on the end of being broken up with, how do you believe you'ld handle it?


Any other thoughts on the subject are more then welcome.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

I have had two real relationships, shared feelings for a couple of others. I have regularly been the one to do the breaking up.

Extentuating circumstances. The first girl, it was time. We had simply grown apart, between her med school, and my job demands. Wasnt that bad.

The second one....Fucking whirlwind. I truly belive this person may have been my soul mate, we just met at the wrong time in our lives. We were together for two angry, passionate, crazy years, before I finally kicked her out, and then proceeded to have a threesome with two bisexual girls two weeks later (I also met IC25 and his wife for the first time that same weekend...that was one fuckin HELL of a weekend lulz)....I can say this greatly affected me, as this girl, in effect, "ruined" me...I lost any and all interest in dealing with ANY sort of negative experience with any girl after that...Now, at the first hint of bad behaviour, or idiocy, or potential trouble, I just move on, and generally dont allow myself the attachment. Every time I consider ever putting up with anything, I remember how miserable a lot of the times with her were, and then remember how fucking GREAT my life is single....and then lose interest in whomever is causing me to go out of my way.

Beyond that, for a good two years AFTER the break up, I thought about her probably every single day. Every girl was compared to her on a looks and skills in bed level, and my heart stayed broken regardless of my interaction with others. It just wasnt there to be had for another.

So, it had a pretty profound effect, one that resonates today. My standards arent very unattainabley high, but they ARE absolutely non negotiable. I let things slide and settled for less than what i found ideal before, and paid for it in just about every way a woman can make a man pay for doing that.

 

[¡Roján!]

See, with me, I fall in love too easily. I get too attached and when something I'm used to gets taken away from me I usual have a break-down of sorts. I'm like a modern day Romeo, somehow. But, luckily for me, so far, I've never had a real girlfriend. They've always been half-flings or friends with benefits. Still though, 9 times out of 10 it ends with me crying in the shower singing Josh Groban songs. I really have worked on trying to not get carried away but, it's sometime too hard. I like being hugged and kissed and I miss it when it's not around. Plus, I miss sex, but I always miss sex.

Anyway, I live in fear of the day that a girlfriend does break up with me. I just don't know how I'l react to it. Granted, the last time I got semi-dumped was 2 years ago so, hopefully, I've matured as a person since then. Either way, it's going to be ugly. Eeeesh.

 

[Paralyzer Z]

Much like Rohan I have never had a real girlfriend however contrary to him, I have never had anything remotely resembling a girlfriend so this is more or a "What it' question to me.

It's extremely hard for me to fall in love, mixed with the fact that I have about as much experience with women as a rock I doubt I will have to face a break-up very soon. However if by chance I find the perfect gal for me and she decides to break up with me (if I where the perpetrator I'd make sure the break-up would be the funniest and most victorious moment of my life) I would use mental defense mechanisms. Know I am not an emotional person, never been one so I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of a reaction and just shrug, smile and walk off without saying a word. Mentally I would just focus on the positives aspects of the splits. Always show optimism when in bleak I always say. I would see it as being liberated from all the cons that came with the relationship.

In simpler words I would see it as a opportunity for something else in the future rather than a split from something very dear to me.

 

[BK Styles]

Me and my ex were together about a year and a half, and I was madly, madly in love with her. We just seemed to fit together really well, and I all but worshipped the ground she walked on. The problem was, we were both at two different universities, so we hardly saw eachother. In the end, it was this that broke us up. We just grew apart, but I was willing to try and work through it. She wasn't.

I found the end of our relationship really hard to deal with, but I was okay. It didn't break me that much. What broke me was that, a month later, I found out she was together with one of her housemates. From that point on, I turned into a real asshole. I wasn't particularly pleasant to be around, and I snapped at everyone around me, and just hated everything about my life. I even sent her messages and e-mails telling her just how much I hated her and how much she hurt me. After a about 6 months of this, I can't really explain it, but it just clicked in my head about how big an asshole I had been. I didn't forgive her, but I sent her quite a long message explaining how I'd acted immaturely, and that I shouldn't have acted the way I had done. Looking back, I can see how happy she is with this guy, and I'm glad that shes happy. But bearing in mind we broke up 2 years ago, it's taken a while to get there.

My way of dealing with it since has been not to be in a relationship. I don't want to feel that pain again, to the point of not wanting to take the risk. Only recently have I started to turn around on this, but for fear of going through all of that again, it's knocked my confidence and made me overthink being in a relationship far too much.

 

[Mustang Sally]

Instead of confronting my feelings and dealing with the loss in my life, I've simply replaced.

In my own experience, there is a self-protection mechanism inside most people that prevents them from jumping immediately into another relationship after being dumped from the last one. I've been "dismissed" several times in my life and found that in the days and weeks that followed, the last thing I felt like doing was jumping into another relationship.....or even dating. Sometimes the person whom I saw as a possible "one and only" might come calling, yet my personal self-defense mechanism kicked in and kept me at home for awhile until enough healing had occurred to allow me to get back in the game. Actually, it wasn't a matter of keeping myself in total isolated misery; depending on the severity of the break-up, I'd at least go out and do stuff in groups rather than stay home and wallow in self-pity. Sometimes, though, being the "dumpee" was so painful, I wouldn't want to leave the house. It never lasted long, though.....two weeks was my personal limit.....and that happened only once.

LSN80 was lucky to have met his wife in the period immediately after a painful break-up; lucky in that his bad recent experience didn't cause his initial relationship with his wife to never get started. I guess when it's meant to be, it's gonna happen. Love conquers all, as he was happy to find out.

 

[Trill Co$by]

Easily for me, the hardest break up I've had to go through was losing the mother of my son... especially since we had been together for 2 years prior to his birth and even stayed together for almost an entire year later. To me, it felt like she and I were going to become a happy family with our son and live such a great life together... but then, out of the blue she decided that she "wants to explore options" and left me... taking my son with her. Fortunately, we now have legal split custody and I get my son during holidays and vacation times, but nonetheless.

For me, what made it so had was the fact that it literally came out of the blue, and to me, it felt unwarranted. I felt like with her that I did everything right. I was honest with her, I was there for her when she needed it, I made sure she didn't go crazy and hurt herself after long days with our son, and I made sure there was always extra money for her to spend if she needed it. I treated her, and my son, like they were the center of the earth because they were to me.

And then out of nowhere she left. How did I cope with it? Well, for about two months everything was fine until it finally hit me that she wasn't coming back... and I exploded. I believe I was with my friend when he brought her up, and I just went off and vented everything before going to an attorney and starting up a battle for custody. Of course, it ended with court issued split custody rights but I'd never let my son be so far away from me, and I don't know of any father who truly loves their child that would either.

But yeah, for me, the break up wasn't so bad... it was just losing my son that scared me the most.

 

[Dagger Dias]

Break ups are difficult to deal with regardless of if you're the one breaking up or the one being broken up with. I've dated a lot of girls, and have therefore been through several break ups. Nearly all of them were not serious relationships, just casual dating, so those instances of splitting up were easier to cope with. The break ups from my ex's that I was serious with, however, were extremely difficult to get over. I had been going about the dating scene the wrong way during my teenage years, I had incredibly high standards and was already looking for "the one" rather than having fun like most guys do at that age. I didn't see the point in casually dating due to the fact that breaking up was inevitable and I wanted to skip past all that drama and just find that special someone. Looking back on it now, I was nowhere near mature enough to be with one person forever yet, but I thought I was. I was immature and so was just about every girl I dated up until college.

With many of my break up's came more additions to my list of standards. I would find new things I didn't want to put up with again in future relationships. I would also often find myself creating these women in WWE video games then have guys like Stone Cold or Bret Hart (Trish in the games where only divas could face created women) beat up on them with Steel Chairs, Ladders, etc, or hit finishers repeatedly. That often made me feel a lot better. One of those moments that sticks out for me is when I was Randy Orton and RKO'ed my ex who had cheated on me through the announcer table.

Other than that, I primarily dealt with the break up's by spending time with friends and speaking with guys from my worship group who kept me accountable in doing things the right way. They obviously did not condone things like beating up on video game counterparts of these girls but understood why I did it. I also would try to get right back out there and try to meet someone new. Most of the women in my small college town only wanted one thing though and my answer would always be no. It was even harder for me to try meeting someone new when the older I got the less women fit my criteria anymore.

Much like LSN, being married has given me a chance to look back on mistakes and realize how good I really have it right now. We are always honest with each other and can openly discuss things like previous relationships. Neither of us believe in divorce for reasons other than infidelity, which neither of us support either, so I doubt I'll have to cope with another break up again lol.... The best advice I can give the single guys out there is to never give up. Stay true to what you believe in, if something is a legit deal breaker then you should keep those standards, never settle. Your princess is out there. Hang out with friends and always be on the lookout for someone new, a special lady could be right around the corner and you may miss out on something special if you're still too hung up on a break up. It's hard, but you will be alright.