Love Life | interstalking

Breakup Flare Up

Why do breakups last FOREVER? I mean, there’s that “half the time of the relationship” rule, which we all know is total bullshit. I’m inclined to believe they aren’t over until you fall in love with someone new. Because until you do, you’re always going to miss the last one in some capacity as your last experience of the comfort of intimate love.

As long as there is any contact with an ex – you’re still in the break up phase. I don’t believe in being friends with exes until vast time and space has passed, making you different people, who feel like less mature versions of themselves dated each other, making it less painful to remember.

They are all hard to get over. But the hardest to get over are the premature ones, when you weren’t ready for the end – maybe the timing was off or someone overcommitted and ran away. The breakups where you slowly begin to loathe the other person and avoid having sex with them – I experience the same emotions… but with a different degree and flavor of pain and anger, more bitter than anything about my former partner’s inability to be who I wanted him to be. No matter what happens and on what side you stand – you realize, more and more fully as time goes on, how much you are alone.

My heartbreak pattern is:

Grief Bender: Depending on who broke up with who and the length of the relationship, this lasts 6 – 12 weeks: Heavy drinking, smoking, serious weight loss, not much sleep. Somehow I look amazing in this period, like I’m high from depression. I emerge from the ashes of my relationship into this phoenix heartbreak phase extremely pissed that my ex isn’t seeing me so thin. My stomach is alluringly flat and I look great in all my clothes and much younger than I actually am. Somehow I never get acne despite how shitty I’m taking care of myself. I go out every night and catch up with every person I didn’t see during the relationship. Then I come home and cry. Or pass out. But there’s always time to cry in this phase, it’s unstoppable.
Forced Dating: Somewhere in the 6 – 10 week period I will try to force myself to date to distract my mind from thinking about my heartbreak and how much I miss my ex, especially physically (if the breakup wasn’t my call). It will never result in sex because I’m still way too depressed and thinking about my ex constantly but may result in some awkwardness. Or it may just be some dumb Tinder bullshit that doesn’t go anywhere. In general I am not giving off an approachable vibe, I’m hot but completely fucking awkward as soon as you talk to me. This phase can overlap with the “It’s Really Over Phase” if I am unfortunate enough to run into my ex in public, and he’s also “forcing” himself to date. Rock bottom happens here. I can’t live like this anymore. Potentially make contact with numerous exes from the past, either to dig up old bones or remember people who once loved me who I don’t now hate.
Mistakenly Think I Have Found the Replacement: Happens between 2 and 3 months after the break up. OMG how did I get so lucky to find my new boyfriend so quickly? Seriously this is crazy! I’m not thinking about my ex at all because I’m thinking about this new guy all the time. My therapist calls this a “transition relationship”.
Disappointment: 3 to 4 weeks after “Mistakenly Think I Have Found the Replacement”. Disappointment in the new guy followed by missing my ex, reliving the break up again, more crying, and anger that I’m not quite as skinny as I was in phases 1-3. Suddenly I’m starting to look my age or possibly even older? All vestigial confidence from being adored and in love has completely dissipated. Contact all other exes from the past, especially the ones I know I can easily make fall for me (again this is going to have nothing to do with sex, I’m still guarding myself like a vestal virgin). My seduction is of the emotional variety, and I’m extremely needy.
Crash: 4 to 5 Months after the breakup, I can’t keep up this pace anymore. My skin starts breaking out, and I start to actually get hungry. I have built a new life that is very full and busy, has nothing to do with my ex, and requires more of my attention than being depressed does. I remember that dating is total bullshit after multiple guys ask for my number and don’t call or cancel our first date an hour from game time. I miss my ex. I can’t believe he hasn’t contacted me. There is no way I’m the only one who feels this way, but I guess he is that much of an asshole and doesn’t care about me at all. I become comfortable spending nights alone at home again, and even begin to look forward to them.
Begin Dating in Earnest: Nearly half the time of the relationship has passed since the break up (or, 5 to 6 months at least if it was a long, fizzle out style one). I realize I’ve been comparing every guy I meet to my ex, and I didn’t even like my ex when I first met him, how stupid! I guess I’m never going to hear from him again, so I stop waiting to hear from him again. I start to actually feel ready to date someone new, so of course-
Ex Contacts: Now we’re at half time, so to speak, and my ex reaches out and messes with my mind. He doesn’t say what I want to hear, and fills me with questions. I relive the break up, and I cry. I run in the other direction to the disappointing guy/s from phase 4.
Continue to be Disappointed: The disappointing guys from phase 4 come back around (as they always do) as well as the multiple exes from the past I’ve been in contact with to prop up my fragile ego. I remember that dating is total bullshit, and I miss my ex. Not necessarily because I think we should get back together, but because he had this thing that none of these guys I meet now have – he loved me. And in that love, I was safe for a while.
Repeat Phase 8: Until I suffer from the cold reality that I’ve become that icy island girl again, so used to being alone, or I fall in love again. (But try not to become that icy island girl, try to remember what it felt like to love and be loved, so I can be open to it.)

Love is cruel.

Turn

I wince at this song, because I listened to it on repeat in the weeks leading up to it because I felt it coming… and then during it and a bit after and then I had to stop because I had to stop crying. But Jesus if this shit isn’t true. Here I am – everything has changed.

In the throes of my heart wrenching breakup six weeks ago, I couldn’t visualize this day. (I couldn’t necessarily swallow food or stop crying either.) I’m used to being alone in my apartment again. Just a week or so ago I had to socialize myself to the extreme to get to being okay with it or even maybe wanting it.

Going out doesn’t feel that weird, because I was very independent in my last relationship, as was he. I liked it until the parts when he never hung out with my friends, and I didn’t feel like I really knew his. (See “commitment phobia”, in a million psychology texts.) But, I go out a lot more now, of course. And it’s actually been nice to know I have a lot of friends.

I had my last cigarette on Friday. (Not that I won’t ever buy more.) The journal entries almost stopped. This daily occurrence suddenly disappeared when something about how things had changed and led to our breakup crystallized in my mind and set me free. Yes, I’ve read many times lately, we are wired to move on. It’s chemical, just like falling in love.

This fleeting thought passes by me, “I can’t believe this happened. Again.” Did I dream the relationship I was in and the horrible painful breakup? Before it, I had forgotten how it even felt to love someone. I miss that feeling. But, again, I have survived.

I have been obsessively watching “Sex and the City”, and I’m old enough that the only things on that show that haven’t happened to me are cheating on a boyfriend (I’ll NEVER do that) and getting married. Oh and that lesbian relationship of Samantha’s. Miranda even said something I’ve said in the last few weeks, about Steve when he opened the bar and had a new girlfriend. “I’m just here in the same apartment, with the same job.” I felt that way for weeks.

But. I’m kind of different now. I mean, I’m different compared to me when I last ended a serious relationship. I’m much more capable of letting go, and of not putting energy into wasteful pursuits. It is insane how much time I have, and now that I’m not particularly depressed I am appreciating how much I am getting done with it. Yes, those things I put off when I spent so much time being in love and bending my schedule around it. The things that scared me so much when I realized I was really going to have to do them. Well. Fuck it. I’m doing them now.

I can also do things like manage to cook four separate meals on a Sunday and pack my refrigerator and still go for a run and work for a couple hours at a coffee shop and do a load of laundry all in one day. Single life is back, and it feels right at the moment (especially with the breakup-orexia weight loss silver lining), because I couldn’t, at this point, imagine someone else, and I also couldn’t imagine wasting time on something that didn’t feel like what I had a couple months ago.

Oh and then there is that hurtful part about not really being able to imagine the last one either, because he hurt you so much and you also realized that it needed to end. It’s sort of a romantic purgatory. This has been one of the hardest things for me, the setback of knowing I have to be single for a bit. Because, I have to get over having my heart broken, and then I have to meet someone I actually like.

The hyper evolved me who posted about minimalism and thought she was the one enlightened beast that could make a relationship work with someone almost nine years younger has been taken down a notch. I still love minimalism. But I’ve been forced to make neighbors (not quite friends yet) with reality. Soon I want to stop posting personal bullshit like this on my blog (I hated when people thought I had a dating blog) but – I’m struck by some revelations. And maybe someone who reads will relate.

I’m forced to admit my age. Not because I want to move to the suburbs and push a stroller (though I do want to move to Marfa, TX), but because it does kind of matter. I am not interested in the same things I was eight years ago, or even four years ago. I mean, not as much. I also know, no matter what, things are fine. I never ended up on the street and my career worked out and I figured a lot of other shit out that lets me enjoy my life a lot more with a lot less anxiety than I used to. And I’m actually kind of stoked to not be divorced.

Second, I’m kind of glad that he did it. Because I don’t know if I would have been able to, even when we weren’t having the relationship I wanted. I was so scared of abandoning him that I’ve struggled with that thought even after being rather abruptly broken up with. I loved him so much. Now I don’t have to be available anymore, and it’s not my fault. I couldn’t have done any better for that person. Is it possible that this is actually easier than being the one who does the breaking up?

Yes, I’m changing too, though I’m loathe to admit it. My world is tilting again, and I know the best is yet to come. I don’t ever want to stop loving and exploring and learning. I’ll always seek and I’ll always try to do it with my heart and eyes wide open. But there are a lot of things I’ve done and done to extinction. I’m moving on. Sometimes old patterns don’t serve you anymore. And like old friends you may feel slightly scared to say goodbye to them.

We never stop loving people because love never ends. Timing is fucking everything. I’ve been telling myself frequently, “this moment is for you.”

A friend mentioned Tesla today. I have a vague memory of playing “Love Song” with my guitar teacher at age 15, which means he played it for me. I’m going to get arrested for the flagrant sentimentality of this post.

But why the hell not.