This post got me thinking; why is that in the majority of posts about break-up we exalt the person who left us or who we left as being “the best,” “amazing”, “so awesome”, “so good”, “a god”, “a goddess”?

In reality, in the grander scheme of things, we’re all average. Over their course of their entire lives, I doubt it that anyone ever deviates too far from the median for too long on any measure we use to evaluate an individual. Therefore, objectively speaking, how can anyone be better than anyone else?

The person we’re with is usually “perfect”, but then you think to yourself, “Wait, a second, the person I was with last was also perfect at the time, is this person better than that person? Is the next person going to be better?” There’s even a social convention and pressure to speak highly of your current partner and talk about how better then were then your previous relationships. “Oh, she / he is so much better than the last person I dated. I don’t know what I was thinking with that one. I’ve got it all figured out now. This one is perfect.”

Look back at your relationships. Look all the way back to your adolescence and remember how many people you considered to be ‘perfect’, ‘awesome’. The truth is, none of them were. It was simply your mind playing tricks on you. Emotion guiding reason and the following story starts playing in your head, “If I feel so strongly about this person, then they must have been special. They must have been better the person before and there’s no certainty that I’ll meet anyone as good as them”

I’m beginning to appreciate how the mind begins to create what seem like “rational” stories in order to justify the feelings that we experience. It’s your mind justifying / rationalizing it’s actions and feelings. In short, it’s your ego being fed. Because, if you truly realized that the person was just like any other, objectively no better and no worse, your ego would crumble and rebel

“What do you mean I invested so much time and effort and emotion into something who was just average?”

That kind of thinking is unacceptable to the ego, so it exalts the other. It puts them on a pedestal in order to satisfy and secure it’s position and it’s own importance.

I think we simply meet people at different stages of our lives and depending on a given variables (interests, values, mental stability, willingness, physical attraction, etc) we’ll either connect with another person or we won’t. It has really nothing to do whether or not they’re better or worse than someone else because objectively speaking, they’re just average sacks of bone, liquid, and flesh just like anyone else. To think of them as better or worse than yourself or anyone else is a ranking game that we play to secure our ego’s position in a false and impermanent hierarchy.

There’s definitely some amazing lessons that you can learn from this experience. From your last post, the first one that comes to mind is, never drink to the point of intoxication. Reason and logic become suppressed under the influence. It’s a short term escape and will only perpetuate your cycle of up and down suffering.

As to your question about how long you should wait, well, everyone is different, but based on what you’ve been posting in the past little while, I would say anywhere from 6 months to a year. Don’t rush into another relationship until you’ve found your footing. Standing strong, tall, and firm will prevent you from getting sucked into the dramas, insecurities, and neurosis of others.

During this time, I would prescribe the following:

– keep your home neat and tidy (the state of your home reflects the state of your mind and vice versa)
– meditate daily
– exercise regularly (cardio at least 3-4 days a week)
– abstain from any sexual activity (discover a new sense of emotional mastery by not succumbing to your libido)
– improve your diet
– don’t do any drugs and never drink to the point of intoxication

There seems to a be a contradiction here: “I thought that if I just put myself out there, out of my comfort zone and into unknown places, I would feel at least some form of approbation…”

I think putting yourself out of your comfort zone is a great way to grow, but it’s precisely because it creates feelings of discomfort and pain. If wasn’t uncomfortable, it wouldn’t be out of your comfort zone. 😉

Now that you’re outside of your comfort zone, you may want to recoil and run home to safer grounds, but take a pause, breath, it’s only been 48 hours. If you suffer from social anxiety, pace yourself and give yourself a break. Two steps forward, one step back. Eventually, you’ll get where you want to go.

Read this article (http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153) and now read your post over. Sound familiar? There might be some deeper underlying issues that you might want to take care of. 😉

The real question at hand is, now that you’ve moved into residence, what are you going to do next to connect with people around you? 🙂

Meeting new people is hard and at passive social events like parties, it’s hard to strike up a conversation with a perfect stranger. If there was a social setting where you could play an active role and take some action, it would help break the ice and make connections.

What clubs are available on campus? What meet-ups might be available? Any posters around looking for volunteers to help a cause?

University is a stream of activity, but you have to be ready to get your feet wet and go with flow. 🙂

In that case, I retract my statement. I misunderstood the scenario you were describing.

The only other thing that I would react to is this notion of keeping score, “more UNavailable than he is available”.

What if, when he is available, he is simply available, and when he’s not available, he’s simply not available. If we stop tracking numbers and setting up implicit expectations what someone should or should not be, there’s so much less churn. 😉

I hear your pain and if this helps, let me share with you what I’ve experienced having been on the other side. When it comes to break-ups I’ve been in both scenarios.

The first is where I am cold and distant, pretend to be relieved to be free, which is simply a suit of armor I put on so that the arrows of pain of the person I’m breaking up with bounce off of me. This is mostly a defense mechanism because in reality I too am suffering the pain of the break-up and to experience someone else’s pain in addition to my own would be more than my heart could take. Don’t let his external facade trick you into believing that he’s not feeling any of it. Even if he’s the one who broke it off, he may be suffering just as much as you are.

The second scenario is where I do break-down and cry in-front of the person exposing my raw painful feelings. If I’ve broken up with a person (for whatever reason), but I’m still really attached to them (perhaps co-dependently so) then break-up can feel like withdrawal symptoms from a drug and my emotions are in such turmoil that I look for support from the source of my addiction. This scenario makes the break-up drag on even more painfully as with every moment of despair I turn back to the source of my addiction apologizing for leaving and looking for some sort of external release and permission to be free.

As painful as both scenarios are, I personally prefer the first approach to the second – go cold turkey, cut ties, and begin some serious soul searching and reflection to learn more about yourself and what drove you into that obsessive, addictive, and co-dependent relationship in the first place.

I know it hurts. If there was a way to avoid the pain of a co-dependent break-up, I haven’t heard anyone describe a better way to do it.

• This reply was modified 12 years ago by John.