Shelbyville,

I forgot to add what you might know about the grief process. DABDA: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. You can google more for each of them, but personally, after the initial shock has worn off (“Oh no, s/he couldn’t have! It is a mistake! S/he will come round to her/his senses! Can’t be true”, etc.) and before acceptance (“It is what it is” and you are content, maybe even happy), one goes from one to another. In my case, I started feeling a little anger only now, over three years (!!!) after the breakup. I am not particularly proud of it, but I wouldn’t mind him falling in love with me all over again (also my pride speaking because he has never ever gone back to any old flame of his) and me toying with him for some time to say “Sorry, babe, can’t do it” afterwards. I mostly felt depression (probably had a propensity to it before and the split just exacerbated it) after the split. Bargaining also took place when I thought I could win him back. Well, you can’t “win” anyone back, no more than you can “conquer” anyone or make them love you. I like the sayings “It takes two to tango” and “the relationship is a two-way street” and “You can lead a horse to the water but you can’t make him drink.”

So I would say don’t be surprised to start thinking “what if” (bargaining) again or crying or anything. You may even play a little psychologist with yourself catching and determining what it is you are feeling right now and what stage of the grief process it is.

Try to derive little pleasures from your everyday life (buy a pastry, go out to see the night sky, etc.) And tell yourself that you will try to live the life the way it is unfolding and you will revisit and examine where you are heart-wise one year later. It may very well happen that you will notice that you are feeling much better and not thinking about him as much as you used to well before that one-year mark.

It also helped me to remember on the conscious level that I had been devastated just like that after my very first breakup and very first love. Well, I survived to fall in love again, then fell in love with this guy. Also, I had a couple of infatuations after him. I knew I was not fully ready, but I also knew that with time, the attachment to my ex would fade and if the new guy stayed in my life, I would fall in love with him. Unfortunately, he had his own problems and it didn’t work out, BUT it did take my focus off my ex AND I hadn’t YET fallen in love with the new guy, so was kind of stuck in-between. That happened three years ago, and it has been like that since. For my ex I feel nothing, even wouldn’t mind him suffering (as written above) (so not exactly nothing he-he) and for the new guy I sort of entertain a very vague hope that doesn’t however prevent me from living my life as a single and enjoying it.

I am also aware that I have much more freedom now to do what I want and how I want (my ex was what you would call high-maintenance). I also remember all those little things that I turned a blind eye to thinking that he was tired, stressed at work, etc and that things would get better with time. Well, they hardly ever get better with time and, for instance, stress and being tired doesn’t prevent my father to do some things for me that my ex could have done but didn’t. I do look at his new wife’s social media account once every three months or so and realise that I don’t want to live the life she is living now, because my ex hasn’t changed. I suspect him to be a covert narcissist, so, in all frankness, I don’t want to live my life waiting for my partner to FINALLY take time off work for us to go travelling (he did it at the very beginning of the romance, but there it stopped both for me and for her – and I have travelled alone to many more places than I could have travelled with him if we had still been together during these three years), to live my life wondering if I am truly the one (he was not exactly a womanizer, but one couldn’t help wondering quite often whether he was behaving as a true gentleman or actually liked another lady – I can see the same in his body language in real life (we still meet occasionally)) and so on.

Oh, and one more thing that did have a huge impact on me. I happened to come across a short article in a free magazine lying around at work (weird how one stumbles upon meaningful things sometimes!). The short four-paragraph article was about being single during holiday time and the sentence that attracted my attention was, “It is not being alone that hurts, it is being unloved that hurts.” I started digging into it. The long and the short of it was that you can make an effort and try to see love that other people give to you. I remember my mother giving me a chain with a pendant for my birthday and all that I could think was, “Why is it not my boyfriend giving me a chain with that tiny heart? He did give me one when we started dating, he even spoke about a bracelet several times after that, but it has been three years now and nothing…” I resented my mother’s gift because of my boyfriend! See what co-dependency can do to oneself?!! So I started sharing more about myself with other people and making an effort to notice when someone approached me for something – a talk, a piece of advice or information, opening up more, etc. Where in the past I would reserve EVERYTHING for my boyfriend (of course, he is my second half, everything for him and everything with him, if we are not together, the occasion is not worth it), now I tried to “spread” my existence among everyone whom I liked. Doing that also helped me to be less in my thoughts and more in the moment.

Also, I picked up some things that we had been doing or intended to do together. Like travelling to certain places (I would always know where we would go next and then after that – not a strict list, but more like “have an idea for the foreseeable future (3-4 years)) or mastering shooting. It was a little hard at the beginning to restart on one’s own what we had been doing together, but I wouldn’t be starting things that I didn’t like, so the excitement of the activity erased the feeling of missing that he was not there (besides, he didn’t behave the way he said he would after the breakup and my ideal of him was shattered even more on the conscious level; it was only a matter of time for my heart to follow my brain). And once you get better doing something, you get that extra confidence and become more proud of yourself. (In addition, you might meet somebody along the way and cross a few items off your list – only pluses.) So by the time you are done with the original “list” for the two of you, it has been a couple of years (or more – I am very faithful and if I get attached, I get attached), but time and new impressions and experiences do their hidden work in the background, so you emerge feeling relief because your list is done and you are a new person with no luggage (and many more new skills and knowledge).

So be gentle with yourself and take your time.

Good luck,

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