Sunday Speculation: Breakup = Need to make up with yourself?

A breakup, divorce, or loss of a loved one isn't just the end of your relationship with that person. It's a continuation of every feeling of abandonment you've ever suffered. It's the loss of a system of approval you'd come to depend on. The struggle, as Gray points out in Starting Over, isn't just to find a new partner, but to get over those feelings of abandonment or loss or anger or whatever else gets dredged up by the end of a relationship.

Perhaps the book's most crucial chapter posits that the best way to get over the loss of love is to focus on the "love" more than the "loss." ...Remembering only the bad parts, Gray says, leaves you with an important part of your emotional being closed to new business.

As for the Venus and Mars stuff, that comes in the second half of the book, when Gray looks at how men and women start new relationships from different points of view, with different priorities (a man might want to have fun with no strings attached; a woman might carry with her a lengthy list of requirements for her next partner, a list that excludes virtually all available men). - From a review of Mars & Venus Starting Over: etc. by John Gray.

While Gray is a creepy looking man, very very creepy looking, the initial Mars & Venus was quite interesting. Women and men are neurologically different, and a lot of the way we are wired has to do with evolution. I did not actually order this book, or any of his other books, but I did read a bit about it and liked this review for the concise way they put the most critical points of working out both a breakup and then the first re-entry into a new relationship. I also read the initial Mars vs. Venus what seems like a million years ago when my mother had a copy.

Relationship #1: 7 years. I broke up with him (A). He didn't understand, wouldn't listen, tried to get me back, stalked me a bit, and it got weird. So we stopped talking. That went on for... years. Then he e-mailed me one day this year to tell me that he understood, that he was glad I broke up with him because it forced him to face himself and grow up, and that he was getting married. :) It was fantastic! I mourned that relationship and had a completely sexual rebound once it was done. I'm mentally sometimes very masculine though, I think my wiring is a bit of a cross personally. I eventually came to love the fact that I had that relationship, and even stopped lamenting that it was 7 years of my life while only 3-4 of the relationship years were worth a damn. I'm thankful for it. I remember what it felt like to be loved, to be in love, to think I had a soul mate.... to feel unconditionally appreciated. He taught me how to be a kid sometimes, to see the humor in everything, to lie well, what a real family that supports one another could be like, and mostly to trust and believe in myself. Unfortunately he eventually became stifling, hated my independence, and was intensely jealous of my having friends, but those things taught me a lot. He was the love of my life for a little while, even if in retrospect I don't know that he deserved to be. :D Learning to love that relationship left me with no regrets for it, and a deeper understanding of myself.

#2 &3: Not really 'relationships'.... one was a rebound (E), one was an exploration of my sexuality (Q). Though I must say I felt I fell for her. HARD. And I did lots of stupid things to prove it, oh and said even worse. In these, I experienced both sides of the in love issue. I had someone who was in love with me that I was not in love with.... then I had someone I was in love with who had no such feelings for me. They're both such hard lessons. I never wanted to hurt anyone, but I did, more than once. Am I glad I did? No. Do I respect love more?? Definitely, to the point of wariness, haha. It makes you crazy sometimes, but it can be worth it.... when it's returned. I learned so much about myself, and men, and women, and sex, and love from these two people. There are things I would erase, but only for the pain I caused and the insanity I possessed. The lessons though, I keep and claim them all. The best way to learn is by experience, and I've done that. I won't look back at my life and say: Well damn, I wish I had..... I went for what I wanted, more than once, and paid the price of getting it.

#4: K..... Oh my. It took me a long time to be able to look at this positively, but finally after two + years I think I'm good. I felt so much for his daughter, losing her hurts and probably always will. I think what hurts worst is that I had to leave her, as I was left so many times. I never, ever, wanted to do that to a child like it was done to me but I also couldn't stay and allow her to grow up with that as her only basis for a relationship, we would have ruined the poor thing. I felt a lot for him as well. Maybe because I wanted what we could have had, raising her together, him being open to 3somes and my sexuality, everything..... However, who he thought he was and what he thought he was ok with..... I've said it many times before: K wasn't very self aware. Sad. Our entire long distance relationship was a fairy tale, where I was honest, and he thought he was. It all fell apart when we tried to make the fable reality. That's ok with me now, but it wasn't for a long time. There was so much potential for things I hadn't really realized I always wanted and still don't believe I can successfully have. I'd love to raise a child, but not have one. I'd love to be married, but I'm not sure I can be tied down to one man the rest of my life. I like living with someone, it brings out some good things in me, but I don't want to be in a service role, I want to be in a partnership. So what do I celebrate from this relationship? The fact that I moved away from my family finally, that I struck out on my own and survived it, that I fell on my face many times and survived that to, that I stabbed someone in the back and suffer for it daily since then, I lived and I learned (oh the cliche). I'm not proud of some of the things I said and did during this time, but they're mine and I own them. I'm thankful for that time with his daughter and that it forced me to be truly independent eventually.

I still felt abandoned every time I broke up with someone though, haha, go figure.