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I frequently receive reader emails about dating or romance. Occasionally, I will receive a message from someone who feels lonely or is just out of a relationship and needs advice. I have never, however, received an email from a reader who’s hurt vibrated so clearly through the screen. When I read H’s email, I immediately felt her pain. Her grief-stricken panic is so fresh, it is palpable.
So – this is an SOS. I am only one girl with one perspective – but together we are a community. We are a collective of people who know what it is like to feel heartbreak in one way or another. Every day we come together and, regardless of how different we may be, find common ground in this fickle game of life.
Right now one of our own needs us, and I would be remiss if I didn’t ask for your help on her behalf. Here’s an email I got last night from H. I’ll add my input, but I implore you to comment if you have additional advice.
Hi Victoria,
I’ve enjoyed your columns on PGP. Always real and relatable.
Last Thursday, I was delivered a shocking break up over the phone by my boyfriend of a month. Absolutely blindsided by it. The day before, he had brought lunch to me at work, we are together, joked, talked normally. He had even jokingly asked me to run away with him. We also planned out the weekend. We texted normally that afternoon. Nothing to suggest what would come the next morning. Prior to all of this, we’d casually/jokingly discuss our future children and home.
I’m at work, thinking he’d be texting me in the morning like usual. It was getting late for him, so I checked his Facebook. He had deleted the pictures where we explicitly looked like a couple from his page (they had been on there for weeks).
I immediately called to ask if everything was ok, if we were ok. He told me he didn’t want to be in a relationship anymore. I was stunned. I thought he was joking. He also said that he was still sad about his ex. They had broken up in October–he had told me it was amicable.
Drama followed to say the least. I was sad, shocked, and angry. And betrayed. I had finally felt comfortable telling friends and family and coworkers that I had a boyfriend.
At first I was listening to angry country songs. I just wanted to cover his car in eggs, etc. Nothing worse than a Halloween prank.
Fast forward to later that night. The silence and sadness was hitting me hard when I got home that day. The valentine’s balloon he gave me was still floating. Just having to confront the fact that my near constant companion for the last month wanted nothing to do with me.
I figured I would express myself. I was tired with letting guys treat me terribly. I sent several messages saying how hurt I was and how he didn’t respect me. That he was a heartless monster.
Of course, he didn’t respond to those. Still trying to comprehend everything and get some closure, I reached out to his ex. Added her on Facebook, explained what happened, asked her if he’s actually just a sociopath.
She eventually responded, and she was very kind. But she also contacted him. They fought badly. He blocked my phone number, Facebook, and Snapchat. He sent one last message to me, calling me immature and that I was “real mature” for texting his ex. And then gave me a list of “real” reasons why he broke up with me. One so cruel I don’t want to type it out. They borderline haunt me. The message ended saying he didn’t want to talk to my anymore.
Despite all of this, I’d like to apologize to him. While I just wanted answers when I texted his ex and had no intention of causing him more pain, I did cause him a great deal more pain than I ever intended. It’s why he lashed out at me like he did.
Of course, he’s blocked all my ways of electronic communication, so I would have to a) mail a letter b) show up at his house. Those are terrible options in my opinion. My other idea was to leave a note apologizing and a case of beer by his car.
I don’t expect us to get back together. I just hate that a good month ended so terribly.
I don’t want to appear crazier than I already may seem after this message. Just someone who wants to fix part of the mess she made and apologize to someone I care about.
Any thoughts you have are appreciated.
H, first off – I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I know it doesn’t feel like it, but that pit in your stomach, the knot that won’t let you eat or sleep, that will fade – I promise. In fact, one day it will go away entirely and you will look back on this experience and sigh, or laugh, and use it as an example of lessons learned.
In the interim, I will say is this: You need some time.
Give yourself a break. Your emotions are worn so thin you can barely think a rational thought, which is entirely normal when these things happen. You need to take a moment to regroup and find your footing, to remind yourself of your agency and your resilience. Don’t reach out to him now. Take care of yourself first.
Now, I have to be honest. Not too long ago, I broke up with a boyfriend seemingly out of the blue. We were in a relationship that, to him, seemed to be going fantastic. And look, it was great for me in a lot of ways too. Those are the hardest relationships to end, the ones where things are great but not quite right. When we are young we jump into relationships sometimes too quickly. We’re not yet trained to take things slow or measure our decisions cautiously. I imagine this is what happened with your boyfriend.
He was in a relationship with you for a reason, don’t forget that. The messy breakup does not invalidate your experience, it does not erase all of the time you spent together.
I’m sorry he handled you reaching out to his ex the way he did. He should have had more compassion than that. In finding out you talked to her, I’m sure he immediately felt both vulnerable and embarrassed, so he hurt you how he knew best. The hurtful things he said were cowardly, but please remember that love and heartbreak make us into unrecognizable versions of ourselves. When you recognize that the things he said were just a reflection of his own insecurities, you take away the power his words have in hurting you.
H, I think you need to let go of him. Forgive yourself for the lapse in judgment that was reaching out to his ex – find comfort in knowing that people have done far crazier things in the wake of heartbreak (I know a girl that once released a live animal into her ex’s house). Take a deep breath and move on, no matter how hard it hurts, because he’s not in a place where he wants a relationship with you and that is okay.
I don’t think you should apologize. Sometimes it is best to just let things go, to release the resentment and to focus on the future. Moving on without adding any additional fuel to the fire may be the best apology you can offer. .
Respond
CallMeVictoria
Life is messy, let's get dirty. itwasvictoria@gmail.com
@callmevictoria
@itwasvictoria
I mean, I feel for her…but boyfriend of a month? A month? Come on now.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Some people can make you feel more in a month than others have made you feel in years. The short timeline doesn’t invalidate her feelings. To the girl who wrote in – I’m sorry. That guy really fucking sucks. I’ve been in your shoes, and I promise you that you don’t deserve who is capable of treating you with such disregard. His issues are personal to him and have nothing to do with you, no matter what he said to you.
To the girl,
I’ve posted stuff like this on here before, and I hope you and others (because what I’m saying applies to guys to) actually read this and take this to heart. The more you chase someone, the more they will push you away. Read that sentence again. Now think about how you reaching out to his ex and him after he broke things off resulted in him blocking you on social media and now you’re considering mailing him letters??? The more you chase someone the more they will push you away.
Please read: If you are being dumped, the absolute best thing you can do is be very nonchalant and cool (even if your heart feels like it’s being ripped out) and say something along the lines “hey, I understand. If it doesn’t work out with him/her, give me a call, and if I’m still single then maybe we’ll try then, but I’m not waiting.”
And then this part is key: you move on. You go full no contact. You do nothing whatsoever. You don’t call them. You don’t send flowers or letters. You don’t text. You don’t like their posts or watch their stories. Don’t unfriend them or block them (if you want them back), but unfollow instead so they’re not on your feed. You move on.
The quickest way to get someone else’s attention is to remove yours.
Everyone comes back at least one time, so long as you keep cool and things didn’t end horribly. But you have to let them come back to you. You have to let them miss you. You have to let them think how they made a mistake dumping you and going for someone else. How can they miss you if you’re blowing up their phone and reaching out to the ex that they left you for???
You need to take this as a lesson because this relationship is over and you hurt your chances of getting this guy back. And if he does come back someday (in this case I’d say highly unlikely) you have to make him earn you back.
And honestly- this guy was talking to you about kids after a month but still had his ex in mind that he broke up with in the fall? 1. There’s a lot of emotional problems this guy is carrying that I could unpack but that’d make my post longer and you dodged a bullet there. 2. this guy wasn’t over her was the real reason he left you, but you gave him more “reasons” and validated his decision by your actions.
Chalk this up as a lesson learned and how you should act next time this happens.
Tl;dr The best thing to do after being dumped/rejected is nothing at all and play it cool.
Yes, this is the truth. Last year I was with a guy for like 6 weeks and it ended weird and messed me up and what really helped me was just getting out of town for a long weekend with a girlfriend.
You need to not worry about apologizing to him or contacting him. Be with other people as much as you can to keep your mind off him and with time it will get better.
I wouldn’t actually “play it” any sort of way. You will continue to drive yourself crazy and never be free if you try to play it cool in hopes of getting them back. Once a relationship ends the best thing to do is confront the painful emotions and then truly work on accepting the fact that it’s over. Whether that means unfollowing them, blocking them, whatever. Most of us will of course slip up and do something embarrassing when in the throes of break up agony and I think that’s also part of the process. The relationship might work out in the future or it might not. You can’t control the future or change the past so focusing on accepting the present situation is what has helped me come out of break ups with a more evolved understanding of myself. Playing games keeps you forever chained to the person that hurt you and thus unable to truly heal.
I think you misunderstood what I meant by “play it cool,” as a mind game.
I 100% believe you need to get rid of those emotions first before moving on and don’t keep it bottled up inside- but do so privately with family, close friends (I’d recommend non-mutual friends), or even yourself. You need to have some outlet. But whatever you do, don’t direct any of your outlet toward the other person- take your crazy out in another non-public, non-social media outlet. That’s what I mean by playing it cool. Don’t show him your crazy, because that will only make him feel justified in dumping you.
I personally wouldn’t recommend deleting the other person from social media (that is if you want them back, if you don’t then fuck it block them), but just hide their posts, unfollow, or delete the app from your phone for a month (best option). Deleting the other person communicates that you were hurt by them, and trust me they dont care because if they did then they wouldn’t have hurt you to begin with.
We both agree that the best thing to do is immediately move on. The sooner she does this, the better off she’ll be.
And the best ways to move on are of course for her to first invest in improving herself to be the best person she can be (exercise, reading, focusing on work, studying, traveling, seeing friends, etc.). These improvements will not only keep her mind very busy but will naturally attract new and higher quality people into her life- people that will make the guy who left her look like a bum.
This may be the first time that I’ve ever agreed with something that you wrote. Very well said.
Honestly, it’s probably better that I did what I did. Like you said, he’s got a ton of emotional baggage. And he was just willing to delete me from his life! Clearly he didn’t care about me to begin with. Now this can be a clean break instead of having to worry about him showing up for round 2.
Uhhh, I think you missed a lot of what I said and are cherry picking.
He left you because you were a rebound and he wasn’t over his ex fully. That doesn’t mean he didn’t care about you or mean the nice things that he said and did for you. The thing with being someone’s rebound is you have to recognize these people can come and go at any minute. However you didn’t really handle the dumping too well (by reaching out to his new girl) so in a way you kind of forced his hand and had him react the way that he did, by deleting you.
Does he suck for what he did? Sure. But that’s way too easy of a narrative and immature to place all the blame on him. If you don’t walk away from this and can objectively take some responsibility for your actions and the mistakes that you made as well, then you’re doomed to make more in the future. Like I said, take this as a learning lesson. Next time a guy starts acting flakey and says he’s going to see someone else, don’t give into your crazy, just move on. Take the higher road. Make him feel like the idiot for leaving you, instead of coming off as his crazy ex that he’s glad he dumped.
And yeah, I’m not proud of how I reacted.
Hey we’ve all been there, and like CMV said there are people who’ve done far crazier things after a breakup.
What you do now is what I and many others here have said, you move on by making yourself busy. Some would say you should go out, party, drink and hook up, but i think that’s only a temporary fix and a better solution is for you to focus on improving yourself with the goal in mind to become the best version of you as possible. Whether this means getting extremely fit, going for that promotion or better job, reading more, traveling, etc. this is what you should do because it’ll accomplish two things 1. You’ll “reset” your mind back to normal because you’re going to be too busy to think about him. 2. You’re going to be a far more interesting person and better version of yourself, and that’ll end up attracting better men into your life.
He deleted me before he actually broke up with me. Deleted all out pictures.
The first couple grandiose paragraphs had me guessing something really tragic had occurred. This is just poor decisions on both sides following a relationship in the very early stages.
I don’t condone violence in any way but it seems to work really well all across the globe, for literally the entirety of human existence. Take some time to relax your mind so you can focus on a solution clearly and that solution is watching Breaking Bad and learning how to get away with crimes. Then apply that knowledge to extort him until you have him by the balls forever. Knee caps are extremely fragile things lol
He did leave me with his Amazon Prime access…
And you can’t put a price on free 2-day shipping. At least you can say you left the relationship with something tangible. But really, the dude is just an asshole, don’t let it ruin your day.
I could get on board with this
Does this dude really suck??? All he did was end a relationship he wasn’t happy in. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?
That is exactly what I was thinking. People say never to let yourself be unhappy, then demonize you when you end a relationship that was the source of that unhappiness. C’mon people, can’t we just acknowledge that a relationship ended without applying blame to a particular party? This is a breakup not a car accident, nobody has to be at fault.
Few thoughts… I don’t scoff at the 1 month thing, most of us know first hand, falling fast for someone means hitting the ground can hurt a lot worse.
Second, you really have to take a step back and realize that the post grad realm adds a few more complicated layers to dating. First is that people once out of school are going to meet at very different points in their careers and priorities. It isn’t like before where everyone had a graduation date to look forward, the future now is different for each individual. So timing and circumstance is going to end more relationships than anything.
The other aspect is that since the possibility of marrying the next SO you have is very real. So there is a much higher level of introspection and though going into each day you are with someone wondering if they are worth it or if you are burning precious time with someone you can’t see yourself spending the rest of you life with.
My point being, there are a huge number of factors that contribute to someone ending things at this age, majority of which aren’t in your control. Trying to pinpoint the reason of a breakup is useless. You have to cut it off clean. Sawing it off is just gonna prolong the pain. No shame is wallowing in the loss for a while, it is only normal, but chasing reasons is like a dog chasing cars.
This was the best response here, IMO.
Contacting his ex is “McMurphy bringing the house down on Nurse Ratched” crazy. Yikes.
I’m going through a dissolution of a very similar relationship, as in the timeframe of dating. And I too am feeling strongly for the guy…it’s all in the way he or she made you feel during your togetherness.
The thing is there are no right words no matter how well intentioned during a break up, “have a wonderful day” even sounds insulting. I find useful to just step back keep your distance, unfriend/unfollow…and keep yourself very very busy. It’s a trap thinking you can smooth it over and be at peace at this point.
Journal it/talk it out with friends/fam…just not him. Goodluck to you and all who are in our camp right now…sucks to be here.
When my ex broke up with me after a few months, I was heartbroken much like you are and we also had a really REALLY rough patch when we were both drunk and camping a festival together shortly after the breakup. Things got really dirty and unfortunately a lot of people were there to witness it. After that, I realized it was time to ignore him in every way possible. It hurt and I was still upset with him, but doing my best to ignore him helped me heal. I saw him on my birthday, unfortunately, at another concert and things were actually good. Not good enough to get back together but we were able to have a civil, positive conversation. It absolutely sucks right now, but give yourself time to avoid him and things will get better.
I don’t want this to go the wrong way, but it probably will. Telling her she is sorry that the boyfriend lashed out at her for contacting his ex is not going to help her. I know she was in a bad state of mind when doing so, but that is not okay to reach out to someone you don’t know and trying to find validation that the guy is a psycho. She just needs time and distance to heal the wounds. Then find someone who she deserves to give her love to.