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Remember when I declared texting games to be dead? Well, I’m back baby, and I’m here to go scorched earth on another seemingly prevalent dating faux pas our generation has so misguidedly adopted.
We need to get better at using the word “breakup.” Allow me to explain.
Our generation has become afraid of the “breakup” (both the action and the word) because we live in a label-less romantic tundra. The current dating climate is that of friends with benefits and “seeing where things go.” Dates with whomever we please are at our fingertips, so being hesitant and non-committal is about as contagious and prevalent as the flu.
We are traversing a landscape of undefined dating rules and relationship types. We don’t know how to qualify our relationships, so we shy away from any qualifier at all. Because of this, we have stopped “breaking up” and replaced it with fading out, “ending things,” and “oh, we stopped seeing each other”-isms.
We won’t use the word “breakup” unless it involves a couple in a “serious relationship,” and I think that’s wrong.
I now present to you a personal anecdote for your viewing pleasure, and also because personal anecdotes are my kryptonite, like cotton candy or taking a bite of dark chocolate and a sip of red wine at the same time.
A few weeks ago, I sat in a car with a boy I care for very much. Things were going south and had been for a while. Our unfortunate demise was mostly a result of circumstances out of our control (my moving), but also a little bit our own fault (poor communication).
As we sat in the car outside my house, we started from the beginning and recounted together the story of our relationship. He wore a muscle tee to this conversation which, quite frankly, was the most jarring part of the encounter. But I digress.
As Jack Johnson played in the background, we acknowledged the red flags that neither one of us recognized at the time. I told him I hated feeling like an emotional burden on his already long list of obligations and he told me I was far too blasé with announcing my move.
In the end, we both sat there lost for words. I couldn’t get damn “Banana Pancakes” out of my head.
Sure, we could try to stay together until I moved, but as much it ached inside my belly, I knew that going backward to where we were comfortable would only inhibit us from moving forward in our lives. We had to stop seeing each other.
When I got out of the car that night we hugged in an ever so cinematic way. We kind of fell into each other, molding together as if in one last protest. “Look! Look how nicely we fit together!” our bodies begged, even though our minds knew we would never hug like that again.
Two days later, I recounted the story to my friends over breakfast.
“Jack and I aren’t together anymore,” I said. I had a knot in my stomach I couldn’t shake. Our talk in the car was equal parts bitter and sweet, but somehow it felt unfinished.
“What happened?” my friend prodded.
I paused, unsure what to say. Finally, I found the words I’d been choking on all morning, the words I should have said to Jack in the car. “We broke up,” I said.
“I didn’t realize it was that serious,” one of my girlfriends replied.
“What do you mean?” I said. “We spoke almost every day. I slept over all the time. I care for him a lot.”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t your boyfriend. I didn’t know it warranted a breakup,” she responded absentmindedly.
Immediately, I felt cheated. “Of course we broke up!” I wanted to yell.
That’s when I realized, we need to get better at using the word “breakup.”
The word “breakup” carries a weight to it. It connotes sadness and heartbreak, usually for both the giver and receiver. It feels heavy. “Breakup” quite literally paints the picture of something breaking – and breaking hurts. It is a word that carries weight in a person’s life. It is final (even if just for a day or two), and it is meaningful.
Breakups give us permission to hurt, to sulk and revel in our loss, and then to slowly rise from the ashes when we’re good and ready to face the day alone. When we cut ties with a person, and don’t call it what it is; a breakup – we don’t allow the experience to carry as much weight as it should.
A “breakup” is not a “break.” It is not “we’re taking space” or “we’re also seeing other people” – a breakup is the end, and in turn, the start to a new beginning.
While a breakup is often brutal, it is absolutely necessary because it sets in motion the process of recovery. Why? Because it is the first step in closure.
The act of healing is a linear process that cannot start in the middle. It must be set off by the initial breaking, the initial loss, the initial ripping apart of two individuals that have begun to grow together so that both can recover on their own. End of story.
Breakups can be messy and complicated and drawn out, or they can be clean and simple and instantly final. Often times, they are what is best — or what we wanted all along – but even then, they do not mean nothing. They always mean something.
Don’t tell me you haven’t felt the pain of a breakup even if the relationship wasn’t “official” or “serious.” Hell, I’ve felt the wounds of a breakup after a few weeks in a relationship.
So, why do we reserve the word “breakup” only for the most serious of relationships, leaving anything before “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” somehow marginalized to another, less serious term? Why didn’t Jack and I say we were breaking up?
Instead, we date people then tell them “we should put on the breaks” or “stop seeing each other” when things fizzle out. We are intimate with one another for months, then all of the sudden “don’t hang out as much” or “decide to be friends.” We use all these variations on a phrase to tiptoe around what has actually happened.
By not calling these experiences by their true name, we devalue the relationship and subsequent heartbreak, as if what we went through wasn’t as “real” as that of a committed partnership.
In short: You don’t have to be in a fully committed or traditional relationship to experience a breakup.
If you are dating someone, or spending time with them and showing them intimate parts of your brain, or are having sex with them and asking that they be vulnerable with you, then you are in a relationship.
Even if it is not exclusive, or traditional, or permanent – it is a relationship, and when it ends, it is a breakup.
We need to say the word out loud, we need to taste it on our tongue and let it linger in the air so that we can recognize it as reality. “We broke up” is far more cathartic than “we’re not seeing each other anymore” and heartbreak deserves a cathartic end. We have to stop cheating ourselves out of closure.
Wounds need to be cauterized.
Even though Jack wasn’t technically my “boyfriend” when I left the car that night, I should have immediately said that we broke up.
When I finally said it out loud to my girlfriends, it made the experience more authentic, tangible, and it made my sadness feel legitimate. What we had was real, the pain we felt in it ending is real, and I refuse to call it anything less than a breakup, regardless of whether or not I called him my “boyfriend.”
We all need to feel like we existed in another person’s reality, to feel legitimate in our loss, and to move forward with clarity. I wish that for myself and Jack, I wish that for you, and I hope you wish that for a person you loved or liked or lusted over and then left. We all owe each other that much, at least. .
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CallMeVictoria
Life is messy, let's get dirty. itwasvictoria@gmail.com
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I’d be kinda pissed if my friends reacted like that. I’ve had guys I’ve dated long term that the breakup felt freeing and good and guys I’ve dated more short term that left me completely heartbroken. Every relationship is different no matter how “serious” it is and it’s okay that it sucks when it ends.
I 110% agree with this. I know for a fact I would be irritated with my friends if they brushed the importance of relationship off like that.
To add another nuanced layer to all this, it becomes ten times shittier when the breakup is caused not by giant red flags, but ones in which there’s an obstacle that can’t be overcome. We all know the typical ones: having kids, moving away, geographical problems, etc. The issues that usually don’t cause resentment, but nonetheless, the breakup has to occur. Those breakups are the worst for getting closure, and seem to negatively impact the dating game even further, since these people might be one compromise from getting back together.
I can’t emotionally handle these in depth introspective articles from CMV and checking my bank account on Mondays. Love the article.
Maybe Rachel should’ve made it more clear to Ross too, back in the 90’s.
THEY WERE ON A BREAK.
I didn’t realize being on a break meant that you could go out and have sex with the first willing participant…
Then you don’t know what a break is.
Wholeheartedly agree and I’d argue that you don’t have to have “officially” dated someone to consider them an ex.
This is equally important in determining who is off limits to pursue. Your buddy could have been closer to his month long fling than his last girlfriend.
Get back out there, Jack.
And Vic but maybe after you move. I dunno.
I think we shy away from the word breakup in those unlabeled relationships because it’s easier to (figuratively) burn the house down if you tell yourself it wasn’t a house. If calling it a breakup helps you level the ground & move on, so be it.
“We all need to feel like we existed in another person’s reality, to feel legitimate in our loss, and to move forward with clarity.”
This is one of the more profound things I have heard in quite sometime. Bravo, CMV.
This put into words my late December. It really was freeing to admit it was still a breakup, otherwise you just end up beating yourself up for the normal amount of sadness that comes with it because it doesn’t fit the traditional label. Thanks for putting this phenomena so eloquently.
as someone who considers all boys I’ve ever been out with as my ex’s, I relate to this article on another level
I’m gonna throw a challenge flag here.
We as a generation cant go from cripplingly afraid of commitment and then attempt to reclaim the word breakup when dating doesn’t work out. Breakup implies a sense if permanence and exclusivity. Its raw, it hurts because you a breaking what was mutually built. It shouldn’t be reclaimed for sustained hookups when you’re (plural sense) out fucking someone else and only feeling a twinge of guilt.
The relationship needs to be built before we get the honor of calling it a breakup. But I say that as someone who can lose half of everything I own if I suffer my own break-up
Tl;dr if you want the closure of the breakup have the balls to label it a relationship.