Moving On
Breaking Up: Hard to Do or a Breeze?
The only time a breakup is easy is when you're the one initiating it, and neither of you were too committed anyway. After a couple of dates it's pretty painless to say, "You know, I like you a lot but I think we both know we're not destined to be together." Then you each breathe a sigh of relief as you split the bill and head to your respective mobile phones to spread the word: "I'm still available!"
Get a little deeper into a relationship, though, and breaking up gets more complicated. Split after years and let the heartbreak begin.
An old rule of thumb allotted half the length of the relationship to get over it, but these days that seems quaint. Who has a year to set aside to get over a two-year love affair? Or many years to get over a marriage? For that matter, who has the luxury of even a week to wallow? This is the era of instant gratification. We want to split, recover and reconnect ASAP.
A Japanese firm, Hime & Company, offers staff members "heartache leave" to help get over a breakup. But they're not allocating weeks or months. Employees ages 24 and under can take one heartache day off a year, those between 25 and 29 can take two, and those 30 and up have up to three days of recovery time.
Need more than three days? Tough! Choose from these modern words to the lovelorn: "Get over it." "That's in the past." "Move on."
If this all seems a bit hard-hearted, well, it is. There's a grieving process associated with any meaningful breakup, from main squeeze to spouse, and it can't necessarily be measured in days.
There's the sense of personal failure (often misguided, by the way): why couldn't I make it work? Or, what's wrong with me that I chose to be with this person for as long as I did?
There's the ego hit: much of our identity is tied up in who we date, live with, marry. Break up and the "couple" part of that identity takes a hit.
There's the anticipation of loneliness: how will I make it through Sunday mornings now?
There can be the upsetting comments made by well-meaning friends: "She had you so whipped, man, good riddance!" "Everybody hated him."
Finally, there's often a physical move, or even just getting your clothes and toothbrush out of an ex's apartment.
Any way you look at it, after a breakup you'll certainly need more than three days before you'll be up to posting an online dating profile.
If the relationship was unhealthy and you're glad it's over, then it might feel like it should be easier to move on. But those unhealthy relationships, whether co-dependent, antagonistic, reality-denying or just plain miserable, have their own sense of security built in. Even dumping a loser to live alone, while a positive step, can hurt. Getting dumped by a loser hurts even more.
Whether you're left nursing your wounds, or feeling guilty that you've destroyed another's emotional life, you have to admit: breaking up is hard to do.
by Laura
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