Breaking up
Feb. 4th, 2013 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livA friend of a friend has started this business to market to er, support people going through relationship break-ups. I don't particularly endorse Valenswines; my connection to the people involved is rather indirect. TBH the website gives me a vibe of "you're doing femininity wrong! A real woman would buy our products", but hey, judge for yourself.
The reason I'm posting about them is that they made a cute lil survey about break-ups. Part of me misses the old days of LJ when people would pass round these sorts of surveys. Banal, perhaps, but people can answer inane questions interestingly. And as for me, I'm a complete sucker for filling in surveys!
One thing that struck me about the survey was that I haven't actually broken up with anyone in the five-year period it refers to! Indeed I've only experienced one break-up in the last ten years. A couple of connections that I hoped might develop which kind of fizzled out before they got anywhere, which I regret to a greater or lesser extent, but only one established relationship coming to an end. This is definitely a good thing, mind you; I would be entirely happy never to break up with anyone again for the rest of my life!
But of the break-ups in my ancient history, lessee. Did you have an inkling that it was going to happen? Two complete surprises, one completely expected as we'd both mutually agreed for a while that the relationship was going to end. And one that's a bit hard to classify with these simplistic options; I suppose the best summary I can give is that we'd been trying and failing to break up for a while, and I finally realized that instead of panicking when my bf suggested maybe ending the relationship, I had the right to say, ok, that's a good idea, why don't we do that?
How did your ex actually break up with you? Twice in person. One of those was entirely fine, we came to the end of what we had agreed would be our last date, had a minor moment of flailing and not wanting to go through with it, but fairly quickly realized that all our original reasons still held, so we parted friends. The other was not so fine; in hindsight I think my ex came pretty close to hitting me. We were both terrified and in tears and, well, kudos to him for realizing that he was out of control and removing himself from the situation before it turned violent, but in many ways I think that break-up would have been a lot better if we'd handled it remotely. Then we met up again to confirm that we still wanted to break up while we were slightly less overwrought, which was somewhat less awful but still involved both of us crying our eyes out. Once by phone, which considering that reason for the break-up was that we weren't entirely coping with living several thousand miles apart was a vastly better alternative than waiting until I went out to visit, even though conventional wisdom suggests that's the more polite thing to do. Once by, ummm, I am afraid I am verrrrrry old, dear survey, Facebook and Twitter were not invented back then. We broke up via the
What was the reason? Mostly my relationships have ended ultimately because my partner wanted children and I am resolutely childfree, which means that when we ran into problems of one sort or another it didn't really make sense to try to fix them, because the relationship had no long-term future anyway. The specific problems have varied, a common one being that trying to combine a long-distance relationship with a PhD needed more time and emotional energy than I had available. In one case it was because we had a completely ridiculous argument about the nature of love, and somehow everything imploded. I think there were serious underlying problems behind that, though; one minute we were happy and contented and very much in love, and the next minute we were having a quite terrifying fight over the fact that I said that romantic love didn't have to be like fraternal love to be valuable. And one relationship ended because even though we get on extremely well as friends and are pretty compatible sexually, we were both very inexperienced at relationships and were making eachother tremendously unhappy.
What was the hardest part of the break-up? With what I consider to be good break-ups, the hardest part is always missing the connection we previously had. With bad break-ups, the worst part has been knowing that I hurt someone I cared about. In one case we managed, with a great deal of effort, to rebuild a friendship which has is still solid more than a decade later. In the other the hurt of the break-up destroyed the friendship, which is one of my greatest regrets in life.
How long did it take you to get over your Ex? I basically don't get over people. The ex who decided he couldn't cope with being in my life at all, I'm mostly over him because I haven't interacted with him in more than ten years. I still do miss him and feel sad that things went so badly wrong that we haven't stayed friends. I'm still in love with the ex I broke up with in 2002, and by this point I think I probably always will be. The frequency of feeling unbearably sad that we're not together any more has grown somewhat less, but it still catches me from time to time. And equally on the positive side, I still get a huge sense of incredible awe and joy whenever I'm around her. My other exes, well, I am still attracted to them, but it doesn't particularly matter; I am happy to be good friends with them and the ongoing thread of emotional connection doesn't really affect that.
Did you feel any of these things? All my break-ups have been pretty unambiguous, I've never been able to convince myself that we might get back together. I've never really felt angry; nobody I've dated has treated me badly. I have most certainly been sad, but I don't think it's reached the level of depressed. I've not felt really happy either; all my break-ups have been sad, because even though we are better off apart than together I've still regretted giving up the good things about the relationship. I have sometimes felt a sense of freedom. In one case because we were kinda codependent and knowing that my ex wasn't going to be my primary responsibility any more did feel like a relief, in another because although my ex wasn't particularly hard work, I had no spare capacity left over after dealing with a really hard patch during my PhD, and I was relieved to be able to just concentrate on finishing my thesis. My primary feeling has always been sadness and regret, though. Sometimes regret that we had to give up the good things about the relationship because of the stuff that wasn't working, and sometimes and much more sharply regret, maybe even guilt, at hurting another person.
Did you do any of the following after your break up? Not in response to the break-up, no. I mean, I have sometimes broken up with someone and then subsequently moved to a different house (but we weren't living together anyway), or changed my hairstyle or gone on holiday or made new friends, but those are all things that I would have done regardless.
Who did you talk to? With my most recent break-up I told LJ, though not in very much detail, it was more a case of letting people know that me and my ex were no longer together. The others all happened before I discovered internet social networking. I talked to my family a bit, I suppose, or friends I happened to see at the relevant time. I also had this weird habit of (really not intentionally, it just happened) getting into new relationships very swiftly after ending the previous one, so the person I mostly talked to in the sense of seeking solace by talking to them was usually my new partner.
What's the best break-up song or movie? I don't know about the best, but for a long time I've been listening to Piaf's Milord when I need to sit with my emotions for a while. Mainly because:
If you could say anything to your Ex what would you say? In most cases I basically can say anything to my exes, since we are still close friends, so I don't have any particular need to Say Something to them. With the one ex I lost as a friend I would like to say "I'm so sorry I hurt you so badly."
I have no interest in answering Q13, which is randomly m/f for no reason I can see...
And while I'm on the topic of random surveys,monanotlisa linked to which European country are you most suited to? The bad thing about it is that it appears to have been machine translated from Russian, but the good thing about it is that it's based on an actual piece of research into the typical attitudes held by people from different countries. It told me that I'm Norway, I think mainly because it doesn't really distinguish between "religious" and "Christian". (There are actually only a couple of thousand Jewish people in Norway, and there's a reason for this.)
The reason I'm posting about them is that they made a cute lil survey about break-ups. Part of me misses the old days of LJ when people would pass round these sorts of surveys. Banal, perhaps, but people can answer inane questions interestingly. And as for me, I'm a complete sucker for filling in surveys!
One thing that struck me about the survey was that I haven't actually broken up with anyone in the five-year period it refers to! Indeed I've only experienced one break-up in the last ten years. A couple of connections that I hoped might develop which kind of fizzled out before they got anywhere, which I regret to a greater or lesser extent, but only one established relationship coming to an end. This is definitely a good thing, mind you; I would be entirely happy never to break up with anyone again for the rest of my life!
But of the break-ups in my ancient history, lessee. Did you have an inkling that it was going to happen? Two complete surprises, one completely expected as we'd both mutually agreed for a while that the relationship was going to end. And one that's a bit hard to classify with these simplistic options; I suppose the best summary I can give is that we'd been trying and failing to break up for a while, and I finally realized that instead of panicking when my bf suggested maybe ending the relationship, I had the right to say, ok, that's a good idea, why don't we do that?
How did your ex actually break up with you? Twice in person. One of those was entirely fine, we came to the end of what we had agreed would be our last date, had a minor moment of flailing and not wanting to go through with it, but fairly quickly realized that all our original reasons still held, so we parted friends. The other was not so fine; in hindsight I think my ex came pretty close to hitting me. We were both terrified and in tears and, well, kudos to him for realizing that he was out of control and removing himself from the situation before it turned violent, but in many ways I think that break-up would have been a lot better if we'd handled it remotely. Then we met up again to confirm that we still wanted to break up while we were slightly less overwrought, which was somewhat less awful but still involved both of us crying our eyes out. Once by phone, which considering that reason for the break-up was that we weren't entirely coping with living several thousand miles apart was a vastly better alternative than waiting until I went out to visit, even though conventional wisdom suggests that's the more polite thing to do. Once by, ummm, I am afraid I am verrrrrry old, dear survey, Facebook and Twitter were not invented back then. We broke up via the
ytalk command that existed on the Unix server that ran our university email back in the dark ages :-p What was the reason? Mostly my relationships have ended ultimately because my partner wanted children and I am resolutely childfree, which means that when we ran into problems of one sort or another it didn't really make sense to try to fix them, because the relationship had no long-term future anyway. The specific problems have varied, a common one being that trying to combine a long-distance relationship with a PhD needed more time and emotional energy than I had available. In one case it was because we had a completely ridiculous argument about the nature of love, and somehow everything imploded. I think there were serious underlying problems behind that, though; one minute we were happy and contented and very much in love, and the next minute we were having a quite terrifying fight over the fact that I said that romantic love didn't have to be like fraternal love to be valuable. And one relationship ended because even though we get on extremely well as friends and are pretty compatible sexually, we were both very inexperienced at relationships and were making eachother tremendously unhappy.
What was the hardest part of the break-up? With what I consider to be good break-ups, the hardest part is always missing the connection we previously had. With bad break-ups, the worst part has been knowing that I hurt someone I cared about. In one case we managed, with a great deal of effort, to rebuild a friendship which has is still solid more than a decade later. In the other the hurt of the break-up destroyed the friendship, which is one of my greatest regrets in life.
How long did it take you to get over your Ex? I basically don't get over people. The ex who decided he couldn't cope with being in my life at all, I'm mostly over him because I haven't interacted with him in more than ten years. I still do miss him and feel sad that things went so badly wrong that we haven't stayed friends. I'm still in love with the ex I broke up with in 2002, and by this point I think I probably always will be. The frequency of feeling unbearably sad that we're not together any more has grown somewhat less, but it still catches me from time to time. And equally on the positive side, I still get a huge sense of incredible awe and joy whenever I'm around her. My other exes, well, I am still attracted to them, but it doesn't particularly matter; I am happy to be good friends with them and the ongoing thread of emotional connection doesn't really affect that.
Did you feel any of these things? All my break-ups have been pretty unambiguous, I've never been able to convince myself that we might get back together. I've never really felt angry; nobody I've dated has treated me badly. I have most certainly been sad, but I don't think it's reached the level of depressed. I've not felt really happy either; all my break-ups have been sad, because even though we are better off apart than together I've still regretted giving up the good things about the relationship. I have sometimes felt a sense of freedom. In one case because we were kinda codependent and knowing that my ex wasn't going to be my primary responsibility any more did feel like a relief, in another because although my ex wasn't particularly hard work, I had no spare capacity left over after dealing with a really hard patch during my PhD, and I was relieved to be able to just concentrate on finishing my thesis. My primary feeling has always been sadness and regret, though. Sometimes regret that we had to give up the good things about the relationship because of the stuff that wasn't working, and sometimes and much more sharply regret, maybe even guilt, at hurting another person.
Did you do any of the following after your break up? Not in response to the break-up, no. I mean, I have sometimes broken up with someone and then subsequently moved to a different house (but we weren't living together anyway), or changed my hairstyle or gone on holiday or made new friends, but those are all things that I would have done regardless.
Who did you talk to? With my most recent break-up I told LJ, though not in very much detail, it was more a case of letting people know that me and my ex were no longer together. The others all happened before I discovered internet social networking. I talked to my family a bit, I suppose, or friends I happened to see at the relevant time. I also had this weird habit of (really not intentionally, it just happened) getting into new relationships very swiftly after ending the previous one, so the person I mostly talked to in the sense of seeking solace by talking to them was usually my new partner.
What's the best break-up song or movie? I don't know about the best, but for a long time I've been listening to Piaf's Milord when I need to sit with my emotions for a while. Mainly because:
L'amour, ça fait pleurer, comme quoi l'existence / Ça vous donne toutes les chances / Pour les reprendre après[Love makes you cry, a bit like life, then. It gives you all the opportunities and then takes them away again.] Otherwise I listen to music that I associate with the relationship if I want catharsis, or music that I love in general if I want comfort.
If you could say anything to your Ex what would you say? In most cases I basically can say anything to my exes, since we are still close friends, so I don't have any particular need to Say Something to them. With the one ex I lost as a friend I would like to say "I'm so sorry I hurt you so badly."
I have no interest in answering Q13, which is randomly m/f for no reason I can see...
And while I'm on the topic of random surveys,
monanotlisa linked to which European country are you most suited to? The bad thing about it is that it appears to have been machine translated from Russian, but the good thing about it is that it's based on an actual piece of research into the typical attitudes held by people from different countries. It told me that I'm Norway, I think mainly because it doesn't really distinguish between "religious" and "Christian". (There are actually only a couple of thousand Jewish people in Norway, and there's a reason for this.)