Breaking down breaking-up

“Am I lonelier now? Yes. Am I happier? Also yes.”

Don’t listen to Marvin Gaye

Marvin Gaye thinks you should stay together. Why? Because times were good. Because whatever you want to do is alright with me. Then a bunch of promises he intends to keep, but probably won’t, because he didn’t before so why would he now?

Breaking up sucks. It does. But so does getting back together and breaking up again. You won’t just lose respect for yourself (“Am I seriously doing this again? Do I never learn?”), but so will your friends (“Are you seriously doing this again? Do you never learn?”).

How well do you remember “Eternal Sunshine”?

Think about the movie “Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind”. I’ll let you take a moment to reflect on how much you love that movie, and gosh it’s been so long since you’ve seen it, like, not since college right?…

Remember how Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet meet each other again on the train to Montauk, in the same place and circumstance as when they first met. How they go out to the frozen lake and relive their first date in all its spontaneous romance, as if for the first time. You think, they are meant to be. Not even erasing their memories of each other can keep them apart, there is still a lingering part inside both of them that draws them back to each other through time and space.

What a hopeful message about love for young lovers. There is a person out there who will inspire you, challenge you, and you will be drawn back to them no matter what shit happens in your relationship or how much you drift apart.

Now that you’re done reminiscing about the last time you saw that movie back in college or in your twenties, re-watch it. Think about that lingering part inside them that draws them back together. Think bout the shit that happens that causes them to drift apart, and how that part gets conveniently left out of their memories.

This is not a story about the triumph of love. It is a story about the inevitability of getting back together with your ex, about forgetting all the things that made you break up in the first place, and repeating your relationship again and again. If the movie were to continue for another 30 minutes past them getting back together, it would show them drifting apart again for the same reasons they drifted apart in the first place. And the cycle continues…

This is a story about the danger of patterns, and a tale of warning that if you don’t recognize these patterns you are doomed to keep repeating them.

Lonely ≠ Alone

Will you be lonelier after you break up? Yes. Obviously. You had someone in your life, you were getting laid, and now you aren’t. Will it suck? Absolutely. Not getting laid and dwelling on things you could have done better, was it something wrong with me, was it all their fault, why am I still thinking about this I need to get back to work aaaah…

You are happier. Yes. Shut up. You are.

Are you happier? Yes.

No, but think about this one. Think about the shittiest moments in your relationship. Keep going. How shitty did those moments feel? How many of them were there? How often did you feel them?

Now think about the shittiest moments after the break-up, and do one of those pain tests that doctors do. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is Nietzschean depths of existential despair and 10 is receiving oral sex from a super model or Michael Phelps (depending on your preferences) while skydiving in the Swiss Alps. Quantify the shittiness of these moments pre- and post-break-up. Add em up, Bobby. Add em up.

Of course there were happy moments. Duh. But the scale is heavily tipped towards unhappiness pre-break-up, because if it wasn’t, then a break-up wouldn’t have happened.

I’m intentionally removing any agency from that phrase, by saying “a break-up wouldn’t have happened”, because it takes two to break up, regardless of whether you did the breaking up or the breaking up was done to you. It happened because you were both not happy. If only one person is happy then either the happy person is blind to the other person’s suffering, or the unhappy person is for some reason unwilling or unable to express their unhappiness, out of fear, out of immaturity, whatever it is. Either way, both are fucked.

Breaking up doesn’t mean breaking down

Is loneliness after a break-up temporary? That’s entirely up to you.

Get out, date people you probably won’t like, won’t be attracted to, won’t find interesting or exciting enough. Go home after, jerk off, watch your favorite tv shows while eating ice cream and getting stoned with friends.

Leave weekends and evenings open and make last-minute plans to go out, to go to the movies, to go to another country. Think of all the indulgent things that you couldn’t do while you were in a relationship.

And do them all.

That will fill up your mind and your time with doing things, because there is one thing you cannot do, and that’s get back with your ex.