10 Things I Learned About Breaking Up (Part 1)

It's been almost three months since I was dumped. There, I said it. Yes, I was dumped. It was one of the most difficult times in my life. Putting the situation in perspective, I realize that there are so many more important things out there that are worse, but in the heat of the moment when you're taken by surprise and not provided with much explanation, you can't help but be emotional. I wanted more than anything to be over it right away, but that's not who I am. When I care about someone as a friend, I have a hard time letting go. Patience is one of the most important virtues during breakups. Everyone says it will get better. Everyone listens to what you are going through. But nothing feels better until time passes and the emotions become less intense. Or as I like to say, there are no more tears to be cried. Through it all, I want to believe deep down, I am coming out of this a better person than I was. I learned so much about myself and about love.


Lesson 1: While the details are enough to drive you insane, it's best to focus on the bigger picture. A lot of times the warning signs are there, but love makes you blind to them. If you knew it wasn't going to last forever or be a long-term thing, the immediate reason one of you pulled the trigger the end the relationship doesn't really matter. You just have to stop the obsessive thinking, believe everything happens for a reason and move on.

Lesson 2: Friends and family you can count on are more important than anything in the world. I have no clue what I would have done if anyone turned their back on me over the last few months, well you know, aside from the person actually causing me all this grief. Knowing I could call my mom every day if I needed to, being able to be myself (tears and all) around my friends and not having one person snap at me to "get over it" or "stop mentioning his name" helped me feel the love and companionship I needed to feel more than ever.

Lesson 3: The break-up diet is the best way to lose weight and keep it off. 10 pounds and counting...just try not to go 2.5 weeks without eating anything.

Lesson 4: Everyone needs to go through this experience in order to understand it. Now I am in the understanding group, instead of the 'haven't got a clue' club. I think back to my friends who experienced difficult breakups while I was living the single life (more or less) for 6 years. I tried to be there for them...tried to understand and listen. But I couldn't relate. I dealt with breakups in the past, but none affected me like this one did. I am a much more compassionate, understanding and relatable person on this subject now and while I hope none of my friends go through a similar experience, I am armed with first-hand knowledge to help them now.

Lesson 5: Every song on the radio is about falling in love or breaking up. Sometimes, you just have to turn the radio off. And other times the music and lyrics can provide such comfort. In fact, some of my favorite songs being repeated on my ipod over and over are about breaking up. There's something to feeling like you aren't the only one to have these feelings that makes things better. My favorites include this song and this song.

Next 5 lessons (Part 2) coming soon...

Update

Life has been crazy these past few months. Tons going on...but with that, I've been doing a lot of thinking, analyzing and, of course, living. Which leads me to the fact that I have many things to blog about...transitions, saying goodbye to my childhood home, navigating a new town, breaking up, learning a friend (actually 2) has cancer, making decisions about grad school, etc. So I have taken the past few days to gather my thoughts and start drafting some posts. Enough time has passed that I can now talk about many of the lessons learned about myself and the evolution of both life and love.