Unqualified

  On my actual birthday, I was hit with an odd wave of liberation. I’m not usually into those definitive age milestones, but I felt a weird sense of freedom that morning, and I think it was during that weekend that I subconsciously planted the seed that I was going to make a big transition with Ben soon.

  Not long after that getaway, I was filming a movie in England, and Ben and I decided to skip Christmas with our families and spend two weeks traveling the English countryside instead. It was an amazing trip and we stayed at all these tiny inns and ate at funky cool pubs and it was great, except every day we were searching for conversation. I don’t know if that had always been the case and I had just never realized it, or if it was a new development, but I felt like I was working hard at communicating with him. I barely even knew what his interests were, which perhaps speaks to my own issues of being self-absorbed. I knew he was really good at interior design and fashion—both areas that are not my strong suit, to put it mildly. It was as if I suddenly realized, after almost a decade, that we had nothing in common.

  About two months after that trip, I left Ben. I have to be honest, it felt like a two-hundred-pound backpack had been taken off my shoulders. I was so exhausted from trying to make the relationship work, which I think is another reason I stayed in it so long. The thought of breaking up felt even more draining than staying together. I would think to myself, If I kick him out of the apartment that we both signed the lease on, logistically how does that work? What’s the law about that? Fuck that. I was too tired.

  That relationship ended ten years ago. And while I don’t have any regrets, I certainly had some takeaways regarding how I wanted to approach my next relationship, and how I might advise others wondering about marriage, too. If I could instill one thing in my son, Jack, for example, it would be to wait until he is thirty to get married. I know that’s a cynical thing to say, and I know it ruffles feathers, but for me the twenties were so much about career growth. I was working really hard and was in a selfish place. I was a much more insecure and jealous person back then, and I didn’t have a lot of extra room in my life to allow for a relationship, let alone a marriage.

  The best thing to come out of my first marriage, for me, was the recognition of what I want from the people in my life and what I need from those I surround myself with. People should constantly calibrate the amount of joy versus the amount of discontent a person brings them. I’ve eliminated, as much as I can, people who don’t bring me happiness and I’ve realized it’s not worth it for any of us to keep those people in our lives. I basically take the same approach to my social life as Marie Kondo does to a coat closet. I have a good friend in a bad relationship, for example, and I try not to get too harpy with her, but I do challenge her with this basic idea of joy all the time. “Think about this,” I’ll say. “Does he make you happy fifty percent of the time? Sixty percent?” No one can expect to be completely happy 100 percent of the time, but if you’re spending the majority of a relationship feeling like crap because of the other person, that probably means something.

  As I imagine is the case for any divorce, the failures of that relationship reverberated through my next one. My learnings from my marriage impacted who I chose to date next, and also the way I behaved with him. I’m happy to say that despite having just left a failed marriage, I was not skeptical of love or men or relationships the next time one came around—and, as you’ll soon see, that happened pretty fast.

  • • •

  When I met Chris, the most striking thing about him was that he knew how to be happy and he knew how to make the best out of a bad day. He was constantly seeing the positive in everything. When I looked back at my marriage, and many of my relationships before it, I realized I had always equated cynicism, discontent, and anger with intelligence, and getting together with Chris made me reexamine that. It made me realize that being with someone who was well-liked and popular actually made me happy.

  Still, I didn’t emerge from my first marriage completely unscathed. I’m only human, and I’d just ended a relationship that, all in, spanned eight years of my life. So while I was struck by (even skeptical of) Chris’s generosity of spirit, I definitely took an approach at the beginning of our relationship that could be categorized by a single mantra: “I’m not putting up with any shit anymore.”

  For example: When Chris and I started dating he was chronically late. One time, he said he’d be over in thirty minutes, so I decided to cook. Chicken stuffed with lemons and roasted tomatoes and a big loaf of my famous garlic bread. (Spoiler: It’s famous because it’s covered in butter.) After an hour of waiting for him to show, I left. I walked out of my own home and went for a long walk. I didn’t want to—in fact I wanted desperately to see him—but I felt like I had spent so many years having so little power in my relationships, and I didn’t want to be in a place in my life where I was constantly waiting for somebody. I had done that already, and was over it. I wanted some consideration. I had to set boundaries, because I was so wary of feeling bulldozed in any way. When Chris finally showed up at my house he called me in a panic and I told him where I was: at a restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard by myself. After that, Chris was always on time, which I acknowledge is a good argument for relationship game-play. I hate that term, but that’s the reality of what I did. I liked Chris so much but I didn’t want to appear overeager. I would do things like not call him back immediately—I would wait a whole (gasp!) twenty or thirty minutes because I was so proud, even though I wanted so much to hear his voice.

  I think the real problem was that as soon as Chris and I started dating, I wanted to marry him. I was head over heels, and that made me feel helpless in a period of my life when all I wanted was to feel powerful and understand my self-worth. I guess that was all part of the “divorce journey,” a phrase that genuinely makes me want to throw up.

  Listener Advice: How to Get Over a Breakup

  There’s a lot I don’t know about navigating relationships. I know what has worked for me, and what hasn’t, but that’s it. You’re just as qualified as I am, dear reader, to give love advice. (Unless you’re a psychologist, or a psychiatrist, or a social worker, or, I don’t know, a sex expert—is that a thing?—in which case you are much more qualified than I am.) I’m just lucky enough to have a platform to indulge my desire to tell people what to do in their relationships. But given the knowledge that I’m totally unqualified, I wanted to gather some of your thoughts, too, so that any reader looking for actionable, helpful advice on dealing with a real problem might have a good range of tips to choose from.

  So I posted this question on Facebook: What’s your best “getting over a breakup” advice? If someone called into your podcast with a broken heart, what would you tell them?

  Here’s what you said:

  Keep your mind busy. Dive into work, friendships, and hobbies. Don’t stop to dwell on the past until you are far enough away from it to really understand what happened.

  —Elec

  Let yourself have a weekend to indulge your feelings, because if you tuck them away, eventually they’ll resurface. Then focus on all the other kinds of love in your life and keep busy by doing something on your bucket list or taking up a new hobby. Don’t try to meet anyone right away, because we all need time to heal and the next person you date deserves the best of you, not the parts of you that are still emotionally involved with your last partner.

  —Courtney

  Go out. Even though it sucks mostly. Make as many friends as possible. Not Facebook friends, real friends.

  —Weston

  Allow yourself to be as sad as you need to be. The more you feel your feelings, the sooner you can move through them. Some people get over it in three days of sadness and some take weeks. Stop pressuring yourself to bedone at a certain time and treat yourself with compassion!

  —Natasha

  Drink the first night (’cause let’s be real). Then pamper yourself and spend time with f
riends and family. And eat lots of pizza.

  —Katie

  You need to go through the journey—the process of owning your responsibility in the relationship and the breakup. Be honest with yourself. At what point was there a first red flag that you ignored? And the next? And the next? When you examine that, you’ll get insight. Is this a pattern? Why do I do that? What do I not value about myself that allows me to allow someone else to treat me badly? Once you do the difficult self-work, then you’ll be free and ready to welcome the right partner into your life. It’s neither fun nor easy to do that work, but it can be life-changing.

  —Ann

  Delete them from all social media! You don’t need to see any of that. Take some time away from social media, too, because you’ll be tempted to look and drive yourself crazy.

  —Allyson

  I don’t think you need to dwell in the past, but I don’t think you need to forget it, either. Time will do its work. There is no recipe for heartbreak, unfortunately. People who you loved will always be a part of you—you gave them your heart, so it’s normal that they took a piece of it. For better or worse, they are part of your history. The only thing you can do is cherish what was good and forget about the bad. And focus on the future. Now you have a whole new opportunity to meet somebody else who will be even more awesome than your ex!

  —Cassien

  Get under as many people as possible.

  —Dane

  I’m a firm believer in exes staying exes. If you broke up, it was for a reason, and chances are they didn’t suddenly change overnight. Go out, have fun, and get outside your comfort zone. Don’t worry about the timeline, worry about yourself. If you feel ready to start dating a week later, go for it. No one knows you better than you.

  —Dory

  Be really careful about the music that you listen to during the worst part of the breakup. I have ruined some of my favorite albums because now I associate most of the songs with feeling terrible.

  —Samantha

  You don’t just “get over” a bad breakup. You live it. You experience it. You wallow. You overanalyze. You question what went wrong and why you weren’t good enough. It took me three and a half years to get over the worst breakup of my life with the only person I’ve ever fully given my heart to. I experienced every feeling on every single level—hatred, anger, sadness, confusion, guilt, etc. After you experience it, you wonder how to get over it for so long that you actually are over it before you even realize. You’ll look back glad that it’s over and glad that you’ve learned from it. There’s no timetable that dictates how long it takes, but it will happen.

  —Kelly

  I like to do something I’ve never done. Like go to the movies on my own, or go on a hike. It gives a sense of independence that is refreshing.

  —Rebecca

  Take things one day at a time. Grieve, because technically something did die, a relationship you had with a fellow human being. Do whatever you can to become a better person, whether it’s pursuing deeper spirituality, taking up boxing, reading more, or meeting new people. And have at least one crazy night involving tequila.

  —Bethany

  Take Me Home Tonight. Literally.

  When I first met Chris, I was constantly looking for proof that he was not as great as he seemed. It was 2007, and we were in Phoenix filming Take Me Home Tonight, a movie about a bunch of recent college graduates in the late eighties that follows them over the course of one night. Chris and I played a couple. I was still married to Ben (it was after my thirtieth birthday weekend but before our official breakup), and even though neither of us was happy in the relationship, I was still technically off the market. All the more reason why I was skeptical of Chris’s general kindness. What was in it for him?

  One day I left my credit card at Kmart, and I mentioned that to Chris during shooting. He spent what felt like all day trying to track it down for me, talking to customer rep after customer rep, and requesting to speak to the managers, just to help me out. I was flabbergasted, and rather than accept that maybe this was just a good guy, I tried to analyze his motives. What did this cute but incredibly boyish big dude want from me? Why was he doing this? I had no clue. He can’t fuck me, I thought. I’m married. So what is it?

  And then he kept doing nice things for me. They weren’t creepy; they were just respectful. Because the movie largely takes place over one evening, the whole shoot, with the exception of one day, happened at night. After filming, Chris would walk me to my door or otherwise make sure I got home safely. It baffled me.

  We became friends over the course of filming, and, I should be clear, he was having his own good time. He wasn’t walking me home to get in my pants. He was hooking up with some of the cute background actresses, and I eventually started acting as his wingwoman. I loved it, and was so impressed with myself for being the cool girl who helped him hook up with hotties. But then I found myself feeling incredibly jealous of said hotties, and starting to wonder what the fuck was going on in my head. In hindsight, I was obviously crushing on him, but I don’t know that I realized it at the time, even subconsciously. He was so different from anyone I’d ever been attracted to. He was kind and silly and totally beloved on set. Plus, as an actor, he was really good, and I was kind of taken aback by that. He was so daring and uninhibited during scenes, and I remember realizing that I was acting with someone who felt really free, and it was jarring and wonderful at the same time.

  Ben came to visit me one time during the filming of that movie. I ended up going home early, but everyone else—including Ben—went to a club, and he came crawling home from his wild night out at about 7:00 A.M. I don’t know what exactly went down, but the next evening I was talking with Topher Grace, who played my brother in the film. “Anna, what the fuck are you doing with that guy?” he asked me. It was such a wonderful cold splash of water in the face. People had hedged around the idea that we weren’t right for each other before, but that dancing-around-the-issue approach made me defensive. Nobody had just come out and said it like that.

  I thought about the question for a moment, looked him in the eye, and answered. “I don’t know,” I said.

  The whole cast was staying in some dumpy apartment complex, and a few nights later Chris invited a bunch of us to his apartment to hang out and eat elk Rice-A-Roni, made with elk that he’d hunted and brought with him from Salt Lake City. It was a fun evening, and Chris and I were at our peak banter. Though we didn’t act on it physically, I couldn’t deny that something was happening between us. The next day I went to my friend Dan Fogler, a really talented actor and costar of the film, and confided in him that I wanted to leave my husband and I didn’t know what to do.

  “I saw you and Chris last night, and it was like I was watching Ping-Pong,” he said. (He starred in Balls of Fury, a Ping-Pong movie that came out that year, so it was top of mind.) “You two were so into each other.”

  Dan also told me that if I was going to leave my husband, I had to be a surgeon with a scalpel about it. Do it immediately and effectively, he said. So I called Ben and told him over the phone that I was leaving him, and then went to set and was like, “Hey, everybody! I just left my husband.” Pretty soon I was knocking on Chris’s door and was basically like, “Hi. I’m ready to get boned.”

  I know that leaving your husband over the phone is a questionable decision, and I definitely felt like the villain in that moment. But as I’ve mentioned, a real part of the reason I didn’t break up with Ben sooner was that the prospect of it just sounded so exhausting. Dealing with all the broken pieces of our relationship was daunting enough that I basically put it off until I couldn’t anymore. And in an odd way, we’d been through so much together at that point that it felt like the only way to do it. Had I told him face-to-face, not only would I have had to wait longer, but it would have been horrible drama.

  Breaking the news from afar was, in some ways, the easy way out. I won’t
deny that. But even on the phone I had to repeat myself a number of times before he took me at my word. “You’re just tired; you’re really tired,” he responded at first. I just said, “Nope, I’m leaving you.” And that was that.

  • • •

  The end of the relationship was long overdue. We hadn’t been happy for a while, but the reality is that if I hadn’t met Chris, my first marriage probably would have lasted until I found a different someone else. Chris was my cattle prod. I needed someone to come along and show me something different than the relationship I knew, even if he did so without realizing it. I wish I could have figured that out on my own, but I didn’t. It probably has to do with the public proclamation of marriage and my incredible reluctance to admit failure. Basically, my pride mixed with my what-did-I-do-wrong guilt was pretty hard to overcome.

  In the moment after I broke the news to the cast and crew, Chris and I exchanged a brief glance, and we both knew what it meant. When we finally got together, it was hot and heavy in a way that I’d never experienced before. I felt a little bit guilty, mostly because I didn’t want him to feel like I was pressuring him to be in a relationship with me, like, This is what you have to do because I left my husband.

  It was extremely important to me, especially toward the end of my relationship with Ben, not to sleep with anybody while we were together. I have complicated feelings about that now. Not that I think I should have cheated on him, but I realize that that moral stance was basically a way to let myself off the hook. I think about my motivation during that time period, and I think I was looking for something to hang my hat on. Sure, I get to proclaim I didn’t fuck Chris before I left Ben, but what is there to celebrate in that? It didn’t make me a hero. After all, I wanted to. Desperately. And I had feelings for him, obviously, even if I wasn’t honest with myself about what those were. So while I didn’t cheat, I’m not completely innocent, either.