How to Break Up With Anyone

by Jamye Waxman

  It’s not often a fast decision when someone chooses to end a relationship, just as it’s not often an easy decision to accept that ending. Throughout this book, at the end of most chapters, I’ve offered tidbits of hope and help, so you can try to deal with your own situation better.

  We all need reassurance when it comes to feeling good about our lives and ourselves. Whether we get that in school via good grades or through friends who love us, for most of us, we want to perceive ourselves as good people with good intentions.

  The term “winning the break up” involves getting over the break up before the other person gets over you. It includes not calling, texting, or looking despondent when you run into your ex-bestie. It involves deleting your ex-business partner from your online life and moving on.1 While this chapter isn’t about winning the break up, it is about feeling like a winner again in your own life. You can do a spite dance, conjure up a curse for how they’ve made you feel, or huff and puff until you blow their house down, but none of these things are really going to make you feel better. So, what can you do to win even when you feel like you’ve lost?

  How Field Goals Can Help You Stay Strong through a Break Up

  If you are of the mindset that being broken up with means you fail at relationships, then it’s more likely you will fail at relationships. Research confirms you may have the tendency to kick yourself when you’re down. A 2009 study by Purdue University’s Jessica Witt and Travis Dorsch found that performance influences perception.2

  Using field goals as a marker for determining how perception impacts a football player’s kicking performance, the Purdue team chose a group of non-professional players and asked them to kick field goals. They found those who failed to kick field goals believed the goal posts were too close together to get the ball through. And the larger the “players” perceived the distance between goal posts, the more field goals they actually kicked. In layman’s terms, people who see the bigger picture score more goals.

  This is an interesting reminder about the process of breaking up. Any break up is a pretty big deal. Both of you are gaining independence from a situation that has been holding you back (whether you realized it or not). If you can perceive yourself as the Incredible Hulk or Popeye post-spinach, or if you feel like you have a large support network to help you get by, you will likely do well in your break up. If you have a can-do attitude, you are more likely to have the physical and mental strength and ability to get over the break up.

  But if you envision yourself more like Superman holding kryptonite or think of yourself as completely alone and unfriendable, then you will not only be weak in the break up, but you will also feel totally isolated and unlikeable. That’s because when your perception is weak, it’s easier to get sucked back into feelings of being bad or wrong and thinking the break up was “your fault.”

  By seeing the bigger picture, you can learn how to perform at your best through a break up. You will not see the end of this relationship as insurmountable. You won’t continue to fail, because you will believe you can succeed. If you tell yourself the end of this relationship will change your life for the better, you will already be on the road to a better life. And because your perception impacts your performance, having the foresight to see the good in the bad can help you face the break up with confidence and courage.

  And there’s also that other bit of research out of Amsterdam, the study that points to how our bodies make a big deal physically about break ups (see Chapter One). So, try telling yourself that your heart is making you feel like this is a bigger deal than it actually is, and you might be able to keep things straight in your head. Because, despite the things your brain and body are telling you, these sensations and thoughts are only temporary.

  WANT TO FEEL BETTER?

  Need some help dealing with the break up blues? Try these actions:

  Stay off social media. If someone you see on Facebook or other social media sites breaks up with you, remove yourself from their online presence. Seeing their daily whereabouts will make it harder to accept the situation and can also make you feel bad about not being a part of their life. Don’t recieve mutual friends’ updates. This way, you don’t potentially run into a post about them, or a photo of them having a good time out with other people you know. If you never want to see what they’re up to, you have the option of blocking them for good.

  Get out of bed. Even if you already do this to go to work, you need to do this even when you have no other plans. It may mean walking to the store to get a bag of potato chips or going out clubbing to dance it off. Whatever your preferred method of leaving your house or apartment, get out. The more you are living, the less time you’ll have for loathing.

  See a therapist. It can help to talk with someone outside of your social circle. A therapist, or other counselor, is a perfect choice for helping you get over the feelings about being broken up with. These types of people can help you find the lessons in the relationship, as well as give you tools and techniques for coping.

  Write a letter, and never mail it. If you feel like you didn’t get the closure you desired, then writing a letter to your “ex-bestie” can be pretty cathartic. It can be a meaningful exercise and give you a chance to articulate what you are feeling and get it out of your system. You can make a copy of the letter and leave it in an envelope in a drawer, then plan on revisiting it in a few months. This way you can see how much of what you’re feeling still rings true. And if you’re over it before then, you can always burn it in a ceremonial fire.

  Stay busy. Now is the time to fill up your social calendar. Make plans. Go on dates. Take a vacation. Doing whatever you can do to keep yourself occupied, with the intention of having a good time, is a good thing. This way, your brain doesn’t become your own worst enemy.

  Meditate or exercise. Keeping your body and brain healthy is a good way to keep the rest of you healthy too.

  Any way you look at it, science proves break ups impact our sense of self-worth and well-being. And that’s okay, it happens. But when you can move on and understand the process, you can kick some major field goals.

  Getting Past the Blame Game

  If you can look at the break up from the point of view of the other person in the equation, do you see how hard it can be to initiate it? Can you think of how many times you’ve initiated a break up in your life? Or did you usually wait for someone else to make the first move?

  It’s really tough to actually break up with someone. It takes courage and conviction to be able to say how you feel and to stand your ground. Breaking up is not done for sport. It’s generally a serious decision to end a relationship with someone you care about. Even when you do the breaking up, you can be uncertain. The breaker upper may have his or her doubts about whether or not they’ve done the right thing (unless the relationship was so bad, or abusive, that neither of you doubt the decision). They will be sad and happy, missing you and reminiscing too.

  The question remains, how are you doing? You may be experiencing a sense of loss, but also a sense of relief. You may be angry, hurt, or feeling abandoned. You may want to blame your aches and pains on the person who dumped you. But, even if you do, they are still your aches and pains to soothe.

  If you can get past feeling like something bad has been done to you, then you can start to see some good in all of this too. By blaming someone else for your feelings, you are actually doing yourself more harm than good. You give away your power. You lose any sense of control you may have in the situation. You could have done the breaking up too, but you chose not to. Still, that doesn’t mean you weren’t feeling that something needed to change. You have the ability to move on and woman up. But if you continue to blame someone else for your feelings, you have no power at all.

  Even if you think it’s going to help you to blame them in the short term, blame is more like fresh cement than sustenance. Once you get stuck in the idea that you have been wronged, you will have a harder time feeling like you will be all right.
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  And if you continue to blame others, you can’t learn to move on. You can’t see what you may have done to be broken up with. You will continue to feel like a victim. And this can be just like seeing the smaller goal posts in lieu of the wider angle.

  When you can hold your dumper accountable for her specific actions around the relationship and the break up instead of blaming her for everything that went wrong, you can feel powerful, confident, and in control. Blame is about punishment, while accountability is about exploring the roles you both played in the relationship. You may not agree with how things happened, but blaming is a childish way of making sense of a situation. Accountability is more adult.

  You can turn the situation around by taking care of your needs and feelings. Self-care goes a long way in letting you be the best friend you need right now. Also find support from others who love you, or simply like you.

  The Benefits of Being Broken Up With

  I know it’s hard to hear things like, “It’s for the best,” or, “It will get better,” but people effectively use these phrases all the time as coping mechanisms for moving on. And even if it’s not for the best, because it sucks not to have this person in your life anymore, you have to hope that it will get better. Especially since that’s the only option (right now). If someone feels you’re not good and healthy for their life anymore, then they weren’t great for your life either.

  Through all the anger, tears, resentment, joy, or whatever emotion you’re currently feeling, there are benefits to being broken up with. The more we remember this, the more likely we are to be able to move forward with the picture of a happy, smiley emoticon in our head.

  BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF

  I grew up hearing the phrase “Honesty is the best policy.” And, even when it hurts, it generally rings true. When someone breaks up with you, they are being honest about how the relationship feels to them, and they are taking the time to take care of themselves. Now it’s time for you to try to do the same. How honest can you be with yourself? Is it a relief to finally know where you stand? How does it feel to be out of the gray area and moved into a place where things are black and white?

  Think about it. You don’t have to worry about figuring out if you’re in a good or bad place with this person anymore, because you aren’t in their space at all. And that means you don’t have to worry about saying, or doing, something wrong. Also, it can be a comfort to know—quite possibly for the first time in the relationship—you have been given an honest, accurate assessment of what is going on. Even if you hate them for it, you can admire their honesty. Yes?

  THE SCAPEGOATING SOCIETY

  Ever heard of the Scapegoating Society? It was founded in 1997 as a resource both for people who have been forced to bear the blame for others and for people who work professionally to prevent this very thing from happening. If you are transferring all the blame and responsibility of this break up onto the other person, you may want to check them out. And even if they don’t make you feel better, being aware of what you’re doing is a good way to stop doing it.4

  REFLECTION AND INSIGHT

  Looking back on the relationship, you can learn a lot by taking the time to answer some questions you may not have thought about while you were in the relationship. For example, what was your role in the relationship? (I.e., were you manipulating or manipulated? Did you give in or give up?) Do you have a “type” of persona you can identify with? (I.e., victim, drama queen, protagonist, servant, warlord?) Who caused the arguments and who reinforced this conditioning? Did you feel like you were treated with respect for your opinions and beliefs? What did you agree and disagree on?

  A break up is a great chance for reflection, so look at the roles you assigned to each other and analyze your part in the “performance.”

  Sure, a relationship isn’t a play, but you get the picture. Reflection leads to insight. And it gives you a chance to assess what types of people you want to be around. If your ex-boss was a conservative Republican and you’re an anarchist, perhaps you now know you can’t work with people with a certain types of political beliefs. Maybe that’s you’re trigger. Or, maybe you can work with them, but you need to think about how to better handle the situation the next time around.

  SEEING THE POSITIVE SIDE OF CHANGE

  You now have the opportunity to do you. You got broken up with, and you can’t change that, at least not right now. But what you can do, if you choose to accept this quest, is find ways this past relationship can help you to implement positive changes in your life. For example, look at the actions you took with regard to your ex. How could you have made things better during the relationship, or even through the break up? If there are things you can change for the better, how far are you willing to go to make these changes? And if you do make those changes, will you feel better about yourself?

  NO MORE ENERGY SUCK

  Bad relationships often have vampire-like energy, draining a lot from you, sometimes without you even realizing it. But once it’s over and you don’t have to think about the problems in that relationship any longer, you can stop using your energy to “deal” with this person.

  After the break up, you may notice an energy shift. Feel the effects of no longer having to focus your thoughts and energy on someone who wasn’t always making you act like your best self. You now have time to focus your energy on new things, like your life, making new friends, and enjoying new activities.

  Along with the shift in energy, you now have the opportunity to shift your focus elsewhere. What will you do, and where will you go?

  IT’S ABOUT GROWTH

  You may see the ending of this non-romantic relationship as a failure, but actually, it’s an opportunity. Even if you remember the relationship as all good before it turned bad, there was obviously room for improvement. In terms of growth, make a list of the ways you grew from, and in, the relationship. Just because it had to end doesn’t mean the good parts of the relationship have to go away. There is value in taking the good with the bad and then using all of it to grow.

  “FREEDOM IS ANOTHER WORD FOR NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE”

  Ultimately, breaking up is not all “happy, happy, joy, joy.” But you have to admit there is an element of relief from being set free. Understanding you are the only one responsible for your feelings can be quite freeing. If you can let go of the feelings of being burned, scorned, and one-upped, you can create space for feeling other things. And you can begin to look inside yourself and probe around to find the things you enjoy feeling. You will realize you are free to let go of this relationship and pursue other avenues now.

  On top of that, you are still alive. And you (hopefully) have a lot of life left in you. You too get to choose the relationships you have in your life and get rid those you don’t want anymore. You are lucky you live in a time when and place where you aren’t being told what to do, how to think, or how to act. So embrace this newfound opportunity. Go out there and live your life!

  HOW TO EXCEL AT BEING BROKEN UP WITH

  “Living well is the best revenge. So is out living them.”

  “Pick a D. C.—designated contactee. Every time you feel compelled to call, email, or text the person who dumped you, you contact your D. C. instead. Tell your D. C. anything and everything you need to say to the dumper. You get it off your chest and walk away without saying things you will regret.”

  “I don’t suppose ‘lots of booze, pot, crying, music, and lost weekends’ would be an acceptable response. I just know it’s worked for me.”

  “Go to work. Don’t let it fester.”

  “Self-care, eat well, sleep well, journal, stay busy, and take time for yourself, plus allow yourself to grieve. Allowing the contradictions is important. The longing and loss as well as moving on.”

  “Karma will take care of it all. It may take time, but eventually it happens.”

  “Let go!”

  “Think of it as a gift. You’ve been released from a relationship that was failing to satisfy
the needs of both partners. It’s an opportunity for growth and self-discovery each time.”

  “Pretend you are happy and okay until you are. (Which sounds like terrible advice, but it works somehow).”

  “You cry and feel pain and heartbreak and that is okay. Just remember those feelings are only temporary and you will feel better in the future.”

  “Work out. Sweat. Perspire.”

  “I always found that taking a trip somewhere that I had never been was a great way to get myself moving forward. And ‘success is the best revenge’ helped me focus more on the future than the past.”

  TWELVE

  Navigating the Aftermath

  You’ve ended it. It’s over. And whether you feel like dancing in your underwear à la Tom Cruise in Risky Business or sitting around talking to your computer like Joaquin Phoenix does in the movie Her, you are responsible for how you choose to embrace the final scene in this relationship drama.

  Sometimes the hardest part of a break up is making the break, and sometimes that’s only the beginning of the hurt. It may not be something you’re prepared for, definitely not fully, and aftercare can be surprisingly difficult, even if the break up is a “good thing.”

  You are likely experiencing a wide range of emotions. Feelings you weren’t planning on having may begin to surface. There’s probably some relief associated with the fact that you went through with the break up. You may feel angry about being put in a situation where breaking up seemed like the only option or about how it all went down. You may be experiencing sadness for what you have lost or happiness about what you are gaining (a greater understanding of self-care and your own self-worth).