What A Breakup Will Eventually Teach You

It’s probably the biggest nightmare of any relationship, but sometimes it’s inevitable. Sometimes “life” happens, and the relationship crashes. Breakups are traumatic. It’s true that if you initiate the breakup, you may feel less pain or handle the pain better than the person you’re breaking up with, but it’s hardly easy either way. And breakups are no trivial matter. I probably should've known better, but I was naïve in my relationship lifetime. I learned some invaluable lessons though, and I share the lessons I learned from them here with you today.

A breakup won’t kill me... For days after my first breakup, my heart literally ached. I felt sick, and I lost my appetite. Worse yet, my blood pressure soared. Waking up every morning was torture. I could understand why some people end their lives after a failed relationship. The seconds, the minutes, the hours, and the days all passed slowly. At the end of every day, simply staying alive to see the next day seemed impossible. At the time, I did not want to stay alive, but I’m here writing this so I know that the heartbreak associated with a breakup could not kill me. If heartbreaks could kill, I would have died three more times after my first breakup.

A relationship cannot thrive on love alone… But if it could, some relationships would last forever. Yeah, they do have that much love. More often than we’d like to admit, money or lack of it contributes to the demise of many relationships. I know because it contributed to mine, and I know my relationship wasn’t the first or the last under heaven ending because of money issues. I learned it’s not just about money either. Personal experience has likely taught you several factors that can make or break relationships. So you just don’t need to take my word for it.

Switching to “just friends” after a breakup is unrealistic, at least for a while… We’re friends now, and we do talk, but during the first few weeks and months after the breakup, it was a terrible idea. I couldn’t even stand the mention of her name without getting a pull in my chest. Since she left me, I felt I could still talk her into giving our relationship another chance, but the worse the reality was the more we talked. Because each time we talked, her words gave me little to no hope. I always felt heartbroken all over again. That in my opinion delayed my healing process. Now I know better than trying to play the “just friends” card, at least until after some time has passed. Staying “just friends” immediately after a breakup may work for you, but it never really worked for me.

Love is hard work... A wrong perception of love is common today. People feel that once they’re in love, they’ll always be in love with little or no effort on their parts. That’s a lie. Nobody stays in love without working to stay in love. When you truly love someone, you make a conscious effort to stay in love with the person. You won’t always feel a strong attachment to the other person. You won’t always find the other person very romantic (some people call it being passed the “honeymoon” phase). Showing her love won’t always come naturally, but you have to anyway. Staying in love is like keeping in good physical shape. It requires constant work. Sadly, I believed I had or could show enough love to cover for both of us. I was wrong, but that was my next lesson.

Love takes two people... I loved her enough. I stopped at nothing to show it, but my love could not conceal her inadequacy. The more I tried, the more I realized the futility in trying. Relationships surviving on the efforts of one person can hardly last, that’s why there are two people in a relationship. I learned that the hard way. I just couldn’t do enough for both of us. I had my part to play, more importantly, she had hers to play too. She had to do at least some of her part. These words are true:

“The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three.” – Alexandre Dumas

When you carry the chains of a relationship alone for too long, you’re sure to crash under its weight.

Nobody graduates from self-improvement... I felt I was romantic enough by sending her handwritten love letters, by calling her every day, or by sending her text messages during the day. For her, romantic meant affording dates at exotic restaurants, it meant buying her presents on the regular. In short, romantic meant financial competence. While my personality wasn’t particularly unbearable to her, my financial condition was. It had to get better, and she wasn’t patient enough to watch it improve. Not that I was trying to improve it then anyway. My life wasn’t perfect (still isn't), and that was a painful reminder.

Relationships are not always fair. Some men date women for selfish reasons. Maybe because she’s beautiful, maybe because she’s rich, maybe because she’s popular. They soon get disillusioned when they realize those aren’t recipes for successful relationships. Some men see women as sex objects. And they have to feign love just to get her between the sheets. When they realize he’s just a “sex” guy, they leave feeling downhearted and used. Are any of the above scenarios fair? No, they’re not. But do they happen? Of course they do. One thing is sure: when only one person is pulling the weight of two in any relationship, it’s not fair. But such is life too, and I wish I learned it sooner...

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