Swimming to Europe from England or from North America?
Actually, I actually thought of it as swimming home, from Europe, I'm now remembering. Like, you've got to leave that relationship behind if you ever want to get home, and it's tempting to turn back but you'll be stuck in Europe. No offense, Europeans, it was just a mental device.
That makes sense. It's pretty easy to go to Europe as a student or a tourist, but actually immigrating is apparently a whole big thing.
Why did you break up? If it was your idea, you must have had what seemed to be a good enough reason. Can't you focus on that as a crutch to get you through missing your ex?
IME with a very similar situation, life was godawful and miserable for a good long time, and then slowly got better. Ultimately there's no way of getting around that; you have to suffer. My only advice is to avoid escapist behaviours for at least the immediate aftermath, e.g. I didn't drink any alcohol at all for several months after the breakup because I was very scared I would come to depend on the relief it would give me from the daily hell.
Also, I think almost everyone who ends a relationship more than a couple of years long loses their mind over it to at least some extent. Maybe not always at the point when they actually leave, but it is a consistently crazymaking thin to happen.
7 is right. The last really bad one I went through I dealt with by drinking a lot of alcohol and exercising a lot. So I ended up thin, at least.
Maybe there's a better mental framing than "this is a nigh impossible marathon of a task which in all likelyhood will kill me slowly and painfully."
On the other hand exercising a lot (as per ttaM) might make sense.
I'm not sure I'd try it without the drinking part. The man has a system.
I think it's also a good idea to think very concretely about what your must-haves are, in a partner.
IME 7 is totally right. Also, in most cases, if you're ending a long-term relationship, you probably weren't at your best and happiest even prior to the breakup. So the crazymaking comes right on top of a decently long period of misery or depression.
So, to 10: this is a nigh impossible marathon of a task which in all likelyhood will kill me slowly and painfully, but hey! At least I'm going to be insane and possibly welcome the self-destruction.
A certain amount of wallowing is understandable and perhaps even necessary. I'd try to limit drinking for numbness, not that I followed that advice myself after my divorce. Still, it's smart to follow ffeJ's advice as much as you reasonably can.
I found this book helpful when I was going through my divorce, though that was 12 years ago and I don't really remember very much detail about the book any longer.
My standard unhappiness tactic is regular exercise outdoors if at all possible, eating food that's healthy and that tastes good, making sure my clothes are a little nicer than what I feel like putting on at the moment. Personally, I watch my alcohol intake when I am unhappy, a spiral of drunken misery is a terrible outcome and alcohol does not cheer me up, not even a tiny bit. Chocolate for dinner, not best practice. I smoke more when I'm unhappy, don't feel guilty about it.
For bad relationships, I see compassion from a distance as the desiired outlook, hard to do with any consistency of course.
. I think of breaking up as deciding to swim to Europe. Once you're in the water, it sucks and it's tiring, but the idea of getting back together with the ex would be like returning to the wrong shore: you'd just have to get back in the water at some point and start all over again.
This is why we have the analogy ban. Returning to the "wrong sure" is surely the right thing to do, because swimming to Europe is insane.
I think of breaking up as deciding to swim to Europe. Once you're in the water, it sucks and it's tiring and then a great white shark rips your legs off.
Seriously though, condolences. My one breakup after a multi year relationship was about as un-hostile and un-dramatic as you could ask for, and it still sucked.
After ending an LTR it takes a bit of time to get your sense of yourself as not part of a couple with the other person reestablished. I forget whether I did anything in particular to get through my breakup. I think I might have watched a lot of bad horror movies.
Try fighting with swords. Not, like, super seriously. Just a little.
Yoga, chocolate, letters full of thinly veiled hostility...these are all girl things. You should try a more masculine strategy, like picking fights in bars.
20.last: Post-divorce I watched Blackhawk Down about a zillion times. No stupid romantic subplot, just people shooting each other. It was perfect for the job, and remains one of my favorite movies.
16
I found this book helpful when I was going through my divorce
I was trying to remember the name of the same book. It was recommended to me by a therapist and I remember it being crazily sexist and yet also seriously comforting. I think there's a revised edition now, which is maybe not quite so sexist.
Oh, and I played a lot of mindless video games, preferably the kind where you just steadily shoot evil monsters for hours. Very soothing.
Also, no matter how correct the decision to end the relationship is or who (if anybody) is at "fault", you're going to spend significant amounts of time being sad or angry, and often both at the same time. Everybody goes through this and there isn't any avoiding it. I found anger a much lighter load than sadness because at least it provided some energy, where being sad just made me want to sit and stare at the walls.
The advice I always give (but never managed to follow myself) is to take some time to learn how to be single again. A huge part of your life has just been removed and the urge to fill it with a new person is terribly difficult to resist, but rebound relationships 1) are almost never as good and profound as they seem at the outset, and 2) too often end up re-creating the problems from the previous one. You're a different person when you're paired up with somebody else, and it takes a while to exorcise the ghosts and start being wholly your own person again.
Also, what I should have said in 7, is that while I think almost everyone seems to lose their mind in a breakup, almost everyone seems to get through it and come out on the other side. People a year or two on the other side of something like this aren't still a mess, they're mostly as functional as anyone else is. So a big part of what you need to do is just suffer through and trust that you're going to feel better.
I recommend the desensitizing effects of a steady diet of media violence.
OT: It would be treason in the war against cliché to complain about TWYRCL making me go to a Pilates class, so I will just note that I think I enjoy yoga more and go back to trying to find a time when I can sneak away to see the new Die Hard movie.
You're a different person when you're paired up with somebody else...
That's true. I have two completely different ways of being an asshole.
To be honest (now that I've read the OP), chocolate and a half bottle of red wine for dinner is some pretty half-assed unhealthiness. If it was a half bottle of that shitty whiskey teo's buying now, hey, then we're talking.
I went through my self-initiated bad breakup long before the first death of someone very close to me, but in retrospect, getting over the end of the relationship was a lot like grieving. There's just a certain amount of sadness and anger that you have to get to the other side of, and in my case the only remedy was time.
My ex may have sped things up a little by beginning a course of harassing phone calls and letters though; at least I was able to stop wondering if I had done the right thing. But I was still more or less in a fog for about six months IIRC.
30: And teo's relationship didn't even last that long.
Also, no matter how correct the decision to end the relationship is or who (if anybody) is at "fault", you're going to spend significant amounts of time being sad or angry, and often both at the same time. Everybody goes through this and there isn't any avoiding it. I found anger a much lighter load than sadness because at least it provided some energy, where being sad just made me want to sit and stare at the walls.
The advice I always give (but never managed to follow myself) is to take some time to learn how to be single again. A huge part of your life has just been removed and the urge to fill it with a new person is terribly difficult to resist, but rebound relationships 1) are almost never as good and profound as they seem at the outset, and 2) too often end up re-creating the problems from the previous one. You're a different person when you're paired up with somebody else, and it takes a while to exorcise the ghosts and start being wholly your own person again.
Apo's advice is excellent.
I went through/am going through a similar thing. It is difficult to learn to be alone. To be in a quiet house.
I try to do some easy mindless reading combined with reading things about mindfulness.
I will also put in a plug for Rumi's The Guest House:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi ~
that shitty whiskey teo's buying now
I like turning this into teo's new norm.
Personally I say if your choice is staying in an abusive relationship or having to read Rumi, stay in the abusive relationship.
More seriously, the only things that help are friendship and exercise. Maybe therapy.
31.2 was my experience. I was actually pretty relieved to be released from BOGF*, but letting go of 6 years of accumulated couplehood was hard. Except, again, she acted fairly crazy post-breakup, so going back was never tempting in the least. Which isn't to say that I didn't spend too much time with her - it wasn't as clean a break as it could/should have been.
Anyway, the most useful piece of advice I probably have is that, in all likelihood, your bad relationship taught you some bad, false things about yourself (e.g., you're thoughtless or selfish or stupid), and you need to surround yourself with people who will tell you the opposite. It's not just the cliche of "You're better off without him/her", but actual, specific positive reinforcement. BOGF had beaten me down far more than I had ever realized, and it was incredibly uplifting to hear positive things that weren't paired with criticisms.
*bad old girlfriend
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was actually very helpful for me. Er, empowering, and shit.
Also: get out of the house into sunlight every day.
Which has the side benefit of keeping off vampire attacks.
Oh, and I want to push back a little on the "avoid rebounds" advice. Obviously, you shouldn't move in with the next person who flirts with you, but I think it can be crippling to remove yourself from romantic life. Among other things, while it will carry rejection, it will also include some of that positive reinforcement I mentioned above. Shortly after I moved out from BOGF, I went to a show by a female punk rock trio, and one of them flirted with me before the show and actually remembered me (as in, recognized and hugged me without prompting) at the next show, which was incredibly affirming, even if she was actually dating a guy in another band (shocking I know).
Even if you're the instigator, the combination of a long term bad relationship and then a breakup leads you to think that you're a failure at love/romance but, as long as you temper expectations, a little casual dating can fight that.
Then there's the fact that I met my now-wife a mere 6 weeks after moving out from BOGF (although we'd been broken up for 6 weeks before I moved out), and boy am I glad that I didn't have some artificial rule about not pursuing romance too soon.
Expand your circles. Go to DC and meet internet people.
Also, whether chocolate for dinner is a problem depends entirely on what you ate for lunch. My main meal is lunch, and sometimes I have a cracker for dinner. With a manhattan. At 11:00. Anyway, never mind that, I'm still capable of giving perfectly good advice, which is: don't beat yourself up over trivia like what you're having for dinner. When you were five, this would have been your dream supper. Think of it as a longing fulfilled.
When you were five, this would have been your dream supper.
I hadn't really developed a palate for wine when I was 5.
I was more a single malt sort of kid.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was actually very helpful for me. Er, empowering, and shit.
That's what Wh/e/d/on wants you to think! But fulfilling the fantasies of a neckbearded nerd masochist is hardly empowering.
Emopowering, maybe.
Every question has already been asked and answered.
(I vaguely remember there being good advice in that thread.)
Just read comment 575:
Now I want to know if Flippanter abandoned law and is a paragliding guide.
give yourself free reign
Urrrrgh, stab, stab, stab!
40: I definitely recommend Unfogged meetups.
Participating in new activities always helps.
Meetup groups seem like they would be a good distratction.
Maybe a paleo diet meetup group:
http://paleo-diet.meetup.com/
I thought I'd given the advice in 159 of that thread somewhere here before. The suggestion that I read War and Peace post breakup was perhaps the best single piece of advice I've ever gotten, so I like to pass it on.
40, 41: DC is compatible with chocolate for dinner.
@50, So the paleo-diet isn't being enforced at unfogged meetups?
I suppose there's no mandatory crossfit either.
And we spend a lot of time downloading pirated media. Not for consumption, just for the sheer joy of violating IP law.
I'm with the exercise + sunlight therapy groupies, along with any distractions one likes that are not immediately fatal.
||
So I had a good laugh at my boss's expense yesterday. I was meeting with someone who knew her "way back when", and he told of a malapropism from early in her career. It seems that in conveying that a particular business was in danger of extinction, she told a client that said business could "go the way of the dildo."
|>
along with any distractions one likes that are not immediately fatal.
Any slow poisons you enjoy, though, go for it. (There's a creepy line in an E. Nesbit children's book, with a little girl painting and sucking on the paintbrush, thinking that white lead paint tastes sweet. I suppose no one knew it was poisonous at the time.)
It seems that in conveying that a particular business was in danger of extinction, she told a client that said business could "go the way of the dildo."
"The problem is that your product is of wildly varying popularity from year to year. It's in, then out again, in, out, in, out..."
I'm pretty sure I've told all this before, but: after the breakup that ended the worst (~4 year) relationship of my life, I just made myself inhumanly busy and went from no caffeine to five weakish cups of coffee a day at work. I got in touch with all the friends I'd lost in the horrible tunnel of the relationship, listened to loud electronic music while falling asleep, traveled as often as possible, and for about three months just didn't let myself touch the ground. Then I lowered myself slowly down over the following year. This strategy did postpone the inevitable rather than eliminating it, but, crucially, it allowed me to make and execute significant life-changing plans rather than getting paralyzed. It's difficult, and unpleasant, to imagine my life otherwise now.
The only parts of this I would venture to recommend are the stimulants (rather than booze) and travel, even day trips. I've never been much of a drinker, but on the one night when I had a significant amount of wine during that period, hooooooly shit did I feel bad. Go to the best cafe nearby and get a macchiato (a real one, not that odd Starbucks milkshake variety). Also, yes, read interesting books.
57. In the 18th century face powder was made from white lead. And yes, it did sometimes kill them. But it also seems to have been understood that it wasn't entirely a good idea.
The only parts of this I would venture to recommend are the stimulants (rather than booze)
There's a real difference between people who alcohol cheers up and people who it doesn't. While I certainly drink enthusiastically and incompetently, I've never had the experience of drinking making me feel better: if I'm sad, or if I'm not having fun in the moment, drinking immediately makes me unhappier, so that's never been a way I've dealt with being unhappy.
But I know it takes a lot of people differently -- I mean, obviously there are serious risks to dealing with unhappiness through heavy drinking, but on some level it's something that some people find utility in.
It seems that in conveying that a particular business was in danger of extinction, she told a client that said business could "go the way of the dildo."
I remember seeing a story from Russia, shortly after the breakup of the soviet union, who worked at a dildo factory, were being paid in product because of the shortage of currency, and were having a difficult time selling them because newer style vibrators were much more popular (this might have been in the Economist, I have no idea where I would have seen it. It it was that would date it to 1996-97 because that was the only time I've read the Economist regularly).
62: IME it exacerbates my mood. If I'm up, I'll have a much better time socializing. If I'm down I'll end up rocking in a corner somewhere.
64: Right. Which means that if I'm depressed and lonely, the last thing I'm ever going to do is pour myself a drink (which explains how I made it out of the Peace Corps with a liver).
53-54: Hmmmpf. I'm going to have my OWN meetup with COOLER people and you are NOT INVITED. That'll show you. That'll finally show you all.
We're just all hurt that you said you weren't coming to DC.
There's a creepy line in an E. Nesbit children's book, with a little girl painting and sucking on the paintbrush, thinking that white lead paint tastes sweet.
Dreamily sucking the brush, even! It's a memorable line.
("How sweet Chinese White is!" said Jane, dreaming sucking her brush again.)
Although I just googled, and I'm wrong about the lead -- Chinese white was zinc. So not lead poisoning.
Re: Recovering from a relationship, I seem to remember reading somewhere or other that getting back to normal can take about as long as half the length of the relationship. Eight year relationship, for example, would mean a four year recovery time.
Now, obviously, that's horrifying when I put it like that. But that's not a guide saying "don't date for that length of time" or anything, you can still play the field or pursue another serious relationship(1) as long as you're aware that there's a good chance you're not "back to normal" yet, and of course some people get back to normal more quickly. Don't blame yourself or assume there's some deep-seated problem if it takes that long, that's all.
(1) This isn't necessary a good idea, I'm just saying that the idea of a standard refractory period doesn't exclude it.
On the other hand, lead paint is sweet and zinc isn't.
Also, I thought you loved the Peace Corps?
getting back to normal can take about as long as half the length of the relationship.
I thought the rule was one half plus seven.
Let me be the first to say that break-ups suck and you have my sympathy.
72: I wonder if "length of relationship" is the wrong metric. After all, don't many people check out emotionally sometime before a bad relationship ends?
Actually, I don't think I"m buying that suggestion at all, or maybe I don't know what it means by "back to normal". Not sad anymore? Not missing the other person anymore? Having undone the emotional damage caused not by the breakup but by the actual relationship?
Furthermore, that advice might make some sense wrt short term relationships - a one month fling takes 2 weeks to get over, a 6 month relationship could take 3 - but I don't see any reason that an 8 year relationship should take a full additional year to get over compared to a 6 year one.
I'd be more inclined to a guideline that takes into account length, depth, and healthiness* - a 2 month summer fling with a good person wouldn't take much time to get over at all, while a 6 year, all-or-nothing wrestling match with a BOGF would take much longer - unless you checked out about 18 months in.
Or maybe we're all different and each breakup is a unique snowflake of pain.
*yes, the fruit hangs low
74: Have I given that impression? I've got stories from those years, so I drone on endlessly about it. But I was doing an exhausting, difficult job I was very bad at while extremely socially isolated. And I was pretty convinced the program I was working in was actually counterproductive. And there were centipedes. Those were not a happy couple of years.
On the other hand, I did substantially increase my lifetime risk of skin cancer, so that's something.
I don't see any reason that an 8 year relationship should take a full additional year to get over compared to a 6 year one.
I've mentioned here that when Magpie and I broke up (after ~10 years together), one of my friends pulled the "you should wait half the length of the relationship before dating again" thing on me, which would have meant that I wouldn't date for all of my mid-to-late 30s. Crazy talk.
And there were centipedes.
The quickest way to make a bad breakup story an amazing breakup story.
80: That is hilarious. "Inert Dildo" would make a good pseud.
I had never heard the "half the length of the relationship" thing until Charlotte said it on Sex and the City -- which pretty much meant it was ridiculous.
83: Just because Charlotte said it doesn't mean it's ridiculous. After all she did ultimately have the good sense to marry a nice Jewish lawyer.
Still, it is ridiculous.
63: Here you go.
Thank you.
I am pleased to see that my memory was correct (including the date), and that it offers an example in which the original malapropism would be correct.
Re: the "half the length" thing: fair enough, an exact number is stupid. Still, it can take a while.
Re: alcohol, it tends to enhance whatever mood I'm in, but the thing is, whether I'm happy and it's making me happier or I'm sad and it's making me sadder, either way a lot of it makes me tired. I need to either drink more alcoholic drinks with caffeine in them like Irish coffee, or get more sleep when I know I'm going to be partying, or just start drinking in the middle of the afternoon. On that note, I miss college.
I've talked about this here before, but I was completely devastated by the end of my relationship with my partner of nine years.* After a few weeks of stumbling around aimless and crazy, I became super programmatic about getting through it:
1) I subdivided every day into three segments -- morning, afternoon and evening -- and planned in advance what I was going to do for each time period. On week days, the first two segments are used up by work, so that's easy. I found something (dinner with a friend, a class, a movie, etc.) for every other block, every week. In general, I'm a loner and an introvert, but for several months, I tried to spend as little time alone as possible.
2) Yoga didn't do it for me. I needed a less meditative and more consuming exercise. I started taking tennis classes, and they kind of saved my life. I had never played tennis before, and in addition to being physically exhausting (which felt great), it took intense and total mental concentration and effort. I remember after my first class, I was positively giddy -- I had actually gone a full hour and half without being sad and broody, and for the first time I could imagine being okay.
3) I stopped budgeting. This advice is not universally applicable -- I had a steady job and decent money, so I could afford to do this, and not everyone can. Still, until that point I had always been very careful about money, and I let that go. This was necessary to some extent to facilitate (1) and (2) above -- I had dinner and drinks out nearly every night with friends, went to movies and plays, and spent lots of money on exercise classes. I just let myself not worry about it for a while.
I also did a lot of things that I wouldn't recommend, like drinking and smoking way too much, going on dates with people I hated, and giving myself a lot of leeway to act out in fairly crazy ways. I went to a series of therapists, none of whom I found helpful or useful.
*I'm not sure how useful my advice is, on reflection, since my story doesn't have an ending along the lines of "and eventually after a year or so I was fine," etc., because after about a year and a half of pining/recovery, my ex popped back into my life (and proposed marriage, which I also discussed here in these pages). You probably don't want that part. YMMV.
There's good advice here. I like heebie's notion of binary OK/Not OK and being very kind to yourself when you're not OK.
My standard unhappiness tactic is regular exercise outdoors if at all possible, eating food that's healthy and that tastes good, making sure my clothes are a little nicer than what I feel like putting on at the moment.
Ugh. Nothing personal, lw, and I'm glad you're able to do this, but hearing this kind of thing always just makes me feel like it's my own damn fault I'm unhappy. (I'm not suggesting that's what you mean, lw. Though maybe you do, you meanie.) I say give yourself credit for whatever you are able to do during the OK times rather than worrying about the "shoulds."
45: "Abandon" would be a bit strong. The law and I are on decent if cool terms of separation while I try to start another relationship with capital. I considered going west to paragliding-bum it for a season or two, if not get instructor-certified. If I had gone I would likely not have met TWYRCL, so that particular moment of sticktoitiveness--"You think you can drive me out of the big city with your scary global financial crisis? No, fuck you, The Economy"--served me well.
There is a requirement to date someone who is too young for you. If you are 40, date a 25 year old. Just to get it out of your system.
Oh, I like Lunchy's acronym. "Twerk," heh.
89:
Thanks for the update! Perhaps we could enlist chris y or ajay or asilon to narrate Unfogged Up.
91: I think we've agreed that "Twerkel" is the canonical pronunciation.
Meanwhile, de-lurker, you should use this as an outlet as often as you want, whether it's to ramble or just to say that today sucked a little more/less than yesterday. You're gonna need a pseud, though. It seems like we've run through the presidents multiple times, but most of the first ladies are up for grabs. Pity poor neglected Louise "Lou" Hoover and Hannah Van Buren.
You're gonna need a pseud, though
"Inert Dildo" is available.
I think we've agreed that "Twerkel" is the canonical pronunciation.
88. Sure, people are different.
I'm pretty self-centered, only care about the opinions of a few individuals. Keeping up appearances and taking care of daily physical stuff is something to do for me, not for other people. At least to me, it's not obvious that keeping up appearances would be helpful, but it helps me. I know that chocolate and TV or whatever would not; YMMV.
If chocolate isn't your thing, there are other treats.
My problem with the exercise prescription is that I really hate exercise. I like the results - there's no doubt it improves my mood and the health benefits are great - but in the moment, sweating away at whatever the hell it is, I just want it to be over with. I've managed to mitigate it somewhat by building a little stand so I can play on my laptop (or watch streaming video) while on the elliptical machine, but there's still a part of me that just wants the strain to stop.
I think there's something to the idea of taking up a difficult hobby to get your mind off of your troubles; a friend of mine kept sky-diving right up to nearly the end stage of her cancer, she said because the time period between jumping out of the plane and hitting the ground was the only one she had left when she didn't think about cancer.
I don't think it necessarily has to be exercise, though. You could take up something else totally nerve-wracking, like sewing, or driving an 18-wheeler.
Aerobic machines indoors don't work for me. I'll run, bike, or swim outside, can't stand repetitive machine exercise.
I see that I managed not to say in 97 that this is my personal protocol that helps, not some abstract advice. I wouldn't choose a time of gloom to revamp my CV or redecorate my house, I'm not advocating preserving every surface appearance on general principle. But for me, counterproductive to eat shitty food or take hygeine shortcuts due to sadness.
I'm probably not the best person for offering interpersonal advice, so staying quiet about that part.
My biggest break-ups were completely irrelevant to the question, because I did the jerky thing where I stayed in the relationship waaaaay past it's expiration date and mourned it and processed it, while still in the relationship, and then broke up with the other person. Then I felt immediately great! Except scared of being single - but not missing the ex.
I don't feel like a total asshole, because the other person was often also being a total asshole in different ways. But it's not good advice, either.
"How sweet Chinese White is!" said Jane, dreaming sucking her brush again.
When I was kid I used to steal thermometers from my mom (she was always accidentally bringing them home from work, along with band-aids and alcohol prep pads and the like) and break them open so I could play with the mercury inside. (Push the balls together, now break them apart! Now chase them around the ... oops. Get another thermometer, repeat.) No one ever stopped me because I was so clever about keeping it a secret.
103. Doing this now due to offspring. Not great.
104: In Samoa, the lab had a half-pint jar of mercury. I played with it some because I'm reckless like that, and it really is astonishingly fun stuff -- it's such a shame that it's poisonous. If it wasn't, it'd be the best toy ever.
105: Did that too for the same reason. Hooboy. Almost done, though.
I also had a meter-long glass tube closed at one end, and tried to make a barometer by filling it with mercury and inverting it into a dish of mercury. It worked in principle -- that is, I got a vacuum gap at the top, and the level changed -- but I never managed to identify any relationship between the air pressure and the weather.
The lab end of teaching science wasn't a strong point. I liked my chalkboard and butcher paper much better.
My chemistry teacher talked about when he was a boy and they got to play with mercury in school and he swiped some to take home. He rolled it around on bare skin (including his tongue) long enough to get mercury poisoning. Now he posts gun-love stuff on Facebook. Those two facts are probably not related.
The last of my friends who got married in their 20s and was still married just got separated after 20 years. It lasted a lot longer than I'd expected, honestly.
10 years before he/she can start dating again. Harsh.
99
My problem with the exercise prescription is that I really hate exercise. I like the results - there's no doubt it improves my mood and the health benefits are great - but in the moment, sweating away at whatever the hell it is, I just want it to be over with. I've managed to mitigate it somewhat by building a little stand so I can play on my laptop (or watch streaming video) while on the elliptical machine, but there's still a part of me that just wants the strain to stop.
I agree with you about exercise - just a slogging chore. (I realize this runs the risk of starting an annoying Cros/sfit thread. Apologies in advance if it does.) For the purpose of staying in shape, I find biking to work great. Takes basically no time (in the summer it'll take longer because I'll have to shower and change clothes to be presentable, but that's still trivial), it's free, and it's not that strenuous but doing it 10 times a week adds up. It's obviously dependent on where you live and work, but if you can fit something like this in, go for it.
For the purpose of getting over an ex, I think I'd actually like strenuous exercise more than usual. The more tiring and time-consuming, the more varied each workout is, the better a distraction. Also, I don't want my workout to be a social experience so much, but maybe that would be good for me if my social life had just fallen apart.
"Inert dildo" is a pretty good dildo phrase, but the best dildo phrase is "dildo fatwa"
110: I have some of it still, and played with it as a kid too. The correlation with gun-love is pretty high.
the best dildo phrase is "dildo fatwa" "Goddamn dipshit Rodriguez gypsy dildo punks!"
103: we're like twins.
Well, just the one time, with BOGF. But I only ever had one other serious GF.
I still recall the one time that I broke a thermometer and got to play with the mercury. I don't recall my mom reaction especially strongly except in the way you'd expect any parent to react to a broken piece of household glass. I mean, I'm sure she said, Don't play with that, but she said the same thing about her inert dildo, and it wasn't poisonous (AFAIK).
The most significant action I took to get through my divorce was deciding, early on, that I was going to come out of it better than I went in. It took me a while to understand the flip side of that -- that I couldn't have any effect on what my ex would do -- but the basic proposition was front and center to me the whole time.
I got us into couples, then abandoned it when it was clearly a waste of time.
I met with my mom's and sister's therapist, which was weird because a) mom's and sister's and b) other side of the country, but she was great and we did a three-day intensive session that gave me a whole new way to think about myself.
I got my ex to go with me to an Imago weekend, which was invaluable -- it gave me the basic therapeutic conversation vocab of mirror, validate, empathize, and it also gave me the tools to hear when it became apparent that there was no way in which my ex was moving back towards me--which was actually just a week after the weekend, so that paid for itself many times over.
I also got really into the enneagram, and made you all take the short quiz. I still use it a lot. I would advise you to take it and see if there are elements of your type that resonate for you -- I find it's good at identifying how I address problems and emotional pain.
As far as more general breakup advice, the first bit of advice I got was "exercise and Coldplay," both of which had their place.
I also had a breakfast burrito every day for about three months, which elevated my cholesterol but got me through the days. One of you tried and rejected that particular bit of advice.
I don't think waiting to start a new relationship is all that important; "the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else." But I do think it's worth thinking about how to soothe yourself without a companion. One book I read during my divorce was Passionate Marriage which is excellent about individuation and self-soothing. (It's about sex.)
That quiz is full of questions where I spend all my time saying "both" or "neither."
Yeah, I found that enneagram test really tough to answer, though it gave me very close to the same results I got with the counselor Lee and I were seeing, who was really into enneagrams. I'm a 1 with an underlying 6, I think. Or I'd thought maybe 5? This test said 6, and whichever one it is is what Lee is too.
"Your highest score was a tie between Type 1, Type 4, Type 5, Type 7, and Type 9. One of these is likely your Enneagram type."
Gee, thanks for that insight!
Knecht and I are the same person, complete with both just going and taking the test.
Also I hate tests like that so I don't know why I took it. All options always apply sometimes, so if you don't give me ways of shading my answer, you're just getting "how Heebie resolves this kind of question" answers.
My test results say:
Your element: Fire
Your ruling planets: The Sun
Symbol: The Lion
Your stone: Peridot
Life Pursuit: To lead the way
Vibration: Radiant Energy
Leo's Secret Desire: To be a star
"Goddamn dipshit Rodriguez gypsy dildo punks!"
Repeated viewings of Repo Man would probably make pretty good breakup therapy.
I like the 144-question test, but the 36-er gets me right off the bat.
I developed the epithet test. May it will be useful. Knecht, would you say you're more of a prig, a diva, a bore, a goofball, or a catatonic?
Those tests all just tell me what an excellent lover I am.
Those tests always tell me I'm pregnant.
They advise taking the test as if you were in your twenties, or, if you've done in-depth psychological work, before you did it. Not a child, but as a young person.
I don't have any weed handy though.
"How sweet Chinese White is!" said Jane, dreaming sucking her brush again.
This reads to me like a drug memoir...
That's weird advice. Why do I care what my knee-jerk responses in my twenties boiled down to?
I also got really into the enneagram, and made you all take the short quiz. I still use it a lot. I would advise you to take it and see if there are elements of your type that resonate for you -- I find it's good at identifying how I address problems and emotional pain.
I just took the test.
It's funny which pop psychology personality typing schemes resonate with people. I identify pretty strongly as a Meyers-Briggs INTJ (and have found that description useful for me). I feel like I'm pretty clearly a Virgo, but don't find that description useful. As far as the enneagram goes the description seems basically accurate, but I don't know that it's useful -- I feel inclined to interpret it based on what I already think about myself, rather than feeling like it gives me new vocabulary to articulate my personal qualities.
Basic Fear: Of being corrupt/evil, defective
Basic Desire: To be good, to have integrity, to be balanced
133: Because the enneagram is a fluid system, and that is more useful as a starting point than the more mature heebie.
This is what draws me to it -- it doesn't so much put you in a box as it shows the typical directions you go in from that starting point.
This is what draws me to it -- it doesn't so much put you in a box as it shows the typical directions you go in from that starting point.
Assuming that's addressed to me -- I find unhelpful the idea that I respond to stress by becoming introverted (type four) and my path towards growth is becoming a happy, integrated extrovert (type seven).
I'm perfectly happy as an introvert, thank you very much
This whole "enneagram" thing is different from the "engrams" thing from Scientology? I think so, but I really never know what people get up to in California.
I hate personality tests in general, but I took a stab at the brief version of that and just winged it. Got a Type 9.
126: Eccentric Repo Man-related fetish: have always wanted a SO with whom I could use the phrase "let's go do some crimes" as code for particularly depraved sexual activity.
139: "Let's go get sushi and not pay" sounds dirtier.
||
Lee just got back from the grocery store and swears she saw a sign saying "Celebrate African-American History Month: African Violets Only [some low price]!"
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136 is a perfectly legitimate gripe, but the comment in question was addressed to heebie.
In the back of your head, I think it's also a good idea to think very concretely about what your must-haves are, in a partner.
Mrs. K-sky's dating site profile contained an incredibly detailed list of what she was looking for. I matched up to it really well. (See, I like taking personality tests.) It was really very helpful -- specific enough that I could recognize myself, and not anyone could.
I'm of two minds. I think those tests can be legitimately helpful and am horrified at putting a checklist on a website to find your mate.
|| Driving home, Go Butte came on the radio. Wanna see something that's really scary? |>
When did it become the norm here that "pause play" was either necessary or sufficient to excuse a comment?
I am a tie with two and seven.
what do I win?
Or maybe 2011. They all run together.
I'm a 5/6 but I suspect it's 5 as 6 has all sorts of stuff about being responsible and reliable and hardworking.
I find it's good at identifying how I address problems and emotional pain.
Whoa, whoa--problems and emotional pain are supposed to be addressed?
Sign me up for Team This Test Sucks. Too many "A and B, or C and D?" questions, where A and C apply, but B and D don't. I scored a 6 for Individualist and Loyalist, a 5 for Investigator, and the others were 4s and 3s except a 0 (ha!) for Challenger.
Although now that I'm actually reading the pages, it's more interesting. Hmm.
Post-divorce I watched _The Breakup_ and _The Whale and the Squid_. I do not recommend this approach.
Post-divorce, I pursued the get over someone by getting under someone strategy for awhile. It was actually pretty comforting, however disastrous on a million other levels.
Post-more recent breakup I vaccilate btw plans to never have sex again and tormented (and yes, utterly unhealthy, I know) text exchanges with the ex about why we're never (ever, ever...) getting back together.
tormented (and yes, utterly unhealthy, I know) text exchanges with the ex about why we're never (ever, ever...) getting back together.
Did you find repeated viewings of the Taylor Swift video strengthened or weakened your resolve?
God, I love that video.
154: I'm not sure I've ever seen the video. Or even listened to the song all the way through. But still.
I admit that I watched the video of her performance of that song at the Grammy event.
You know what? People in stilts with really long pants so it looks like they just have really long legs are awesome. The really big stilt person pretending to control the normal-sized person, as if the latter were a marionette, was also cool. They should just have had a circus, basically, rather than the Grammy event.
Nothing ever helped me but finding someone better. And that is largely a matter of chance.
What I did in the meantime was
1) Watch movies I knew by heart over and over, practically every night, primarily All About Eve and The Women, because I find familiar things comforting
2) Move to a different state, not always practical!
3) Get laid a fair amount
4) Be needy and depressing at my friends
5) In a different instance than the one I'm mainly talking about, actually a friendship breakup but I am mentioning it because it was so great and I think would help with an ex, get together with a friend who has also been dumped by this person and has a guitar, get stoned, and write a mean song about the person.
86: alcohol only ever seems to make me mellow and friendly and ok. I think if I were not very strongly averse to feeling physically unwell and to feeling nauseated in particular, I would be a very dedicated drinker indeed.
Just drink a little bit all the time!
alcohol only ever seems to make me mellow and friendly and ok. I think if I were not very strongly averse to feeling physically unwell and to feeling nauseated in particular, I would be a very dedicated drinker indeed.
Me too, exactly.
156 is quite right, and makes me think that Taylor Swift has a huge amount of genre anxiety. The line about "some indie record much cooler than mine," the fake Animal Collective band, plus the matching Hayden Panettiere subplot on Nashville.
It's still carnival time/mardi gras. Who's with me??? Repent tomorrow. Breakup lurker, this is the only advice that actually matters.
158
2) Move to a different state, not always practical!
Agreed. Obviously not always practical, but great advice if you can manage it.
I had a bad breakup in college, and I'm not sure how long I should say it took me to get over, because even though another relationship started a few years later I wasn't actually happy with my social life or myself until I moved. It was both a matter of getting a new group of friends, and getting to a more urban environment. More stuff to do, places to go, much less chance of bumping into people with overlapping social networks or preconceived notions...
I normally give credit for improvement to living in a city, but now that I think of it the change in friends helped a lot too. I'm not necessarily saying that there's anything wrong with my old friends, and I've already lost touch with a lot of my new ones from after I moved, but just getting out of a rut makes a difference.
alcohol only ever seems to make me mellow and friendly and ok.
I'm also an amiable drunk, but I find it hard to titrate the exact amount needed to maximize amiability while minimizing incoherence. I get tongue-tied relatively easily at the best of times.
this thread has given me a bit of a crush on the whole unfogged mind. You're a good group.
I was told the 'exercise' bit too, after end of 20yr marriage. feh. Alcohol also only exacerbated problems for me. But btvs, chocolate, therapy, zombie movies, movies in the genre of _Heathers_, and being an elsewhere (moving not possible, but just going elsewhere for weekend &/or a few weeks) as often as possible really helped. It's been three years, & I'm definitively over the ex (in the way of not even having anger left; just an amazement that I did that for as long as I did), and finally feeling nearly completely myself again. Former came long before the latter. ymmv.
this thread has given me a bit of a crush on the whole unfogged mind. You're a good group.
I was told the 'exercise' bit too, after end of 20yr marriage. feh. Alcohol also only exacerbated problems for me. But btvs, chocolate, therapy, zombie movies, movies in the genre of _Heathers_, and being an elsewhere (moving not possible, but just going elsewhere for weekend &/or a few weeks) as often as possible really helped. It's been three years, & I'm definitively over the ex (in the way of not even having anger left; just an amazement that I did that for as long as I did), and finally feeling nearly completely myself again. Former came long before the latter. ymmv.
Hey delurker-asker, we do expect progress reports. Since this was posted, you should at least have had some drunken exercise and written a song while getting laid. What's going on?
backwardsinheels has a double crush on Unfogged!
Compelled to de-mostlylurk because I have what may be an abnormal . . . talent? for breakups and am curious if there is (a)any way to translate that into advice, or (b)any way to get paid to Dybbuk up in people's brains and live the first months of other people's breakups for them?
I am qualified to possess and heal your mind because my marriage (nine years, one kid) ended about 6 months ago. I cried a lot for a week, then was ok. Hm. Sleeping with everyone has had mixed therapeutic results, I recommend it with reservation. My only good tricks are spending as much time as I can outside and, when I catch myself trying to Figure Out my life (or even biggish next steps), cutting it out real real quick. What seems like cool reason to me is usually something a lot crueler and less useful.
Ooh, the enneagram! I was way too into that, once upon a time, but I can say with certainty that I am a six with a five wing.
I passed a billboard in Nashville today advertising some radio station using the line "Taylor left us too."