Breakup Advice

Today we have a question from a reader who had an affair for a year, which recently ended. She is having an extremely painful experience trying to get over this relationship and asks:

I am currently dating a man for 12 years and last January 2012, I met this man. We talked on the phone a lot, and since he was a carpenter, he said he could do some work for me. I knew that was just a way of getting to know me.

As time went on, he took me for drives and we had many fires in my firepit all summer long. Very romantic. I didn’t intend on cheating on my boyfriend, but I did. I feel like a very bad person because I have better morals than that.

Dec. 22 of 2012, I told this man that it had to be over. I was starting to get severe anxiety over it. I had a nervous breakdown and had to go to the hospital which my real boyfriend took me to. He has no clue that I had this affair and I can never tell him about it as he would be done with me and I don’t blame him for that.

I did fall truly in love with this other man and the breakup in Dec. has caused me severe anxiety with nausea. They first put me on tranquilizer and now I am on 20 mg of prozac. It has been 5 weeks today since the breakup with this man. I guess I have only been in the relationship for a year and really didn’t get intimate till this summer which I do mean we had sex. So it has been a year since I have known him.

How long do you think that I will get over this breakup? I am still with my boyfriend of 12 years but he doesn’t understand why I have severe anxiety. I told him it was over work and he seems to believe it. This has been really unbearable. And believe me I will never be unfaithful again.

Please give me some advice.

God Bless.

And our response:

There are a few pieces of advice/information I have to offer you.

Whenever the reaction to a relationship is so overwhelming and intense, you have to wonder what it’s dredging up from the past. Usually the type of symptoms you’re having where you are nauseous and so anxious you need hospitalization and medication as a result of a breakup have to do with some underlying attachment issues. That might go back to your family or other experiences in your younger years that left a wounding.

It may be that the reason this connection was so intense for you, even when you already have a longstanding boyfriend, is that this new person triggered to the surface wounds that your boyfriend does not. So there was a strong drive to explore and heal those together. When the relationship ended, it left those surfaced wounds raw and exposed along with the realization that they would not, at least at the moment, be healed in this relationship.

The best way to understand the symptoms you’re having may be to think of it in terms of withdrawal from an addiction, as we talked about in a previous piece on this site. I’m sure you can see how a lot of the cravings and feelings and other symptoms involved are analogous.

I highly recommend these books to help you understand that addictive nature of the situation.

	How to Break Your Addiction to a Person by Howard Halpern – This book will help you make sense of and get through the withdrawal pain you’re feeling right now shortly after the breakup.
	Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love by Pia Mellody – Will help you explore the roots and pattern of the addictiveness.

Luckily, as with other types of withdrawal, if you have the proper support you need (which it sounds like you’re getting, at least to an extent) you can get through it and come out on the other side. But withdrawal is always a very painful difficult process that you have to take one day at a time.

One thing you might consider doing is looking for online forums of people going through relationship withdrawals as that might offer you somewhere that you can – anonymously if need be – get some support from people who recognize how painful this process can be.

As far as exactly how long it will take to get through that phase, as we’ve said in our article on the topic, it really isn’t worth asking that as focusing on that question is like watching a boiling pot. It is understandable to want to ask and try to figure it out, but it only keeps you locked into the feeling. Focus on getting through each day and processing the withdrawal, finding the support you need to get through it intact and the passing of the pain will come upon you like a sudden surprise one of these days. And whatever you do, if you are determined to move on, don’t have any contact with this other person, not even indirect contact like checking their online pages and so on. Focus anywhere else, as difficult as that might be.

Today we have a question from a 17 year old girl who is struggling to get over a breakup with her 18 year old ex-boyfriend. As with all of our readers who give us permission to post their questions and our responses, we thank her.

If you wish to ask a question, contact us. If you are willing to allow us to post your question on the site, we will work with you to protect your privacy as needed.

The reader writes:

My boyfriend and I dated for about 1 1/2 years and it was great. We fought occasionally but they never gotten too bad. Then one day I was talking about the possibly of us going on break since things felt dull between us. He freaked out and we got into the worst fight ever! We screamed at each other and he said alot of hurtful things. We managed to be resolved three weeks later, but we stayed on “break”. Then off and on again with fighting. And then finally he broke up with me after I did something I never should’ve…I involved his mother (thinking she would help him see my side). Now my number’s blocked, I’m blocked on Facebook and he refuses to have any contact with me. But I can’t seem to let him go! It’s been 3 months and I can’t seem to go a day without thinking about him. HELP!!

She adds:

I do accept that it is over and I am having trouble moving on. I do hope we can get back together. It’s something I really really hope would happen. I do want to try and get him back, but at the same time I feel like I should move on…He obviously hates me.

And finally:

I’m 17 and he’s 18. My question is, how can I move on? Like, I want to, but there’s so much around me that reminds me of him and I constantly think of him without realizing it. How can I stop that? I understand that you never get over your first love, but if it’s gonna be like this then….no thanks!

And now our response:

Dear reader,

Without knowing a lot more about the two of you it is hard to say for sure what went on here. But from what you’ve mentioned, it sounds like the problems really hit a tipping point when you mentioned the possibility of taking a break. You say he “freaked out” and you got into a fight. This would seem to indicate that he had a fear of abandonment. A fear like that often comes due to past abandonments. I don’t know what his family situation or childhood history is. But if he has had close people in his past leave him or just felt uncared for or unwanted by any of them, he could be very sensitive to having someone raise the possibility of distancing as you did.

Then you got in touch with his mother. If his family issues are in any way connected to his abandonment issues, then contacting his mother may have just stirred the pot even more. Also, though it may seem paradoxical, many people who have fears of abandonment also have fears of engulfment, in other words, fears of being violated or smothered. He may have felt that you getting in touch with his mother crossed a line and was a boundary violation, which hurt his trust. And he also may have felt ganged up on that you tried to sort of recruit his mother to side with you against him.

In any case, now the relationship is over and, though you claim you still have some fantasies of getting him back, deep down you know you need to move on. And in fact, most likely, if he felt violated by you getting in touch with his mother, then obviously continuing to try to contact him would only make him feel even more smothered. So even if there was any hope of the relationship recovering in the future, at this point it would most likely be best that you give him his space and truly work on moving on as best you can.

So now to the heart of your question: How do you move on?

The first step is to try to gain some understanding of what happened. As I mentioned, a lot of the ups and downs in relationships, especially having to do with fears of abandonment and engulfment, happen because things going on in the present remind someone of the past. So what that means is that you shouldn’t take everything that happened personally. It may not have been such an awful thing for you to suggest a break in the relationship in itself. His reaction may partly have been because of his past, which you may not have even known about. He may not even realize himself why he reacted as intensely as he did so he would project all of that anger and fear onto you, even though you don’t deserve it all. While these things do happen, and you may not be able to change it sometimes, hopefully it can help you regain a little of your self-esteem to know that not all of the bad feelings in the relationship were really about you.

The second step is to understand what attachments are really about. Usually when someone is obsessing over a person, it is because that person hits certain psychological buttons for them or symbolizes something important. What that means is that, many times, even though it feels like all your desire and need is focused on that person himself, it really isn’t about him as much as what he symbolizes or brings up in you. In the future, when you’ve had more relationships and felt this kind of feeling more times, you’ll realize that it obviously can’t be just about the person since more than one person may bring those feelings up over the course of your life. So the point is to remind yourself that your feelings may tell you it’s all about him and you can never love anyone again, but know in your head that isn’t true. In time, with the right healing, your feelings will catch up with what your mind knows.

In order to get more insight and really understand what is going on, you might want to read about attraction, relationship dynamics and so on. There are lots of resources online and also you can take a look at the books we recommend in our bookstore.

The next step is to really accept that you are going to have No Contact with this person for the foreseeable future. In fact, try not to just accept that you can’t contact him because he has cut off communications. Make the decision for yourself that you are choosing not to contact him even if you could because you need that space to heal. The important thing for you is to realize that No Contact doesn’t only mean not talking to him. It means not putting energy into the relationship at all. It means not checking his Facebook. It means not asking other people about him. It means pouring your energy into processing your own feelings, reading and learning more about what really goes on in relationships and moving on with your life.

It will hurt because a lot of times you’re using the  relationship to distract you from your own pain and past issues. But once you choose to not focus on that other person anymore you come face to face with yourself. It hurts but it is a good thing as you can finally make sense of and process your own past issues. Having been in a relationship with him, you likely also have some issues with abandonment, engulfment and so on from your own family or close relationships. And now you can get some insight into that.

Don’t be harsh with yourself. If he pops in your mind trying to force yourself not to think about him won’t help. But just let it pass and refocus your mind again and again on yourself and your own feelings. Practice that skill of calmly refocusing even when your mind doesn’t want to. And this is also why it’s good to spend some of this time reading and researching to learn more about relationships since it will give your mind something else to focus on instead of directly on him while still addressing what you’re feeling in a constructive way, rather than by trying to avoid dealing with what you’re feeling altogether.

Finally, if you are having a real hard time therapy is an option to consider. A great therapist can help you work through what is keeping you stuck and help you grow from this experience.

I really hope this helps you deal with this difficult time. When you’re young these things can feel like they will last forever. But just know that in time this will pass and you have a lot of time and will have other opportunities to love again.