KICK THE HABIT
Leah Mclaren writes for the Globe and Mail of which I now have a Saturday subsciption. Since it's only women that read this site and since many of you have talked about "He's Just Not That Into You" I thought I'd post this.
My downstairs neighbour has a house guest. Let's call her Breakup Girl. For the past couple of weeks, Breakup Girl has been sleeping on the sectional. She is a sweet girl, always up for a chat and a glass of wine on the porch. I like her, or I like what I know of her, as I recognize she's probably not herself at the moment. She has that raw, wide-eyed quality of the recently broken up, as if she has recently undergone an internal chemical peel.
Most of us understand what Breakup Girl is going through. You meet a person. You have a relationship. Problems arise. You hope for the best long after the best times have passed. Finally, one or both of you admits the truth: It isn't working. You go your separate ways. You cry your guts out for a week. You call each other and get together on the grounds of "finding closure." Maybe you have breakup sex. You cry. You call each other and get together. Maybe more breakup sex. Definitely more crying. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It doesn't sound like an enviable situation, and it isn't. And yet, in a strange way I envy Breakup Girl. Not her depression, but what's on the other side.
Breaking up is a painful, traumatic necessity. But a new beginning, even an unwanted one, is still a new beginning. Change, if you'll pardon the cliché, is good. Beyond the minefield of failure and rejection is the promised land of possibility. Most happily in-love people will tell you the story of all the lousy, demented relationships they had to get through in order to find The One. What they don't tell you, of course, is that they are secretly jealous of those who have yet to meet that person. (Apparently you only get to meet The One once.)
If you don't believe me, take it from an expert. Greg Behrendt is one of the co-authors of the international bestseller He's Just Not That into You. He and his wife, Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, have recently published a follow-up entitled It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken.
Behrendt, a recovered alcoholic, draws parallels between the breakup of a bad relationship and the kicking of a substance addiction. The analogy is hardly new, granted, except when it comes to breakup envy.
"I know exactly what you mean," he says when I tell him about my wistful empathy for Breakup Girl. "I feel the same way when I see young alcoholics coming into the program. I look at them and think, 'You don't know it yet, but you're going to have this really shitty time and then you're going to go through a long, incredible journey at the end of which is an amazing experience that will change your life forever. You'll be able to do all kinds of things you were never able to do before.' "
Behrendt even goes so far as to say he feels a strange kind of gratitude toward one particular woman who dumped him. Without the tequila-fuelled spiral that ensued, he never would have bottomed out, never would have sought help, never would have sobered up, never would have met his wife, and so on. Just as illness teaches you to value your health, heartbreak teaches you to be grateful for love when you find it.
"I never had any gratitude back then," he acknowledges. "Even when things were good, I was kind of a bitch about it."
Once you've been through a couple of breakups, the strange thing you realize is that they are really all the same -- and it's nothing you can't handle. While people are complex and individual, our problems are shockingly similar. This is why the hard-nosed advice in It's Called a Breakup is so valuable. It advises women to, among other things, cut off all contact with the ex (they call it the 60-day He-Tox), stop obsessing over voice mail and concentrate on work, exercise and friendships.
As simple as this sounds, it's amazing how many people will do exactly the opposite (contact the ex continually, take time off work, isolate themselves etc). "Everyone wants to think that they are the exception, that the rules of a breakup don't apply to their situation," Ruotola-Behrendt says. "All we're saying is, for the time being at least, pretend you're the rule. Maybe you are the exception and in the end you'll get back together, but why not just be on the safe side and act like you're the rule?"
As for Breakup Girl, she's doing okay. Now that I'm finished writing this column, I can lend her the book. At this rate, she'll be in such good shape by Christmas I'll have to find someone else to envy.
My downstairs neighbour has a house guest. Let's call her Breakup Girl. For the past couple of weeks, Breakup Girl has been sleeping on the sectional. She is a sweet girl, always up for a chat and a glass of wine on the porch. I like her, or I like what I know of her, as I recognize she's probably not herself at the moment. She has that raw, wide-eyed quality of the recently broken up, as if she has recently undergone an internal chemical peel.
Most of us understand what Breakup Girl is going through. You meet a person. You have a relationship. Problems arise. You hope for the best long after the best times have passed. Finally, one or both of you admits the truth: It isn't working. You go your separate ways. You cry your guts out for a week. You call each other and get together on the grounds of "finding closure." Maybe you have breakup sex. You cry. You call each other and get together. Maybe more breakup sex. Definitely more crying. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It doesn't sound like an enviable situation, and it isn't. And yet, in a strange way I envy Breakup Girl. Not her depression, but what's on the other side.
Breaking up is a painful, traumatic necessity. But a new beginning, even an unwanted one, is still a new beginning. Change, if you'll pardon the cliché, is good. Beyond the minefield of failure and rejection is the promised land of possibility. Most happily in-love people will tell you the story of all the lousy, demented relationships they had to get through in order to find The One. What they don't tell you, of course, is that they are secretly jealous of those who have yet to meet that person. (Apparently you only get to meet The One once.)
If you don't believe me, take it from an expert. Greg Behrendt is one of the co-authors of the international bestseller He's Just Not That into You. He and his wife, Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt, have recently published a follow-up entitled It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken.
Behrendt, a recovered alcoholic, draws parallels between the breakup of a bad relationship and the kicking of a substance addiction. The analogy is hardly new, granted, except when it comes to breakup envy.
"I know exactly what you mean," he says when I tell him about my wistful empathy for Breakup Girl. "I feel the same way when I see young alcoholics coming into the program. I look at them and think, 'You don't know it yet, but you're going to have this really shitty time and then you're going to go through a long, incredible journey at the end of which is an amazing experience that will change your life forever. You'll be able to do all kinds of things you were never able to do before.' "
Behrendt even goes so far as to say he feels a strange kind of gratitude toward one particular woman who dumped him. Without the tequila-fuelled spiral that ensued, he never would have bottomed out, never would have sought help, never would have sobered up, never would have met his wife, and so on. Just as illness teaches you to value your health, heartbreak teaches you to be grateful for love when you find it.
"I never had any gratitude back then," he acknowledges. "Even when things were good, I was kind of a bitch about it."
Once you've been through a couple of breakups, the strange thing you realize is that they are really all the same -- and it's nothing you can't handle. While people are complex and individual, our problems are shockingly similar. This is why the hard-nosed advice in It's Called a Breakup is so valuable. It advises women to, among other things, cut off all contact with the ex (they call it the 60-day He-Tox), stop obsessing over voice mail and concentrate on work, exercise and friendships.
As simple as this sounds, it's amazing how many people will do exactly the opposite (contact the ex continually, take time off work, isolate themselves etc). "Everyone wants to think that they are the exception, that the rules of a breakup don't apply to their situation," Ruotola-Behrendt says. "All we're saying is, for the time being at least, pretend you're the rule. Maybe you are the exception and in the end you'll get back together, but why not just be on the safe side and act like you're the rule?"
As for Breakup Girl, she's doing okay. Now that I'm finished writing this column, I can lend her the book. At this rate, she'll be in such good shape by Christmas I'll have to find someone else to envy.
posted by Deac at 1:53 PM
1 Comments:
allo sir i even noted your blog on mine, because you are special. over and out.
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