A+ Monday Roundtable: My Achy Breaky Heart

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Breakups! They suck! Do you remember when/how you knew your relationship was ending/it was time to get out? Was there a turning point in your relationship that stands out for you? How did you proceed? Or maybe it wasn’t you who did the breaking up, how do you view your breakup now?

Mey, Trans Editor

The first time a girl broke up with me was caught off guard, but I really, really shouldn’t have been. On one date I asked her what she was going to be for Halloween, my favorite holiday, and she said “I don’t really celebrate Halloween? It’s the devil’s holiday.” Both of us were church going Christians and I even taught Sunday School, but wow, this was a huge warning sign. I should’ve realized right then she was not operating by the same set of lifestyle rules that I was. A couple weeks later, on another date, she said to me, “So, I have to break up with you. I’m betrothed to my high school boyfriend. He joined the navy and we promised that when he got back we’d get engaged and he gets back next week.” I don’t date people who use the word “betrothed” any more.

Erin, Staff Writer

I have this very unfortunate trait where I can’t have sex with a committed partner if I feel emotionally closed off from them, even if I’m still attracted to them, and then once that happens, there is no turning back. Some people can weather these as two separate obstacles, whereas for me they’re linked and unbeatable. So I know exactly when a relationship is ending for me.

This happened with my most recent relationship, which was relayed to my partner as soon as it was happening, but because we were together for close to five years and lived together for most of that time, we had lives/finances that were very intertwined and so our actual breakup didn’t happen for months and months and months after that. I have to say, I cannot recommend this! It’s not a fun way to go out. And this was especially not fun because it was a person I still cared for and loved.

Our eventual, actual breakup came in November of 2016 after a lot of brutal honesty and self reflection and processing and tears and disappointment. It was exhausting and I think maybe broke me!

Heather Hogan, Senior Editor

For the last 12 years or so I’ve had a very clear sense of purpose in my life, both personally and professionally. Mary Oliver in my ear. Sometimes I haven’t been clear on how to get where I want to be, or what my next step should be, but I’ve always known whether or not I was moving forward toward my purpose, even if that motion was just me getting better at being me. I’ve also always known I want a partner who sharpens me and comforts me and helps empower me to continue pursuing my purpose, and that I wanted to be that same kind of partner to my person, and so I’ve always known when it was time to break up when I realized that me and the person I was with weren’t good teammates anymore. When we were holding each other back from making the most of our one wild and precious lives. I thought for a long time I just needed someone who could tolerate or not grow to resent how hard I work and how much I care about things, but I ultimately realized I needed a place to rest my Hufflepuff head beside someone who works as hard and cares as much as I do.

Here’s a specific story.

The last girl I dated before I met Stacy, she told me this story over breakfast one time about how she hated this band because she went to see them in concert, on her birthday, and she waited after the concert with her friends as the band was walking to the bus and she yelled, “It’s my birthday” and none of the band said happy birthday to her. She was still holding onto it, years later, and it made her hate the band. She changed the station every time they came on the radio! What I wanted to say was, “How many millions of people do you think yell at a band that it’s their birthday?” But also I wanted to have sex after breakfast so I didn’t want to fight. Anyway, it took me a minute but that was the moment. How in the world could I build a relationship with someone who takes things that personally and also hangs onto things that long? She would have been miserable with me. I need a lot of grace. Everyone needs a lot of grace. Forgiveness is the main thing, man.

Stef, Vapid Fluff Editor

After less than two weeks of blurry nights filled with sloppy drunk, weird sex, she texted me one afternoon to inform me she thought there was a chance she might’ve given me lice. It turns out I was not ready for that kind of commitment.

Nora, Fashion & Beauty Editor

My last real breakup breakup was with a partner of about two years. I do well with people who are laid back and help me take myself less seriously/keep me from being anxious all the time, but this can also mean I end up with apathetic people, and that’s what happened here. They waffled on their feelings about me/a career/life for a while, and then I went away for the summer, and when I came back, it was clear they hadn’t really missed me; I was something they could do with or without. We were in bed together one morning and I did something embarrassing, I don’t remember what, and I jokingly asked why they loved me when I was such a dweeb. They stayed silent, and made me force it out of them that they didn’t actually love me anymore. They moved out a few weeks later, which they were going to do anyway since they were staying with me between places, and ultimately I’m glad I didn’t have to commute to Bushwick to keep up that charade.

Carrie, Staff Writer

I remember being on the phone with a friend one night, talking about my then-girlfriend, and suddenly knowing as sure as I’d ever known anything that my relationship was ending. The first warning sign was probably a couple months earlier when she didn’t say “I love you” back, which I rationalized with “I said it because I needed to, not so I could hear it” (which, incidentally, I still think is valuable — but now that I get to say and hear it multiple times a day, WOW is it better this way). Soon after, she didn’t mention me during a long phone conversation with her mom while I was in the room, which led to the revelation that her parents maybe didn’t exactly know I existed. My own phone call epiphany, and the breakup, followed pretty quickly. It remains the only time I’ve truly dumped anyone (unless we’re counting my high school boyfriend/beard, who’s a really good sport) and one of the most important things I’ve ever done.

Molly Priddy, Staff Writer

The biggest breakup of my life happened just about a month ago, when my wife said she wasn’t into working on our marriage anymore. To be honest, it was super surprising to me! I’m the kind when I say things like promises at an altar or, you know, ~whatever~, I like to keep them. Anyway, I didn’t really see it coming, even though things had been difficult for a few months. To me, that was just the cyclical nature of life. So the breakup hit me hard; I wallowed for a week, and then I had the realization that someone who didn’t want to stick out the hard times with me doesn’t have the steel spine nor the ability to hunker down with me that I need in a partner. It’s been hard! It’s been weird and sad and oddly liberating. So while now I see that it was probably the right call, given these aspects I didn’t realize about my partner are a Big Deal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still heartbreaking. Ask me again in six months.

Carolyn, NSFW Editor and Literary Editor

Ask me again in six months, too.

Reneice Charles, Staff Writer

I was in an emotionally abusive relationship in college. I was blindly in love with this person and made excuses for every shitty thing he did. Like having sex with a “friend” of mine when I left the room to get pizza I’d ordered us. Like responding to my not wanting to give him oral by tickling me until I was forced to laugh, then stuffing himself in my mouth. Like using me financially. I justified everything because he was my first love and when it wasn’t bad, it was very very good. Despite all my friends telling me this guy was trash and I needed to leave the relationship, I was so deep in and so emotionally hoodwinked that I didn’t see it and stayed until HE dumped me. Somewhere deep down of course I knew they were right, I knew I should’ve ended the relationship and taken care of myself months sooner but I didn’t. I thought I couldn’t, and I loved him. I didn’t want to. I felt it was important to share this story because it rings true for so many others, and because people who met me after the fact and know present day Reneice never ever believe it. They don’t believe I was someone who willingly stayed in an abusive relationship because there’s this view that only uneducated, desperate, timid people fit this narrative. That is just not true and frankly those views often cause women like me to feel embarrassed and shamed into staying in these situations longer because admission of remaining with an abusive partner is synonymous with admitting that you’re weak, and that feels wrong and unfair. I’m not weak, nor was I then. I’m human, love can be dangerous, and that means sometimes you just don’t know or want to know when it’s time for an ending.

Rachel, Managing Editor

The biggest breakup of my life happened this summer — is still happening? The timeline is confusing because I haven’t filed the paperwork yet? it’s a whole thing — when I ended my marriage. It was weird and awful and its recent nature makes it hard to talk about; I don’t have the benefit of perspective. I think there was a moment when I knew, or the beginning of a series of moments, although it was so small it feels weird to say out loud? It’s not like there weren’t big things on occasion, the yelling and sleepless nights and bleak mornings that even the most amazing relationships sometimes have, and maybe I should have taken those more seriously. Okay, some of those I definitely should have taken a lot more seriously a lot sooner. But this summer there was a moment when we had parked the car and were walking toward the mediocre taco place we both liked even though we knew it was mediocre, and it was one of those days we were already on different wavelengths, not really connecting, and he commented on what a bad mood I seemed to be in. “You know, it’s been a really stressful week at work,” I said, “and I think I just need you to be patient and kind with me today.” He looked back at me like I was speaking a different language and said something like “what do you mean?” Like that was a totally foreign concept. It was a small quiet moment, and in some ways just one of miscommunication and not being on the same page in the moment, but in other important ways not. It broke my heart in a way that it hadn’t been broken during any of the fights or the hard nights or the ostensibly Big Things; after that it felt like I couldn’t see anything in the same light again, and I started thinking about other moments or memories differently too, until it all snowballed and I just couldn’t do it anymore! Now here we are. I feel like that maybe sounds crazy. Ask me again in six months too I guess, maybe it will all sound more like it makes sense then!

Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya, Staff Writer

I have never really, truly broken up with someone. The only person I technically dumped was my high school boyfriend, who I dated for three weeks and then ended things with because he asked me to wash his coffee mug for him in a tone that suggested he expected me to wash it, and I wasn’t about that life! I have been in three different relationships that have all ended, and the other person did the dumping every time. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was blind-sided completely. I was on and off so often with my two ex-girlfriends that breaking up kind of became part of the rhythm of both relationships. I do tend to do this really shitty thing when I can sense that a relationship is ending where I do some big romantic gesture in hopes that it’ll save us. I know how pathetic (and also manipulative and selfish) that sounds. I just hate breakups, and duh, everyone does. Even just thinking about how I feel and in the immediate aftermath of a breakup is enough to make me need to lie on the ground and weep. It’s one of those things that pretty much everyone can relate to you about, and yet it feels so isolating and personal and like you’re the only one going through it in the moment. Any way, I literally can’t even think or write about it more without it ruining my whole day, so I’ll leave it at that!

Carmen, Staff Writer

For me the worst part is not the breakup itself, but the part that comes after. When you are sad and lonely and the only person you want to talk to is the exact person you explicitly cannot talk to anymore? That moment. That’s my weakness. My first girlfriend broke up with me and it took a full three months for me to stop depending on her as an emotional crutch. I remember watching that scene in Sex and the City where Big leaves Carrie at the altar, boohoo-ing into a box of tissues, and emailing her that “It Was Over.” Duh. She already knew that. Three freakin’ months ago! A few years later I fell into an on-again-off-again relationship with a girl who publicly professed she was straight. I eventually broke up with her, but after an unspeakable amount of time later a friend pointed out I was still making room for her in my life instead of investing in someone who was willing to invest in me. It’s a habit that I now make a conscious effort not to continue, but I crave familiarity. Starting over after a breakup is new and raw and scary. It only makes me want to cling to my past relationships like a security blanket. Listen up kiddos, do not do make my mistakes! Be brave. Be your own person. You got this.

Raquel, Staff Writer

This will surprise no one who knows that I am a Scorpio, but I think for a long time I held on too long and grasped too hard onto relationships that had long-since stopped serving me. My early twenties were especially hard: I had an outsized idea of ~~~Love~~~ and what it meant (FOREVER OR BUST), and the amount of personal effort I should put in to keep the relationship going. I was also not a great communicator, in part because I’d be so obsessed with being in love with my partner that I wasn’t great at checking in with myself, my needs, or my emotions, and in part because any tiny frustration or concern on the part of the person I was dating was a Major Crisis that meant I was Not Good Enough and that I was Unlovable and that I Had To Fix This.

I was a trip.

Unsurprisingly, this meant that a lot of my early relationships were ended by my partners, and usually in cruel, indirect ways — mainly, cheating. Even then, there’d be protracted, painful on-again off-again months when I did my best to get them back and struggled with emotions I didn’t understand or know how to deal with.

The best thing I ever did for myself was go into therapy and learn the ways in which my childhood had taught me that performance and self-sacrifice were the only ways to be good. Breaking those ideas was hard—is still hard—but have gone a long way towards helping me build stronger, healthier relationships, both with myself and with romantic partners.

Laura M, Staff Writer

We were on vacation together with friends. She hated history museums; I loved them. She wanted couple date time; I wanted friend hangout time. We went separate ways one morning and it was the best part of the trip for me.

There were a lot of reasons we broke up, but one of the big lessons I learned was how very much I value independence, even in partnership. I need the freedom to do things outside of coupledom — guilt free space for writing; one-on-one hangouts with friends; general alone time — and I need a partner who doesn’t just tolerate that part of me, but supports and encourages it.

Riese, Editor-in-Chief

A red flag isn’t a red wall, you know? You can see it, flapping around in the wind, but it won’t stop you, if you’re squinting just right it can almost seem like a mirage or something else you thought you saw but didn’t see. We were two broken people with intense abandonment issues so we’d promised each other, explicitly, that no matter what happened, no matter what happened, we’d work through it. We pinky-swore and laughed about how crazy we were, to do that. I took that promise seriously, like it had to make up for all the broken ones that had come before it and everything that had ever broken in the history of the world! I think she took it seriously too, most of the time. That promise defined us.

I want to say that I knew it was over when I stopped knowing what version of her was coming home, or who I’d come home to, or if she was coming home at all, or when I started noticing how anxious I’d get when she did come home. I want to say I knew it was over the first or second or third time she lied to my face and I was afraid to say “I know you’re lying,” or that I knew it was over when I was afraid to say almost everything I ever wanted to say. I want to say I knew it was over when I hated myself so much that I began suspecting all my friends and co-workers hated me too, that they were just putting up with me, laughing behind my back about this or that annoying habit that had made my presence intolerable all along. I want to say I knew it was over the third or tenth time a friend pointed out that it was one thing to take care of somebody way more than they took care of me, but quite another to put so much of myself into that somebody that I stopped taking care of me. But I didn’t know it was over when any of those things happened — or when so many even worse things happened, either. I didn’t understand how a breakup could work logistically, because of our families and the house and work and our lives and where we lived, and my love for her was deep and certain, for better or for worse. So I couldn’t imagine it, and if I can’t imagine something, it must not be possible, right? I thought the same thing about Donald Trump winning the election. Life comes at you fast. The real answer: I knew it was over when she was gone.