Was Breaking Up With My Girlfriend a Mistake?
Q:
Hi everyone, after months of building dread and uncertainty and things just not feeling right + reading a bunch of articles in AS’s breakup tag and everything from divorce week… I broke up with my long-term partner. I moved out, have been meeting up excessively with friends and talking about everything, I’ve been journaling, yoga-ing and drinking lots of water, and…. I feel worse every day??? Is this normal?
It’s been a month now and more and more I miss my ex, regularly think about kissing her and having sex with her, watch her Insta stories like they’re the morning news, and wonder if we should get back together. Every time we see each other we have a lovely time, she is such a wonderful person, and I just can’t seem to get a good grasp on what my brain wants. Everyone I’ve talked to has terrible exes, but mine is just such a sweetheart and an amazing, accomplished person who just wants to love me and I’m feeling like a dick for breaking her heart, but also I obviously couldn’t stay in the relationship anymore because I was not feeling happy and satisfied and fulfilled!
It seems like we work so well together but only if I am a version of myself I don’t really want to be, and I don’t know who I want to be instead or how to get there. Everything is a swirling mess of uncertainty, and today she told me she thinks we belong together and it made me feel like crap! Aarggh!
Does anyone else have an ex who is a solidly good and kind and wonderful person which makes them feel like a crazy person for breaking up? Is it silly to hope that we will change a lot in the next year (I will be out of the country for grad school for that time) and maybe we can get back together? Is it normal for things to just feel worse all the time? Is love a lie (for certain people who are maybe just super bad at it)??? I’ve already read Autostraddle classic “The best breakup advice you’ll ever get” around 30 times and yet I still feel lost. I’d be grateful for any wisdom. Maybe I just need to hear that this is normal and okay and it doesn’t mean there is something wrong with me (my ex seems to think that this is all caused by some mystery mental illness that I should get checked out and I feel a little insulted by that, yet it also makes me wonder if I really am just going crazy.)
Summer: I’m friends with my exes and like anyone else, I sometimes wonder where my life would be if we stayed together. The thing is, breakups are emotionally significant and there aren’t many basic emotional responses that are truly abnormal. Even extreme behavior after breakups often results from very ‘normal’ feelings like jealousy, despair, and anger.
It’s completely fine to feel like your life is crapping out a bit even if you initiated a breakup. Even if the other person isn’t at fault, you’ve initiated a massive lifestyle change. You’re dealing with the stress of suddenly changed routines, expectations, and life goals. It’s literally unsettling — the act of no longer being settled in a routine.
I’d never think love is a ‘lie’, otherwise I wouldn’t pursue it. But love is complicated and doesn’t always want to meet us as we are.
Your situation is admittedly very complex since your ex still wants to be together and you’re regularly interacting. Whether you’re together or not, there is still love present. Breakups don’t just delete the existence of love, and they definitely don’t remove the connection that was already formed. The question you’ll have to answer for yourself is whether there’s enough love and stability there to justify forming a relationship. If not, it’ll wane over time (and wane faster if you see each other less). If so, that’s another line of thought you’ll be exploring.
Drew: When I broke up with my ex, I felt the way you did. I thought I must be crazy because everyone acted like my ex was perfect. Only with time away did I realize that there were actually major compatibility problems. She was not perfect. BUT even if she was, the feeling was still the feeling. It seems like you made the right choice.
I do wonder if what you need is to take some time away from your ex. This doesn’t mean you can’t someday be friends, but you need time to heal. That means some distance. That means muting her Instagram. Just because you’re the one who ended it doesn’t mean, you’re not still mourning the loss of the relationship — combined with the guilt and self-judgment of feeling like you’re the cause of this situation. You’ll get through it.
Also here’s a playlist I made after breaking up with my ex that you might enjoy (must be listened to in order).
Riese: I have a theory that the reason people say “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else” is because it’s the easiest way to evict your ex from the romance + sex part of your brain, is putting someone else in there. It’s not necessarily the healthiest way to move on — and also it only works if the stars align precisely when it comes to actually meeting that person and being ready for a committed relationship (which is rarely the case for those fresh out of breakups).
So I’m not saying aim for that! I’m just saying of course she’s still on your mind. She’s still renting that space. That doesn’t mean you should get back together! That just means you’ll have to be really intentional to avoid looking in the window or stopping by. Breaking up with a really incredible person because you know it’s not right, even when they’re still into you, is really hard! I salute you for doing it, it sounds like the easier path was not to, but you’re being true to yourself and that takes guts.
You broke up because you don’t like the version of yourself you’d have to be for it to work and you weren’t happy or fulfilled. I suspect if you got back together you’d start feeling all those things all over again. And she deserves to be with someone who likes the version of themselves they are when things are working with her. Sometimes the best way you can care for and respect a wonderful person is to let them go.
You’re going out of the country for grad school and I think starting over in a new place she’s not in will help. For now — mute her instagram, and focus on your future. Try new things. Work on the version of yourself that you like. This is the hardest part. But you can make it.
Help Me Buy Plants My Cats Won’t Eat!
Q:
Help me get plants! I have never owned a plant in my life. I just moved and my new place could benefit from some green and life. Assume that I have a brown thumb and know nothing about light or “repotting” or anything like that. Are there super easy and forgiving starter plants? Or resources to check out? It is important to note that I have a cat – I don’t think he’ll try to eat the plants, but just in case, I don’t want to bring anything into the house that could kill him if he gets curious.
Summer: I default to recommending well-balanced Reddit communities in times like these. Reddit has a very large houseplants community with everyone from advice to showcase and they have a mini-wiki with essential info. There are of course the usual suspects like YouTube for educational media about the topic.
From what I’ve seen, some succulents are fairly forgiving and hardy. They also take up very little space and give you an opportunity to decide if this interest is worth pursuing.
Also, expect casualties. Plant owners often become intensely attached to their charges and there’s a perception that if you do things ‘right’, you are nearly guaranteed a healthy plant. This isn’t the case. Nature is not optimized for high success rates. We’re only the exception because we have so many technological tools to drive our survival and existence. In nature, the majority of flora and fauna die in the early stages, even in ideal environments.
You will have losses even if you do everything ‘perfectly’ because nature is fundamentally imperfect. Part of the beauty of nature is its imperfection and ephemerality. It’s good to not be discouraged by those casualties because the goal shouldn’t be a perfect instagrammable result. Cultivating life is about the value you find in the process, not the conclusion. The reward is knowing that you’re trying to spark life in your home and uphold a healthy existence for everyone, no matter how short that existence is.
Kayla: I like your optimism about your cat, but it’s very likely he WILL try to eat plants, even if you’ve never seen him do so before, because it sounds like the main reason you think he won’t is because he has never had access to plants before. Every once in a while, you get lucky with a cat disinterested in plants, but it’s rare! I definitely recommend checking the toxicity levels of any plants you’re bringing into the house. I recommend you start with some FERNS. Ferns are resilient, easy to care for, and one of the harder plants to kill (i mean, they’re literally prehistoric!!!!!!). As a bonus, most ferns are nontoxic for pets.
Ashni: Definitely agree with the recommendation to check toxicity levels of new plants before you bring them into the house! IMO either a spider plant or a pilea peperomioides are good starter plants. Both of them do well with medium-ish light and occasional watering. They’ve been fairly forgiving in my experience (I’ve had my pilea for seven years and I have not been a consistent waterer)! Also, resource-wise, both The Sill and Rooted have some plant care blogs that could be helpful as you embark on your plant journey, and browsing there might give you some direction on the type of plant you want to start with (heads up that buying local will likely be cheaper, though, than buying online!).
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I felt very similar to you when I broke up with my partner in March. I think there’s this idea that the person who initiates the breakup doesn’t feel the heartbreak or the shock of the breakup. That’s simply not true. I echo the responses from Team AS – mute her IG and stop hanging out with her (for now! doesn’t mean forever! but you need to not be with her as you’re processing and healing!). The rawness wears off after a while. It’s like any kind of grief; it doesn’t disappear, but it feels like raw and sharp with time. Get yourself a support system that does not include your ex and includes people who are not also your ex’s support system.
For the plant question: I have a lot of plants and also a cat who likes to eat plants. The trick for me was figuring out what kinds of plants he liked to eat and then staying away from them/making sure all my plants that he would eat are out of his reach at the top of a place he can’t jump to. For my little grumpy man, that is anything that has grass like leaves (spider plants, parlor palms, dragon trees, etc) or feathery fronds (like an asparagus fern). He could not care less about things with more rounded classic leaf shaped leaves, so succulents, pothos, ficus, etc, so I am able to have plenty of those around where he can reach and while he occasionally threatens to eat then when he’s mad at me, he never actually does.
It’s maybe a hard thing to test without just starting to get plants, but one way to do so for cheap/ease would be to buy yourself some bouquets! Pick out some different greenery from your local store and see what kinds of shapes your cat is most interested in, and that could help guide your plant choices. Of course, your mileage may vary, but that’s how I came to have 15 different plants in my little apartment with a cat who does like to eat some of them.