How To 'Win' Your Breakup (And Help You Move On Faster) In 9 Surprisingly Simple Steps
Breakups are tough, but with this advice you can come out on top.
Breaking up is a bummer — even if you're the one initiating the split or decided you could find a better caliber of partner. Unless you're a sociopath or have anterograde amnesia real bad, it's going to take a little time to get over the loss (legend has it that you can expect about a month of moping for each year you were together).
BUT you don't just have to sit there like a sack of sadness, you can turn this mother around — you can WIN this breakup.
The key to win any breakup is to be the one to move on first. Conventional wisdom says that ladies are at a touch of a disadvantage because guys will either shrug it off (like a man) or walk into traffic (like a frogger) and done and done.
Well, conventional wisdom can go sleep in an Alaskan culvert with a polyester blanket because dudes sometimes wear the same pair of post-breakup sweats so long that their landlord threatens to evict them due to the stench. And sometimes they write poetry. No one wins in either scenario.
Here are 9 steps to move on and learn how to WIN a breakup.
1. Don't get into a new relationship.
Sure, it feels like the ultimate moving on but it's not. It's putting a piece of scotch tape on a chainsaw injury.
2. Channel your pain into something productive.
Now that you're not spending the weekends picking lint out of each other's belly buttons or whatever normal couples do, you have plenty of time to take up Tae Kwon Do (or Tae Know Don't...), learn prestidigitation, read the great American novels, write the great American novel, or wright a ship. Your friends will notice. His friends will notice.
3. Hang with your homeys.
Like the rest of you, I can feel lonely at my birthday party surrounded by a baker's dozen of my favorite people. BUT various social contracts dictate that you don't act like a mope when everyone is trying to have a good time. Fake it until you make it. I've been able to put down my copy of Don't Jump. Life's Really Worth It a couple of times by circling the wagons and treating Atlantic City like a 19th-century rented frontier mule.
4. Have some good old-fashioned rebound sex.
Going from getting it on the regular to getting it not at all is a stone-cold bummer of a cold turkey. Sure, you don't want to immediately jump into a new relationship but if you're the kind of person that can have safe, responsible one-night stands, feel free to do so. Be sure to caveat thusly up front. If, like me, you can't do that, there's always masturbation. Just be careful not to wreck your pleasure centers with anything battery-operated or any website with the word "bang" in it.
5. Don't be the one to call first.
Unless sh-- went sideways real, real bad, one of you is going to call. Feel free to take the call. Feel free to be a decent human being. Feel free to receive the olive branch. If history tells us anything, a trip down memory lane may end up in a backslide to pound town (too many entendres to count). But for the Love of God, DO NOT INITIATE.
6. Be super nice.
There's basically as much catharsis in writing a Roman A Clef as there is telling him off to his face and dumping a Slush Puppy on his lap. Bitterness is drinking poison and hoping everyone else in the room dies. Be the bigger person and BE NICE. (We know it's hard.)
7. Thank your ex.
No, really. I know she seemed like your sun/moon/stars, but if it wasn't working for her, it wasn't working for you either. After you get over the part where your eyeballs go Pavlov's dog at the mention of her name, feel free to thank her for doing what had to be done. It should be noted that if you're the one to initiate the breakup, you can probably keep this one to yourself.
8. Break it off on social media.
We (YourTango) invented a Break Up With Your Ex Day and you should just follow that advice. He'll hear it through the grapevine that "Everything Is Awesome" on your end.
9. Do NOT do anything drastic.
Some of us have a tendency to want to chop off all our hair and quit our jobs when love hands us a butt sandwich. Don't. Unless you really, really want to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, make good subtle changes. And, if a couple of months later you really want to get that Skrillex haircut, do it. Lost love hurts like stepping on a nail and feels like it'll last as long as herpes. You'll get over it: mourn, make out in the bar, get that Brad Pitt sex muscle from Fight Club, but don't get hooked on needle drugs or throw away a great career to start an Etsy business.
I'd like to point out that I have lost every single breakup I've been involved with, even in unrequited crushes that I may've mistook for relationships. American loves a winner. Be a winner. Win your breakup.