How Do I Prepare For My First Break Up?

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

Hey Doc ! Long time reader, 2nd time asker here.

I’m almost 30 and never have been in a relationship. I still think of my oneitis 2 years after (although I’m working on moving on) and seeing how it still hurts thinking about her I’m starting to be afraid.

Can one prepare him/herself to her/his first break up ? I’m starting to be afraid of even getting in a relationship because of the break up that’ll come after.

Thank you for your work, it helps a lot !

An Afraid Noob

This one’s easy, AAN: you don’t.

Ok, I admit, I’m being a bit glib here. Let’s actually break this down a bit, because there are two separate things going on, but they’re influencing one another.

We’ll start with the break up question. This isn’t just a matter of asking the wrong question, this is a matter of “you’re sabotaging your relationship before it even starts.” Or, I suppose, before you’ve even had your first date. 

Here’s the mistake you’re making: you’re focusing on the wrong thing. You’re looking at the end of a relationship before you’ve even met someone, never mind had your first date, first kiss or started a relationship with them. This mindset is a great way to ensure that none of it happens. After all, if the break up is inevitable, then what’s the point of even starting in the first place? If you do start, all that you’re going to be doing is ensuring that the break up happens sooner, rather than later.

That focus on the end and on not getting hurt will just mean that you’re spending the entire relationship – such as it is – either with one foot out the door, or waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall. You won’t be willing or able to fully embrace this relationship, commit to the person or even invest in them because you’ll be worried about the (supposedly) inevitable ending. 

This is what is known as “borrowing trouble from the future”. You’re so busy focused on the day that this relationship will end – a day that may never come – that you can’t actually enjoy the present. You’re stealing joy from yourself and poisoning the good that can come from any relationship and for what? Preparing for this doesn’t make the break up not happen, nor does it make it suck less. Or at least, it will suck less if only because the relationship itself won’t be any good. How can it be, when you’re already expecting it to end. You’re making yourself miserable now, instead of a theoretical time in the future.

Now, will this relationship end? Well, I’m not going to lie to you: the odds are not in your favor. I can count the number of people I know who are still with their first partner on the fingers of one hand with enough left over for some very interesting obscene gestures.

But a relationship ending, while sad, doesn’t mean that the relationship was pointless, that you wasted your time, or that you shouldn’t have gotten into it in the first place. A relationship isn’t a failure because it ended before one of you died in the saddle or you both managed to die at the exact same time. The success or value of a relationship isn’t measured by its longevity or by the fact that it ended at all. Nor does the potential pain at the end mean that the rest wasn’t worth it.

That same sort of thinking – the end is inevitable, pain is inevitable, so why put yourself through it – is just nihilistic. Why make friends, have pets, start a family if they’re just going to die at some point? Why do anything if taking part means buying into a tragedy in the future?

Well, because the parts in the middle are so damn good. I’ve got a pretty significant number of break ups in my past – some ok, some downright brutal. And while there are definitely relationships that I wouldn’t mind having not gone through, I can say that the vast majority of them? The joy of the relationship itself, the fun that my partner and I had together, the memories and so on were greater on balance than whatever I felt when it ended.

Now it’s true that – as Dan Savage has said – all relationships end until one doesn’t, and you don’t know which one that’s going to be. So there will be points where pain is inevitable. Suffering, however, is optional, and there are ways that you can avoid unnecessary pain and heartbreak. You don’t want to overinvest in someone before you have reason to – such as you did with your Oneitis. You especially don’t want to turn one person into your alpha and omega – especially when you barely know them, nor do you want to make them the center of your social life.

It’s also worth understanding that your first relationship is going to be a learning experience. You can theorize and study and do all the research and reading you want. But nothing, and I mean nothing, you read or study will make a difference until you actually are in it. As the saying goes, no plan survives contact with the enemy; when it comes to relationships, all theory goes out the window because you’re dealing with a person. That’s a person with her own agency, her own mind, personality, goals and ambitions. Part of being in a relationship is about learning how to be in relationships in general… but most of it is learning how to be in a relationship with that person, specifically. You won’t know what to expect until you’re in it. And if you’re so busy focused on the end… well, that’s where you miss all the good stuff.

But let’s talk for a moment about the fact why you’re worried about this: your ongoing Oneitis. Here’s part of why you’re struggling: it’s not about her. It’s about what she represents. She’s not a person in as much as she’s a fantasy, representing all of the hopes, dreams and desires you projected on her. Part of why it hurts is that there’s a part of you that understands that these specific dreams are never going to come true.

And if I’m going to be blunt: they never were going to, even if you and she got together. You created an entire world around the idea of her and unfortunately, those are destined to burst like a soap bubble on contact with reality.

The reason for this is because Oneitis is based on the idea that there are few people who would be right for you and this person is The One with a capital “Woah”. The pain you feel from this is partially that over-investment that I mentioned, paired with the belief that she was a special and unique person – the only person you could have a future with.

Well, I have no doubt that she was special and she’s certainly unique… but she wasn’t The One, because there is no One. She’s not the only person you could love or who could love you, she’s just the most recent one you’ve latched onto. And if you’re also dealing with a scarcity mentality, she represents your first, last and only chance for love and happiness.

But until you can recognize that those dreams aren’t going to happen and let them go, then that pain’s going to continue. Holding onto them is a way of holding on to the belief that they could have happened if you’d just done something different or if you’d been someone different. But neither of these were actually possible. All you’re doing is hurting your own feelings, kicking yourself in the balls for no reason other than to punish yourself for not being a fantasy figure.

This is why letting go isn’t about “give it up, you loser”, it’s “you loved not wisely, but too well, and it’s time you forgive yourself for that.” Releasing the pain of Oneitis isn’t about guarding against that pain more effectively in the future, it’s to show yourself some compassion and understanding and resolving that you’re going to learn from this.

And what can you learn? Well, the most important is that “throwing yourself into infatuation with reckless abandon” is a lovely romantic trait in fiction, in reality it just means you set yourself up for heartache for no good reason. Part of learning to be better at relationships is learning how to keep your head, to not charge ahead blindly but to proceed at the right pace. The right pace is going to vary from person to person… but part of how you learn to discern that pace comes through experience.

And yes, sometimes that experience will involve pain. As I said: pain is inevitable; it’s part of being human. But suffering is still optional, and the truth is that while pain may be inevitable, the key is to not let it overshadow the joy.

Here is a truth: just because the relationship may have ended, that doesn’t mean that the good times ended with them like they never were. Just as death doesn’t mean that the joy we had with that person in life is undone, a break up doesn’t mean that what you learned or experienced in that relationship was worthless or just worth less. It just means that this chapter came to its conclusion, and now it’s time for you to start the next.

So don’t focus on the end; the end will take care of itself. You can do your best to minimize the worst of it, but trying to control it is fruitless, pointless and only wastes the time you have on this Earth. Better to spend that time enjoying the now, rather than to look back and realize everything you missed because you were so focused on the ending.

As I’m often saying: nobody said it was going to be easy or painless… just that it would be worth it.

Good luck.

Dear Dr. NerdLove:

Seems like most of your questions are from younger people but maybe you can help me. I am a 67 year old widow of four and half years. I’ve been trying to date for about two. Haven’t been too successful, a few brief friends but nothing really happened with them, which I was ok with. Sometimes you just know when it isn’t going anywhere.

For the last three months, I was seeing a very nice man, charming, nice looking, treated me well. We saw each other once or twice a week. And not ordinary dates, these were like all day and half the night, going to car shows (he has a couple of beautiful classic cars), dining out, seeing the area sights, he’s only lived in the area about 3 years. Great fun. We had lots in common.

Then out of the blue he says we want different things. I did ask what he thought they were, but he didn’t respond. He had a terrible divorce, years ago, but still carries the scars. Sometime after that, he had a 10 year relationship with a woman but they did not live together. He never said why it ended. Though he did remain friends with her father who asked him “why it took him so long” to figure her out.

Anyway, that was a long time ago because it has been 17 years since he had sex. He said with everything going on in his life, it became unimportant. Traveled a lot for his job and was in different cities for months at time.

As I said he just dumps me. I did not see it coming at all. I thought everything was going good, I was totally blindsided. The only out of the ordinary thing that happened was on Christmas. He said something, don’t remember what, so I asked if he thought I was [SLUR REDACTED]. He laughed and said yes. I didn’t think much about it until I got home then started wondering if he really thought that. I may be weird but not stupid or [SLUR].

I texted him and asked if he thought that. His reply was “you sure stew about things” and that I had asked and he was joking. I told him I wasn’t stewing about it and wasn’t it better to ask than to be pis*ed off without him knowing why. It was a couple days after that when he broke up with me.

Another problem may be that I’m a breast cancer survivor. Because of the diagnosis I did not get implants but he knew this before we even met. Since we didn’t get “that” friendly I don’t know if it was in the back of his mind or not. He had said it wasn’t a problem.

Did I do something wrong asking about what he said? If he thought we had different needs shouldn’t we have discussed it before he made the decision for both of us?

I’m not trying to latch on to him because I think I’m running out of choices. I’ll be alright alone if I don’t find someone. Just don’t understand the whole thing. Any advice, insight?

Thank you.

Silver Fox

Right off the bat SF: let’s not fling the word r–ded around. It’s hurtful to people with learning disabilities and handicaps, and it’s considered a slur by the community. There’re better ways of expressing yourself than that.

Now let’s get to your question: what happened is that your potential beau decided he didn’t want to be in this relationship. The reason he gave – that you want different things – is ultimately an excuse. It may have been true and he had different goals for a relationship than you, or it may have been a gentle way of letting you down. But either way, whether he was telling the truth or not, what ultimately mattered is that he no longer wanted to be dating you, and ended it.

Here’s the thing about relationships, SF: every aspect of being in one requires both parties to agree, except for in one area – ending it. Ending a relationship isn’t like launching the nukes; both parties don’t need to turn the keys to make it happen. If someone decides that they no longer want to be in a relationship, then they can make the unilateral decision to end it.

Does that seem unfair? Does it feel cruel to just decide one day that this relationship is over regardless of what the other person (or people) think? It’s entirely understandable that it can feel this way; after all, it affects everybody involved. But by that same token, not being able to end it unilaterally is also cruel; there’s nothing good about staying in a relationship that you’ve already decided that you don’t want to be part of. It’s even worse when the other person decides that they’re not done with it and therefore you aren’t done with it.

Are there graceful ways to exit, when you have decided you’re done? Of course. But grace isn’t required, only the decision. The rest is ultimately a question of what kind of relationship the dumper might want with the dumpee, and vice versa. A graceful exit may make a friendship possible, but its not required.

Is it possible that asking him about his comment (and your response) is what triggered things? Well… honestly, it’s impossible to tell. Maybe that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Maybe everything was going swimmingly until that very moment and he decided it was time to bounce. Or it could have nothing to do with things at all. It could be because you had a mastectomy, it could be because he lost someone to breast cancer and your relationship dredged up old pain, or that could all just be a red herring. The only person who could really tell you is your ex and, quite honestly, even he may not know. Sometimes we don’t know the real reason we felt a certain way or decided to do things until we’ve had time and distance to gain some perspective on it. So any answer you would get from him would need to have a big asterisk over it, because that’s just his understanding of it now. In six months or a year, it may have changed.

But what does this mean on your end? Well… ultimately, very little changes for you. Ultimately, the only thing you can take from this – really, the only thing you should – take from this is that you two weren’t right for each other. You give yourself closure, accept that there will always be unanswered questions, because life isn’t a BBC miniseries where all the loose ends get wrapped up, and you move on.

You and this person just weren’t a right match at some level. That happens; dating is a numbers game, after all. But there will be others in time, should you want – there’s no age limit to love, sex or relationships. The best you can do is learn what you can, give yourself what comfort you can and try again when you’re ready.

Good luck.