Lynn, Lynn, City Of The Dumped

Wednesday | April 1, 2009

Love Letters Relationships

Lynn, Lynn, City Of The Dumped

First break-ups are the worst. Help.

My girlfriend of 7 months just recently broke up with me because our relationship was long distance and we would be apart at school more than together. She says we both really just need to get our lives together and she’s not ready to have a boyfriend and be committed right now. I’m really having trouble dealing with the breakup because I really love her and its hard when I really haven’t been anything but good to her. I’m blaming myself. And what’s worse is that now that we’re just friends, she seems okay with everything and has laughs about being single with her friends when I’m having a hard time. When we were together, she would tell me she loved me and could see herself with me in the future. Do you have any advice for me on maintaining a relationship with her as best friends, while at the same time preserving a chance for us to get back together in the future without me ruining anything (as there will be a good chance my feelings aren’t going to go away anytime soon)
— Hopeless, Lynn

Hopeless, this is how a break-up works when it’s not mutual. One person is moderately sad, yet capable of moving on. The other person wants to get into bed, cry, replay memories, reconsider specific sentences they said, eat, not eat, eat, and then not eat again, etc.
I’m sorry. You’re on the bad end of this one.
What I’m going to tell you — and what I suspect Boston.com readers will tell you — is that this break-up is too hurtful and too raw to evolve quickly into a happy friendship. You’re more than friends, at least on your end. Trying for a friendship, at least right now, is going to make your relationship with her worse, not better.
Tell her you need time and space to redefine how you feel about her. Allow yourself to treat this as a real break-up — because that’s what it is.
I can’t say what will happen in the future. You may not believe this now, but in a year or so, you may not even want her back. Either way, the best thing you can do for yourself — and for your future with this person — is to make her go away.
This is why they all say breaking up is hard to do. Because it’s true. It’s the worst. And what you’re experiencing is a big, fat, giant, awful break-up. Start calling it what it is and force her to do the same.
Readers? Navigate our Hopeless friend through this first monumental break-up experience. Share thoughts here. Read comments from yesterday’s letter (including the letter writer’s response) here.
— Meredith