Ask Jess: How To Let a Good Guy Go…
Posted by Jess - 03/11/09 at 08:11 am
(image by prashant_zi at flickr)
Here is one of those scary moments for a blogger where you imagine your ex boyfriends reading your post and you find yourself ducking in anticipation of projectile tomatos…
So a warm hello to the men of my past! And away we go……..
So I admit it. I’ve let some good ones go. And I knew it had reached a Code Orange when one day I was listening to “Gives You Hell,” a jilted love song by All American Rejects, and instead of identifying with the heartbroken singer, I found myself wanting to defend the accused. If you find a man that’s worth a damn and treats you well, then he’s fool and you’re just as well. Ouch. Payback is a bitch and just one of the reasons, I don’t date musicians. Why risk it?
Despite what the heartbroken might think, letting someone go feels AWFUL. Thinking about it, knowing you have to do it, is literally sickening. You walk around with a knot in your stomach, fueled with regret and self loathing. You blame yourself for coming up short emotionally. And you wonder if you’re cutting out the good in your life in exchange for going it alone (yet again) into the great, treacherous, and tragically random….unknown.
Yes, letting someone go feels like the worst thing imagineable.
But its not.
Getting dumped is so much much worse. The rejection, the hollow feeling, the betrayal, the loneliness, the longing,… I could go on. The feeling is so terrible and lasts so long that you wonder why your heart was designed with such a fatal flaw. The answer is compassion. Its the memory of these catastrophic hurts that enables us to be our most human. And its the memory of this pain that we should use to guide our behavior when we cannot avoid inflicting pain on others.
There is no right way to let someone go. And there is no one way that people react to pain. It’s messy. It’s hurtful. And its what makes us beautifully human.
But here are a few basic principles that you should try never to break:
* Be sure. Don’t let someone go until you are SURE. Yes, it sucks to hold back your feelings while you are deciding but the worst thing you can do is create a turmoil of painful indecision that will make you feel terrible and will inflict agony on him.
* Love isn’t negotiable. Almost anything in a relationship can be resolved through compromise and communication. But love can’t. If you’ve built a relationship on real love, you can find your way back. If you’ve never fully developed the feeling (I mean that real, passionate, unquestionable LOVE), you cannot manufacture it —no matter how much you care for, respect, and WANT to love this man.
* Be Firm. It will be excruiating but your delivery should be final. Broken hearts will look for any loophole to avoid the hurt. Though it’s terrible in the moment, he will be better off in the long run if you deny all pleas for negotiation and stays of execution.
*Keep it Simple: Give your reason and repeat it as often as necessary. Don’t get dragged into details about why you said xyz last Tuesday. Explain yourself in simple honest terms. Respect his ego. If there is something he really must know to help him along in his future with women, tell him kindly. But if he is a great guy and you just lacked chemistry, then there is no point in telling him that you never liked his cologne. Broken hearts hang on to every hurtful word, and replay them for weeks to come. Avoid adding external wounds, even if he seems to be begging for them.
* Show Your Pain: It’s ok for him to see that you are hurting too. It might even help. If it’s killing you, go ahead and cry. Honor the good memories and let him know that it’s NOT easy to walk away.
* Keep the Door Closed but Unlocked: As the weeks roll ahead, don’t contact him. It will only rip open the wound. Let him dictate the terms of your post-relationship relations. If you want to leave friendship on the table, reserve it for a few months. No matter what he says, friendship is unrealistic in the first weeks and months. Any persistent attempts to communicate with you before that should be interpreted as his inability to move on —and should be kindly and firmly denied. But in the long run, you might just find yourself sharing a laugh filled lunch and catching up on each others lives.
In fact, some of my dearest male friends are ex boyfriends…
As for that time when your heart was broken? Store that pain away in a little box and take a peek at it once in awhile. It will make you a better person and it will also remind you of what love feels like when its real.
In the meantime, I hope all of you are enjoying a heartbreak free week. And for those of you still searching, good luck out there!
