Why breakups hurt so much — and how you can overcome them
If you are a healthy, sociable adult, you probably have been through a relationship breakup already. You and your partner may have had some issues, but you were giving the best of you and for the sake of the relationship — ultimately, for the sake of them — and, out of the blue, on a thursday evening, they breakup with you.
Being dumped is not always your fault. Actually, I dare to affirm that, most times, the dumpee played a minor role in the killing of the relationship. Unless you cheated or physically hit your partner, hardly ever you have done something so terrible you killed the relationship alone. Since human relations are an exchange of feelings, action-reaction, and dating is the same thing but with kissing, your actions towards your partner’s deleterious deeds helped destroy the magic you had with each other as much as they had.
Although some acts of you as a dumpee might have accelerated the relationship to its end, you didn’t contribute for that on your own. As said before, relationships are giving and taking, 50–50. Unless you got serious mental issues, the dumper also contributed to make the relationship less than it could be, or even not loving you as much as you loved them.
It’s not of our interest to describe toxic relationships or explain why they fail, but to get stronger and over the breakup. Breakups, specially when you truly like the person you are dating, can be an excruciating, terrifying experience. That’s because you experience intense depression and anxiety, which are symptoms of abstinence — psychological abstinence. You can’t rush through your grief — for grief it’s abstinence of a person — , but you can make it less painful and get out of it in your best shape. Everything resumes to self-love, self-improvement and a little bit of neurotransmitters.
It’s about you, not your ex
If your ex dumped you, they couldn’t care less about you. Their love ran out quicker than yours, and the relationship was an unbearable burden for them. After a breakup, your ex feels relieved for doing so, so it is useless for you reaching them out after you tried to reason the motives (the post-breakup conversation both of you had; you trying to show the breakup was a mistake) of the separation. So, now you are all by yourself.
Unless your ex actually likes you and broke up with you in an impulse and went right after you days after the breakup, they have decided splitting up. Right now, there is no hope for you, so don’t engage in self-humiliation and degrading actions, such as begging and calling them to cry out how much you love them. Your ex is intoxicated with your neediness, so they don’t need to hear how many times you would die for them. They would pretty much kill you instead.
You gotta give your ex exactly what they asked for — being left alone. For the good and the bad. Even if it might look like hopeless to live without that person you love more than anything in the world, you need to let it go, even against your will. This will empower you. Since your ex broke up with you on his terms, let them feel the consequences of letting you go, which is remaining completely in silence — the No Contact Rule. No texting, no calling, no gifting, no orbiting social media, no talking about them with their friends. NOTHING.
Across the internet, you will find some “ex back guides” which tell you to stay in no contact for 21, 30, 45, 60, 90 days. This doesn’t work. Every person is different and deals with grief (you) and relief (your ex) in a way. You might not be recuperated yet in 90 days, as well as your ex could miss you only in 30. The No Contact Rule is indefinite — you shall never reach out your ex again before they do. I know this may feel bad and draw your expectations to the ground, but you need to be realistic. I broke the rule and regretted. There’s a chance your ex never come back for you again. So you shouldn’t lose time and move on immediately, by raising the levels of neurochemicals in your brain as quick as you can, as shown in the section below.
Remember: getting over a breakup it’s about you, not your ex. They don’t give a fuck about you — they coldly, heartlessly left you in the dirt, and if you stalked them in social media, you have probably seen them partying like an animal, drinking Piña Colada in Caribe or maybe with a new partner. You have to give them what they are giving to you — distance. You ought to give them jack. No Contact.
Love is a drug
You might have already heard of three substances that mainly regulate our brain — serotonin, dopamine and epinephrine. They are monoamines, neurotransmitters critically involved in regulating our mood— from depression to panic or schizophrenia — , and need to be in a fine regulation in our synapses to make us feel good and functional. Many antidepressants act regulating the serotonin uptake, such as fluoxetine and citalopram, among others that regulates more than only one neurotransmitter. Literature about monoamines and happiness is abundant through the internet; all you have to do is Google it.
There are two other neurotransmitters that you may not know, which play a special role in bonding and social enlacing, although they are there in your brains and are, ambiguously, making it hurt and helping you get over. It’s oxytocin and phenethylamine, a neuropeptide and a trace amine, respectively.
Oxytocin is more complex, so let’s stick to it first. It’s a small protein, produced in the hypothalamus, and it’s released when humans bond, either social or sexually; and in the female brain when amamenting. This is why sex is all related to feeling good in a social manner and vice-versa: utterly the same pleasure of taking a girl diner and making out with her is to sleep with her, though sexual pleasure has a specifical physiology, apart from oxytocin alone. It is a so notable substance it does even have anti inflammatory properties.
When we’re in love, our nervature is irrigated with it, from our frontal lobe to our pudendal nerve. You brain get used to it — just like a drug. When a breakup happens, the positive stimulus coming from your significant other disappears, and you get in “abstinence” of this hormone, with all the devastating withdrawal effects you might have already felt. Since it regulates fear and anxiety alone, low oxytocin would give you that panic feeling you experience weeks after the breakup.
Love is a fire that burns unseen,
a wound that aches yet isn’t felt,
an always discontent contentment,
a pain that rages without hurting,a longing for nothing but to long,
a loneliness in the midst of people,
a never feeling pleased when pleased,
a passion that gains when lost in thought-Luis Vaz de Camões
One of the purest and most powerful sources of oxytocin is human bonding, in every way possible. Hugging, making out, having sex, sticking together and dating are activities that release oxytocin in your brain. So, in order to feel loved and fine again, and to reduce your depression and anxiety, you need social contact — in all possible ways, which includes dating.
So, everything you have to do is increase its levels in order to feel not fine, but at least well, and loved. How? By increasing social contact with friends, family and, nevertheless, with acquaintances, which means dating.
But Augusto — you might say — date?! I still love my ex!
I know you do. But they don’t love you in return. If they did, they wouldn’t break up with you. They would — they could — stick up to the relationship; sit down and communicate to get things right and, if things still didn’t work out, agree to end the relationship with you on a peaceful, civilised, and caring way. Instead, they didn’t commit to the relationship for months and, in the end, kicked you out of their lives, discharging you as a plastic cup and ignoring you as if you didn’t exist; left for dead. They, as a matter of fact, see you as a corpse, rotten, useless, which they didn’t mind dumping.
Give that crush a try. Even though if you don’t like them that much or they never seemed as interesting as your ex, give them a chance. You don’t know what’s inside. You might have a good surprise.
You may not be ready yet. This is absolutely comprehensible. Some people experience terrible feelings while dating after being dumped, which includes comparing the former partner with the current one; or, even worse, fantasize of them while they are enjoying their new company, a dishonest and stingy attitude. It takes from a week to an year to completely get over someone. You can’t be held back by such.
Utterly, I will give you one last opinion… And this, of all that I have written, is what I want to make of you, my dear friend.
If anyone gives you the “option” to suffer because of a woman or you make a woman suffer because of you, always choose the part you suffer; not the part she suffers. You will always recover; the person who made you suffer on purpose — or unintentionally — never will, and they will take it for life. There is no turning back on such thing.-Milton Pires, MD, brazilian cardiologist
If there’s a chance your new relationship becomes a rebound, don’t date just yet. Don’t hurt someone like your ex hurt you. Go see people and do as you must, from kissing to sex, but don’t firm no compromise. Instead, enjoy time with your family and friends. It has pretty much the same effect, although less powerful. Release the oxytocin.
Feel Good, Inc
Humans are biological machines, programmed to stick together to raise their chances of survival and reproduce, perpetuating its gene pool through the environment. Since engaging in such activities may be harsh — you know how hard coexisting with different people can be — , evolution has selected a lineage of individuals, which compose nowadays humanity, that feel pleasure by doing activities that makes us alive and well — thus regulated by some neurochemicals.
One neurotransmitter principally involved in post-breakup grief is phenethylamine. It is an alkaloid, naturally-occurring amphetamine, synthesized in the pars compacta of the brain substantia nigra, directly related to dopamine release and Parkinson’s disease.
As a central nervous system stimulant, phenethylamine acts in a receptor that, instead of fluoxetine, which inhibits the reuptake of a neurotransmitter, it will make the axon terminal release neurotransmitter substances, such as dopamine and epinephrine, thus regulating the general feeling of awareness and happiness, just like methamphetamine does, but in a safe, non-addicting (unless you are taking MAOIs) way.
Runner’s high is due to phenethylamine. So is the exciting and colorful sensation of being in love. The almost psychotic condition of being in love, to be sincere. And, like any stimulant, its lack have already been felt by you — the same terrible feeling of abandonment, depression and absence of hope you feel in the days or weeks after being dumped.
Causa cessante, cessat effectus. In order to regain your self-esteem and start feeling great again, you need to engage in activities that release phenethylamine in your brain — like working out, running, listening to music and skydiving; getting busy with something you really love, like caring for the elderly, painting, writing, singing etc; and last, but not least, getting involved in social activities, like partying, meeting new people, hanging out with your friends and going out with someone in a romantic manner. This last form of getting a phenethylamine trip is the utter, for it helps you detach your feeling of happiness from the dumper, making you dissociate the necessity of their presence to feel whole, which is indeed the hardest part of the post-breakup transformation you need to go through in order to prevent perishing in overthinking and depression.
My words above are not trying to reduce love to biogenic amines nor chemical reactions taking place in the brain. Psychologists and poets, please don’t hang me in a tree. I am just showing, in a feasible way, why do we feel so bad after being left by the person we most love; and how to detach from them, since they detached from us, easing the pain of being abandoned without a chance to hold together the one we thought were the love of our lives.
Turn forever hand in hand
Take it all in on your stride
It is ticking, falling down
Love forever, love has freely
Turned forever you and me
Windmill, windmill for the land
Is everybody in?
You 2.0
As Albert Einstein once quoted, a crisis can be a blessing to any person, for all crises bring progress. People change only for one motive: discomfort. When we are inside our comfort zone, we have little encouragement to make a change in our lives. That’s why so many people are getting fatter, lazier, depressed and hateful, as the clock ticks. Industrial Era has brought so much well-being to us that one of the most elementary survival features, which is the intrinsic difficulties of life, are ridden, in a malefic way we have no reason to keep going. Instead, we would rather sit down and watch Netflix eating ice cream the whole day — even if we aren’t tired of work.
Nietzsche’s Amor Fati got lost in the well-being society, and now we have to deal with the boredom pole, just like Viktor Frankl prevented us, half a century ago. We, as humans, live between boredom and angst, and much of any can make us either depressed or crazy.
When you are inside a tire relationship, walking towards its end, with no excitement at all, and then break up with your partner, you are bored. The dumpee, in the other hand, get desperate to have you back. Both of you are unsatisfied — the difference is keeping yourself bored is much more comfortable than being in angst.
That’s why, apart from relieving the initial pain from the breakup by pursuing leisure and improving your global well-being, you need to start working hard to become a better version of yourself. Losing weight — or getting in shape — , learning a new language (aprendam português!!), improving your speaking abilities, learning to play the piano, graduating from university, improving your income, becoming more comprehensive, learning emotional intelligence, getting a fresh new partner or becoming more spiritualistic are some ways you can become a best you.
In the other hand, the person that dumped you because, on their minds, you wasn’t good enough for them, has stayed in their comfort zone. They will keep the same erratic behaviours and keep on making the same mistakes — the same ones conducted your relationship with them to failure. While you become more understanding, more attractive, more open-minded, more independent, less needy, and capable of having a better relationship with the next person you date, the dumper will keep acting wrongly, with no will to change, until they get as hurt as you did in the next relationship with someone that is not as patient or nice as you were with them.
When that happens, they will go after you just to see how you are doing. They will see you are hot as fuck, with a new job, a new degree or a new girlfriend/boyfriend. They will realise what they lost by dumping you and then will reach you out, desperate to have you back, even willing to hijack your current relationship. That’s why sticking to strict No Contact is important — if you keep on going after you ex, you will not only push them further by showing your neediness and insecurity, but delay your recuperation, as you are living in the past, and not aiming the future.
Obviously, the whole point of getting better is not to offer yourself as a prize for your ex in the future, for they don’t deserve it. If they didn’t stay with you at your worst, they don’t deserve your best. The point is to use the breakup as an opportunity to have some time alone and work on yourself, instead of dreaming together with your egoistical former partner, which milked you out every way possible until you got empty and was left in the dust.
After you start working on yourself, people will start noticing the different you. You are getting more confident, prettier, more sociable, more easygoing, more interesting and, ultimately, happier. Even that person you secretly liked for years but never had a chance with — making you stick with your second choice, your ex — will start looking up to you, and you get the unexpected opportunity to come closer and even date them — because that’s exactly what happened to me.
And that’s the time you forgive and thank your ex for acting recklessly and irresponsibly with you, breaking up the beautiful relationship you had. Your ex will be so depressed and miserable without the 2.0 version of you they will eventually regret letting you go, having the same opportunity you had several months ago of becoming a better person. They will remember the good times you had, that diner, that walking in the park, that hot night you had some weeks prior to the breakup. And they will rue.
That’s when karma — or divine justice, or law of return, call as you will — is going to hit your ex like a Mike Tyson’s hook. And it will hurt twice as much as hurted you right after the breakup, for they dumped you on purpose. Don’t get happy about it. Just know acts have consequences, and people need to be responsibilized for their deeds.
Caption this: you are improving for yourself, not for your ex. You are not the one who will redeem them. Life takes care of it. They deserve what they asked for: being left alone. By following the tips above, I promise you, you will not only get over your nasty ex, but you will also become a better, stronger, and more loveable person than before. Unlike your ex, you will be overwhelmed by the only feeling that matters — love.
There is not, below skies, a greater feeling than love. Love moves mountains, ends wars, is the source of forgival, of tolerance and of happiness along with someone; and as much love as you give, you will receive it in return.
Love can make people miles away stick together; a father trip only to hug his kids in his free time; make a doctor assist freely patients in need; have billionaires giving millions to social causes anonymously; and, the greatest miracle that love can undertake, to give life to a new person through the ultimate communion of two souls — the embodiment of love.
Love is a so powerful thing it makes 1+1=3, not 2, and allows a mother to give a part of herself, via mother’s milk, to a child. Love is so willing it makes two people stick together despite their differences. Love is so omnipresent, the history of mankind cannot be told without it.
Do not become embittered nor resentful after being abandoned. People come and go all the time, always to teach us a lesson. You must always be grateful for people around you and understand what they are, even if unconsciously, teaching you. And, the most important lessons all departures tells us is that no one will be there for us forever; and that you have to stay strong, all the time.
Love is the seasoning of life. It makes it sweet, tasteful and even funny. Love is the only thing that can make the existence bearable. The best feeling, in this world, is to be in love. Life gets coloured, happy, and wholeful. So go out there and love.
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
