Breaking Up Was The Best Thing To Happen To Both Of Us: Here’s Our Take On What Happened
We broke up. We’d been together for over a year, but then we broke and finally we broke up. It was civil, and it was messy. But we learned a lot from the experience and we’re better individuals now. We’re also better with each other; breaking up was one of the best things to happen to us.
He said. I took her for granted. I stopped treating her with the decency I would treat a friend. Once I became comfortable with her I expected her to be more accepting and willing to deal with me, but I forgot that that didn’t mean I could treat her like she had to be with me. I was too caught up in life and forgot to let her know when what she did was appreciated.
She said. It was our first relationship. Breaking up seemed like the worst thing, it was only after we broke up that I realized that staying together would have actually been worse. In retrospect, I’m glad be pushed for us to break up. We loved each other deeply, but we were in a destructive cycle and the only way to get out of it was to get out of the relationship. It’s weird to admit that staying with someone you love is bad for you.
He said. I forgot to take time out of my day. I couldn’t just take 30 minutes, 15 minutes or even 5 minutes just to let go and relax my mind. It made dealing with life difficult and the stress piled up very quickly. I didn’t have time for her when all we needed was that little bit of time. Those moments away from the rush of everything just to absorb each other and remember why we wanted to be together.
She said. I spent so much time maintaining the relationship that I forgot to maintain myself. I didn’t realize how broken I’d become until we broke up. And then I started doing things I enjoyed, I went back to yoga, I wrote more, I spent more time with my friends. I realized I had become someone that I didn’t like, and it was a process to slowly start rebuilding myself back into a person I wanted to be.
He said. I’ve now become more self-aware. I’ve learnt how to stop for a second and think about why I’m acting or feeling the way I am. I look for the root of where I am. Without this self-awareness how could I ever be aware of her? There’s only so much of another person you can deal with while not being able to deal with yourself. She needed someone who could deal with himself. I only found out how after I’d let her go.
She said. Just because we’d broken up didn’t mean we’d failed. I think after a break up people try to erase that person from their lives and pretend the relationship didn’t happen. But I find that incredibly sad. He was a person who I had loved and shared a lot of live with, and to deny the deeply profound impact he had had on my life would have been like denying a part of myself. We had loved, and I didn’t want to forget that, even though it hurt.