This Is The Kind Of Breakup That Kills You The Most

Breakups are painful. So fucking painful. But are all breakups the same?

Is the breakup where the love just fades less painful than the kind where he leaves you for someone else? Survey says, “yes.” The former feels like having your heart ripped out with a surgical knife and the latter feels like having your heart ripped out with a dull spoon made by a third grader in woodshop class.

There’s the sadness of losing the relationship, but then there’s the added rejection of having him choose someone over you.

He had to make a choice, looked at both options, and decided he didn’t want you. He wanted her.

The “bad” relationship that was broken a long time ago that never seemed to work out. It doesn’t make sense. You were great together. In love, perhaps. He was always seemed happy with you. You never fought, just mildly disagreed. He said you were a one-in-a-million girl. You laughed all the time and talked on the phone for hours, which in the end never felt like hours at all.

Being around each other was effortless and natural. When he looked into your eyes, you felt a connection that just felt right. But then he changes his mind and wants to go back to her. He offers no explanation. Just like that, he flips a switch and it’s over. You are no longer rowing in the same direction. He’s in a different boat with someone else and you’re left on the shore buried waist deep in sand, devastated and broken.

Yes, breakups are painful. So fucking painful. But when a breakup happens because of a third party, you torture yourself by picturing them together doing the things you used to do with him.

Friday night takeout and movies, Sunday morning cuddles, even silly errands to the grocery store. You picture him putting his arm around her waiting in line at Starbucks. You imagine him kissing the side of her head while she recounts a story to a group of friends. You picture him making love to her in his bed, the same bed he professed his love for you. You see her sitting in the passenger seat of his car, holding his hand, staring out the same window you’ve done countless times before. You think about the “good morning” and “good night’” texts she’s getting with heart-shaped emojis.

Your mind goes there even though it knows it shouldn’t, pouring salt into your wound that never gets a chance to heal.

In the absence of any answers, your mind is stuck in an obsessive loop of asking “why.”

Why would he choose someone who he swore would not be good for him? Why did he change his mind? Why didn’t he pick the “better” option?

You start to fill in the answers by looking inward. You pick apart every conversation, every interaction looking for answers that will reveal the logic behind his choice. You had to have done something wrong. Maybe you weren’t pretty enough. Maybe you weren’t interesting enough. Maybe you weren’t good enough in bed. You convince yourself that you just weren’t good enough.

But sometimes, it has nothing to do with you. Nothing you could have done or didn’t do would have changed the outcome. And that is a hard pill to swallow.

Because we all want to believe we have control of our lives and we could somehow “fix” whatever went wrong and win him back. Even if there are answers offered, it still might not make sense. He may not even know why. There may never be an answer that will satisfy your need to understand.

The truth is you are exactly who you should be. Just not for him.

But you will be perfect for the next guy who comes along and appreciates everything about you. Decides to choose you every single day, nine ways to Sunday. The universe has different plans for you. It’s clearing the path for someone who deserves you to come into your life. Not everyone we date will be our “forever” guy. Some people are only meant to be with us a short while and move on. Their purpose has been served and the key is to understand what that is.

Yes, breakups are painful. So fucking painful. But they are not all the same.